Dear Editor,

Lorena and I lost our home and most of our material things in 2016, the Cold Springs Fire. Much of our property was torched. There were some untouched areas, and after a few years of hard work, things started to regrow. We had a beautiful (better, actually) view of the mountains, a year-round pond, and a cute little barn.

Friends, neighbors, and fire tourists would often stop by. Some were struck by the beauty - a straight-on shot of the mountains, with the sun setting behind. The pond attracted wildlife, ducks bobbed, and neighbor dogs would come over for a swim. The beauty was a very nice thing.

Others turned their backs to the beauty – literally - to focus only on the burn. A matter of perspective, they couldn’t see the very beautiful, the very nice things.

In 2020 we had two big wildfires at the same time – Lefthand Canyon and Cal-wood. I worked for the County at the time, and I was sent to man a dumpster, behind the fire line, out in Raymond. This was so, when residents were allowed to return, they’d have a place to dump the spoiled contents of their freezers and refrigerators. The mountain was still ablaze, communication was sparse, the air was thick with smoke, and there were no other humans around. It was eerie.

When the road re-opened, residents trickled back in, smiling and waving as they drove to their homes. They returned later with their things that were ruined. They were relieved, they were thankful; we talked, there were tears. Some brought me food or treats. One woman brought me a bag of money she had collected from her neighbors (which I declined.) It was a very beautiful, very nice, thing.

A young man came in on the second day. He hadn’t lost anything in the fire, he just wanted to dump his weekly trash. Which he normally did at the Allenspark Transfer Station, but that was temporarily closed, because it was closer to the active fire. Standing out in the smoke, oblivious to the emotions of those around him who had sustained losses, he announced a more shallow perspective. He berated me for the “inconvenience” (his word) of having to drive an extra twenty minutes to dump his trash. In a sense, he turned his back to the beauty – people survived, losses could have been worse, and even though the flames still danced and the air was ash, we were there for him so he could dump his trash. Instead, he could only see the burn – the inconvenience to him.

I write some of the Mountain Folk Tales for this paper. Happy pieces celebrating the lives and stories of our mountain friends and neighbors. I always ask the people I write about to recount the first time they saw Ned. The answers are remarkably similar – cresting at the top of the canyon, seeing the ramshackle splotches of color behind the shimmering waters of the res, and the realization that this is it! For me, I found myself sitting at the counter in Dot’s Diner (now Tres Amigos), with Neil Young in the background, calling my wife in Tampa to tell her, “I’m supposed to be here!” Like Brigham Young, I had found it – a beautiful, magical place. A very nice thing.

Sometimes that gets lost on people. All they see is the burn, what they don’t have – convenience, paved roads and groomed trails, street lights and trail lights, pump tracks and bandshells, hamburgers and arcades, more services, more things, more concrete, and overriding it all, less taxes.

What are they thinking? We’re in the mountains, we don’t have much of a tax base - do the math. Life isn’t convenient up here, but convenient doesn’t mean nice. As for all those other unnecessaries we don’t have, maybe so. But don’t tell me we don’t have nice things - we have everything we need, and beyond that, we have the nicest things of all. We have the nicest things that matter.

John MacKay

Nederland