Of Fires and Wars

Images of war have replaced metaphors of a great hunt as the figurative language to describe the Las Conchas fire.

Any war, all wars, jumbled together. But especially the trenches of World War I and the eastern front in World War II where neighbors fought one another to settle old scores while matters were being decided elsewhere.



There’s the unremitting greyness when smoke obliterates the landscape, a greyness that resembles grainy newspaper photographs from the 1940's.

Also from World War II are the exotic names that taught many their European and Asian geography. The Jemez has always been a western flat behind the proscenium arch of everyday life, an undulating shadow of dark forms that stretched from the Black Mesa to the raised triangle in the north. Now there are names, Guaje, Chicoma, Polvadera.

On Jan Studebaker’s map for the Los Alamos Mountaineers, the peaks are a concave ring of teeth circling the great caldera. From a car they change location each time the road shifts to pick its way through the ridges and mounds of the lowlands. From my back porch, the Jemez are part of a great convex rotunda that surrounds me. They have no set form.

Finally, like young boys from many wars who finally seek the great atlases in public libraries to see where their fathers are stationed, I started pulling the USGS maps of the area. I found my location and moved west and found absolutely nothing. Lots of contour lines indicating changes in elevation, but no place names.

If there’s no reports from officials on what I see each evening, it’s partly because there really are no words for it. It’s in canyons and drainages that have not been tamed for human use. I begin to understand the necessity of names like Porkchop Hill.



There’s the sound of aircraft that disturbs the quiet of the countryside. When the helicopters are visible, they recall footage of the Korean mountains in M*A*S*H. Once in a while, for no obvious reason, they fly quite close and drop ammunition on areas that seem removed from the front.

As the days warms and smoke begins to tickle my nose and burn my eyes, there’s the recollection from the Hundred Year’s War that peasants far from the centers of action are often the greatest victims. When it mingles with car exhaust to make me light headed or turns brown from the maneuvers of the planes, I try not to think about what war did to civilians in Vietnam.

When my lungs are finally so full of smoke particles I no longer have the energy to stay awake, I flee for Taos in my air conditioned car and ponder the meanings of collateral damage.



Many afternoons bring false rumors of liberation like those that sent slaves fleeing plantations to find refuge with the Union army in the Civil War. Clouds gather to the north and east, sometimes thunder is heard. A couple times actual rain has materialized, but not enough. The heat and drought continue.

And then there’s the evening when the planes return to roost and trucks return from the mountains. Men foregather to assess the day’s progress, issue their press releases that focus on containment, that great metric of the Cold War. Then, victory was declared when communist armies didn’t attack Greece. The fate of the peoples in the Balkans, who had fought so hard for one side or other in the 1940's, were mere hot spots within the perimeter.

And so, each night we’re given the containment percentage for the war. We’re given insights into the strategies of this war, and how well we’re progressing. Dramatic, sometimes harrowing, photographs of men fighting on the front are posted that drown out those from bloggers that protest the unending sameness.

I suddenly realize, containment is also the defense of those who can’t fight within the perimeter. Our armies, whose technology and men come from urbanized environments, couldn't deal with the jungles of southeast Asia, can’t deal with the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Likewise, we justify our inability to deal with fire in the wilderness by saying our priorities are areas already domesticated by humans, the cities and their remote communication towers.



The efficiency of the public releases machine erases previous postings that suggest it always takes time to amass the equipment and organization to fight a war, time exploited by the enemy. Popular histories remember raising the flag at Iwo Jimo more than the Blitzkrieg, the burning of Atlanta more than Bull Run.

When the press release doesn’t answer questions raised by observations of the day, people become Kremlinologists, parsing every release for what’s not said. What does it mean that only progression maps are available today, not the one that shows yesterday’s hot spots? Are those realistic seeming comments just that, or are they intended to cover up something that might emerge tomorrow. What does it mean when they say “with expected ‘monsoonal’ rains, the fire may be extinguished naturally?”



As the sun goes down, heat drives those without aircontioning from their homes and they can see for themselves. Some nights the smoke rises from the nameless ridges, some nights it does not. The spots of red become fewer, and seem to appear farther away, higher up. Perhaps, at last, the fire is burning out, moving away, leaving battle scared land and destruction.

Finally, the night air cools the smoke and flames, the stars come out. The illusion that things have returned to normal is only disturbed by the smell of smoke. The stench of war is what people remember.

And the sense, that this will go on and on, repeating itself day after day with variations in smoke, but that, once started, fire and war follow their own inevitable logic. A kind a apocalyptic hope replaces the paranoia of isolation and media-induced ignorance that promises something, a great bomb, a great leader, a great storm, something will end the endless war.



Picture 1 Helicoper flying over the uplands, 9 July 2011 about 8:05pm; mountains are invisible.

Picture 2 Western mountains and uplifts hidden by smoke the day the fire flared in Gauje Canyon, 7 July 2011 about 4:10pm.

Picture 3 Helicopter spraying dry grasslands in front of the uplift, 7 July 2011 about 4:58pm; mountains are invisible.

Picture 4 Looking towards the western mountains as rain drips off the porch roof, 8 July 2011 about 7:38pm.

Picture 5 White smoke rising in the valleys before the far western mountains as the sun sets, 8 July 2011 about 7:57pm.

Picture 6 Fire reflected in smoke rising from behind, not in front of the mountains, for the first time, 9 July 2011 about 7:11pm.

Picture 7 Clouds over the uplands behind the Puye Cliffs gas station, 8 July 2011 about 8:10pm; mountains not visible.