Fire on the mountain

July 2, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

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.

The longest day

June 21, 2026June 21, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

Hot town, summer in the city, as the fella says. Welcome to the summer solstice in the Year of Our Lard 2026.

It’s 76° at 15 minutes after the big hour of 9 a.m. here in The Duck! City, with a high of 95° expected — three degrees above normal but well short of the record of 103°, set all the way back in 1981, when “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes topped Billboard’s Hot 100 as Ronald Reagan shredded the social safety net while bulking up the Pentagon.

Well, there you go again. … Good times. Maybe not. Better than now? Your mileage may vary.

Where there’s heat, there’s often fire, and it should go without saying that we have a few: Deer Canyon, south of Mountainair; Osha Canyon, south of Placitas; Rio, at Mesa de la Gallina; and Elk, in the Pecos Wilderness.

Rather than add my little flame to this hot mess I whipped up cool smoothies for breakfast: Mango, strawberries, banana, yogurt, honey, rice milk, and a sprinkle of Vietnamese cinnamon.

Up north my man Hal Walter was putting the finishing touches on his Substack series, “The Blur Goes to College,” which over the past two years chronicled son Harrison’s adventures in higher education. And I do mean “higher” — The Blur attended college at 10,000 feet, in Leadville, after growing up at 8,800 feet outside Weirdcliffe.

Hal’s plan is to transform the Substack chronicle into a physical book, with a cover by noted Leadville artist and old pal Craig Schreiber. Mine is to go for a ride before it gets too bloody hot.

I can’t go all the way back to 1981 for a bike — that year I had just abandoned a Seventies Schwinn when I fled The Arizona Daily Star and Tucson for parts unknown, shortly after my father’s untimely death in Bibleburg.

But I can time-travel back to 1994, when I bought a DBR Prevail TT from John Crandall at Old Town Bike Shop in that very same town.

Do you believe in magic?