Long distance runner, what you standin’ there for?
Get up, get out, get out of the door. — “Fire On the Mountain,” The Grateful Dead
Caught between a rock and a hard place. Or a hot place.
That’s my man Hal Walter, who is dealing with not one, but two fires up in Colorado.
The big one — the Aspen Acres fire, presently the No. 1 priority blaze in the country — is reportedly at more than 48,000 acres, with zero containment and evacuations ordered in Hal’s old hometown of Wetmore, plus San Isabel, Rye, and Colorado City.
Hal’s rancheroo is miles west of the road closure at Mackenzie Junction atop Hardscrabble Canyon, at highways 96 and 165, but a fire with that much reach and attitude isn’t the sort of beast you want running loose anywhere near your area of operations.
Especially when your wife and son are up in Leadville, where another no-containment blaze— the much-smaller Willow Fire — is giving folks the jitters.
Harrison Walter went to school at Colorado Mountain College, and since graduating has been dividing his time between the family home and an apartment in DisneyLead, where he works a couple-three part-time jobs while Hal and his wife, Mary, tag-team supervisory duties. Harrison is neurodiverse and can be a tad sensitive to stress, though things that would dissolve your average normie into a puddle of pee and tears — such as running the 2026 Leadville Trail Marathon, where he placed third in his age group — don’t seem to bother him much.
Harrison and Mary were supposed to be headed home today, the Fourth of July festivities in DisneyLead having gotten a big thumb’s down, but I haven’t heard from Hal yet this morning.
Here’s hoping he’s not loading up the truck with the devil on his tail. In addition to the usual family heirlooms Hal has a pasture full of burros and a book under construction.
Mad Blog Media 
Damn, that’s scary. I read that Western parts of Leadville were in pre-evacuation status. I hope the weather cooperates on the Aspen fire. With red flag condition as fire can move a mile very fast. Wildfires are like earthquakes; one experience was enough for me.