New Mexico’s wildfire season has gotten off to an unusually early start. I keep thinking of 2011, the year of the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez. I wrote about that fire last summer so won’t repeat myself here, other than to say I now know, for sure, that for all their destruction and devastation, wildfires also create space for innumerable new and beautiful beginnings.1
Hard to imagine, though, looking at the photo I took last week of smoke from the Cerro Pelado fire, which is also in Jemez and, in some areas, very close to the “footprint” of the Las Conchas fire.2
There was a chopper ferrying buckets of water from Cochiti Lake to the fire. It seemed like a Sisyphean chore to me, almost literally a drop in the bucket.
I went back to the same area a few days later and could see almost nothing at all. The smoke was so dense that my eyes and throat were burning, even though I was wearing a KN95 mask.3
I decamped to a spot several miles away and set up my tripod. I tried to stabilize it against a rather stiff wind4 so I could shoot some time-lapse video. While I was waiting for that to complete, I took stills with another camera. The photo above is a very wide-angle view of the same area.
A dog from the ranch on the other side of the fence came over to investigate — carrying out her guard dog duties, I assumed. After I’d taken a few photos, I called to her. She promptly turned tail and fled, making me wonder if she wasn’t quite the diligent guard dog I’d originally imagined. Still, she was very cute.
The time lapse finally completed5 and I packed up to head home. Driving away from the fire, I saw pinkish streaks in the sky. I was tired by then but stopped for just a few more photos. Wildfire smoke often has a weird and spooky beauty.
Red flag warnings are forecast for the next several days, with today expected to be particularly windy, both in the area of the Cerro Pelado fire and throughout the rest of New Mexico. The chance of new fire starts today, in particular, is so high that NM made the national news.6
Stay safe, you all.
A truly amazing form of everyday magic we can look forward to in years to come.
I’ve learned much of what I know about New Mexican wildfires from NMWildfireInfo.com, which said Cerro Pelado was only 11% contained as of yesterday afternoon.
The smoke from the Cerro Pelado fire hasn’t been too bad in Albuquerque … yet. It’s been absolutely horrible in Santa Fe though, which is caught between the Cerro Pelado and Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak fires.
As you can see, I failed in my efforts to stabilize the tripod. On the upside, it was never actually blown over by the wind, which is way more than I can say for my portable chair.
A full hour of stills, taken every four seconds, produced a 30-second video.
I really hate it when news in little old New Mexico goes national — it’s never for anything good.
Click here to see the story in the Washington Post.
Here’s one of yesterday’s tweets from the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, which is possibly even scarier.
Click here to watch a video clip in which a Kewa/Santo Domingo Pueblo elder describes hearing the trees cry. I was more or less between Santo Domingo and Cochiti pueblos when I shot the time lapse the other day.
Great photography of a devastating fire - which will later lead to new beginnings as you say. Such informative links also - thanks Lisa!
Scary and beautiful, yes. A little down the Twitter feed is a photo from a Substack post. Is that yours?!