Fire on the mountain

~ Patrick O'Grady
The Aspen Acres fire, as seen from my old stomping grounds. Photo: Hal Walter

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.

11 thoughts on “Fire on the mountain”

  1. 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.

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    1. Yeah, it’s a pisser. I remember the Hayman, Waldo Canyon, and Black Forest fires from our Colorado days. Didn’t care for any of ’em.

      I thought we might have to run from the Waldo blaze, but nope. We did take in some refugees from Manitou Springs, though.

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    1. That Utah fire is making everyone in Grand Junction crazy, last I heard. Then there’s the Ouray one, the DisneyLead one, Aspen Acres, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

      And leave us not forget all the fires we have right here in New Mexico.

      Last night as we hit the hay we heard the neighborhood knuckleheads playing with fireworks. Jesus wept. You just can’t fix stupid.

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  3. Have you ever read “Young Men and Fire”, by Norman McLean? The story of the early smoke jumpers and the Mann Gulch fire. It’s pretty riveting.

    I also recall a bike race back in the day and while on the winners podium Bobby Julich, thanked the people of Oregon and the 14 Hot Shots who sacrificed their lives in the 1994 Storm King fire, for protecting his hometown of Glenwood Springs. Very recently 3 firefighters died in a burn over.

    Fire has no mercy and as long as we humans continue to push our growth boundaries to build, rape and pillage where we aren’t t meant to be then these brave souks will put their lives on the line to save our homes etc.

    They are truly heroes

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    1. Haven’t read that one, though I have read me some Norm Maclean. I also recall reading something about smoke jumpers, but I can’t recall the author, and I think it was fiction.

      Fire and water do not play. When the gods start throwing their weight around it’s best for mortals to watch from a safe distance.

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    2. Visited Mann Gulch when I lived in Montana and knew one of the smoke jumpers who missed that plane. Maclean wrote of a Montana that was relatively unchanged till the 1990″s. A River runs through it and other novellas are great stuff along with Mcguane.

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      1. Thomas McGuane can rope him some word count, for sure. I can see 14 of his books in the shelf behind me; may be more in another room.

        It’s a shame his old buddy Jim Harrison isn’t around anymore. There was another guy you could count on for a book worth your bucks.

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