It's gonna be a looooong, smoky summer.

fortunately the local firefighters have stayed on top of them, all stayed pretty small, despite extremely dry conditions.

One that got started by accident nearby in a bunch of 20 year-old ungrazed DRY grass got within 5 feet of a house, saw the fire the night before and was sure that house would be gone in the morning - it was OK. That family was pretty freaking lucky, thanks to the fire crew.

and when I woke up this morning the sky had that characteristic orange forest-fire smoke look to it. Plus, when outside I can smell the smoke.

Last summer the fire season was bad enough that my one smoke alarm kept on going off, and I am miles from any actual blaze. It's quite interesting to live in a place that has a fire season.

The sunsets have been pretty awesome, though. Been hell on my allergies, though.

It's about a huge conflagration that occurred in 1910. The burn that's taking place now has many similarities to it. It's scary.

I read it several months ago.

I lived in Boulder, CO twenty years ago, only for a couple of years, and the most important thing I learned was that if you live in the mountains, you must expect to be burned out eventually. Sometimes decades go between fires, sometimes not so long.

In 2000, the Cerro Grande fire (yes, here fires get names as do hurricanes in other parts of the world) burned many thousands of acres, including parts of Los Alamos. Last year, the Las Conchas fire was not only the biggest one ever in this state, but re-burned parts that had been burned eleven years earlier, to the surprise of fire experts. They thought that there had not been enough recovery from the Cerro Grande fire for anything to burn. They were wrong about that.

I live in a part of the city of Santa Fe (behind Las Acequias Park for those of you who know the city)that is as safe from fire as is realistic. There simply isn't any forest very near here. It's all built-up housing with not all that many trees. There's just no place that a forest fire could come close in this part of the city to continue burning. Forest is miles and miles away.