The fire at Marblehead Canyon, between Cloudcroft and Alamogordo, they said, was human-caused. Had to be, they said, because it waosn't lightning-caused.
Now I know there is a small community of desert campers who love it out there, way out West Side Road, which comes off south from around High Rolls, and goes along behind those Alamo mountains where it's real wild, and dry. You have to about have a humvee to get back up in there, and when you do, I suppose you are just as likely to light a cigarette as anyone. And just for the record, I don't want to argue with them about the lightning. If they know there was no lightning that day (about a week ago), that is good enough for me.
But here's something they apparently didn't consider, though they could have just called it "human-caused." I think it's possible that that fire was "space-rocket-caused," since a space rocket had taken off from Las Cruces the night before.
The space rocket didn't really make much news. It was private; it was successful; apparently some people went into space, but not far into space, and they came back, and I assume lived to tell the tale. You didn't hear much about how private rocket launches would change our lives out here in the country, or how it was a new age of space travel. Maybe it wasn't very new.
But this is my argument: It would be hard to get that rocket up there, in any situation, without dropping a few sparks, not to mention a few very hot pieces of rocket. Those had to land somewhere. They could land in the White Sands or somewhere out on that missile range and probably nobody would know the difference - in some places vegetation is so sparse that you can catch one bush on fire and the others won't catch; they're too far apart.
But up in Marblehead Canyon, there's enough, now, so that a fire could start and still be burning the next morning. It's dry enough.
And so comes my prediction. We who live out at the end of the road, in a dry forest, with hundreds of miles of dry forest to our sides and edges, might be called upon to pay close attention in the coming years. Space rockets may keep us on our toes. But here's another problem: drones. People are beginning to use them to hunt. Why not? They will be all over this valley as well, and they will provide the hunter pictures of where the deer and elk are, and even do the shooting. The hunter then just has to know how to go out and find them.
What will we do about drones? I have no idea. I'm not even sure what we should do about space rockets. All I can say is, a little more rain wouldn't hurt.
