wilderness

Dragon legends play a powerful role in mountain folklore. In European tales of yore, a dragon often dwells in a remote lair, which is nestled deep in a timbered and rugged landscape that towers high and secluded above town. However, when provoked, the dragon uses its power to fire scorch the lands below his domain, consuming everything that dare cross his path.

On Monday, the dragon that sleeps in the mountains above my town of Boulder, Colorado awoke with a vengeance. Most days, even most years, he sleeps peacefully and lets us live, play and love in the thickly wooded mountains that ground our place in space and time. However, officials confirmed this morning that he ravaged at least 95 structures, consumed more than 7,000 acres and is still uncontained.

Protected areas are important to each person in their own way.  Be it a special spot, a rare habitat or unique ecosystem, we all have our reasons for caring.  While I care deeply about the intrinsic value of protected areas, I also care about the data that helps us catalog these places.  One of CBI’s recent projects is PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) dataset, a national inventory of protected areas.

I just came back from a week of backpacking in the Gila Wilderness. I hiked from the hot New Mexico desert into cool moist canyons lush with blooming yellow Columbines and omnipresent poison ivy all the way to cool dry peaks where firs, pines and aspen formed healthy green forests. In places, wildfires have killed trees whose boles will retain the stored carbon for years to come providing great drumming opportunities for the local woodpeckers and flickers. We discover these while pitching our tent under a patch of remnant green trees in a large burn area.