The Not-So-Great Smoky Mountains

    Twice in the past week I have explained to people new to Montana, or new to being alive, that summers filled with forest fire smoke are a relatively new tradition here. I grew up in Missoula, whose name means--a bowl-shaped valley especially well suited for trapping fumes.  My childhood memories smell like the pulp mill or smoke from the garbage burning barrel, back in the days when recycling was done with a match.  When I was a child, Smoky Bear was still alive and fire was considered bad because it destroyed things.  Logging was deemed good because it provided lumber to build things. In mathematical terms:  destroy = bad, build = good.  Although we understood that fires return nourishing nitrogen to the soil, we felt that returning good lumber and animals to the soil was too high a price to pay for plant food.
    Now logging is considered bad and fire is considered good--unless it it man caused fire, that is still bad. (I don't think the trees recognize the difference, but the people who hug them do.)  It is this Smoky Bear-eness and abundance of fuel in unlogged forests that produce the combustible cocktail we are forced to drink every August. This summer, we are even importing smoke from Idaho. Environmentalists consider forest fires a natural process that replenishes the soil and should not be interfered with, but breathing is also a natural process that forest fires interfere with and I'm afraid some of the soil replenishment will be the bodies of those with respiratory trouble.
     But underlogged, overhugged forests and Smoky's demise are only part of the reason for the cyclical, summer, sun siesta; turf wars among the fire fighting agencies also contribute to the Molotov meltdown.  We know of several instances where fires have been reported by pilots while they were still small and manageable but, by the time the various bureaus had finished marking their territory, the fire was a roaring conflagration.  I know that the swing of the pendulum that took us from the "spit on fireflies" fire fear of my youth to the "laissez faire" (let it be) trend of today, will someday reach a sensible synthesis. Yes, home builders should realize that their cabin/mansion in the woods will burn like a campfire/marshmallow, and that fire fighters can't save the behinds of those who chose to leave cities behind.  But it is not unreasonable for smoke soaked states to be able to breathe in the summer.  Someday I will tell my grandchildren, or anyone else who will listen, about the idiotic fire noncontrol of this time--that is, if I have enough breath to do so.