It's Raining in Portland Again . . . but It's Ashes This Time

Right now I have too many events and issues close to home, that affect me directly, to write about . . . as opposed to the usual mélange of national/international politics or celebrity misbehavior and weird crimes.

I have been working on a series of commentaries here about homelessness as well as a few other topics, but a one-two punch of hot weather and a wilderness fire only forty miles east of the city struck this week.

Originally forecast to hit 99 or 100 degrees Monday and Tuesday, temperatures in downtown Portland did not get that high after all . . . but that was because the city was blanketed in smoke from a fire that began along the Eagle Creek Trail, not very far above and south of the Columbia River, inside the edge of the Mount Hood National Forest. (That’s the morning sun in this shot, through the haze and between the towers in South Waterfront on Tuesday morning about 7:25 a.m.).

More than 150 hikers were trapped up the trail by the fire overnight Saturday, but most of them got out safely. By Monday evening it began to rain white and grey ash all over Portland. The air tasted foul. The full or nearly full moon turned a rusty brown or nearly blood red for the past few nights. (Below, the Fox Tower on the left, and Park Avenue West on the right, behind the signpost in Pioneer Courthouse Square, with the smoke-dulled sun behind me reflected in their windows, about 9:20 a.m. Tuesday.)

Several towns along the Columbia were evacuated on Monday afternoon, and more communities closer to the metro area have been placed on alert. Evacuees are staying in gyms, with family or good Samaritans; their horses, goats, llamas, and other farm animals have been trucked to safe harbors south of the city.

Strong winds blew the fire west from one ridge to another Monday and Tuesday, and whipped a 3,000-acre fire into more than 5,000 acres. Embers jumped north across the big river on Tuesday and burned patches of land on the Washington state side.

It has been reported that the Eagle Creek fire started because someone was lighting fireworks in the wilderness Saturday afternoon: not only an illegal act, but a highly dangerous and irresponsible one, since we’ve had an extremely dry summer. About 25 days had passed since the last small bit of rain on August 13 (six hundredths of an inch), and you’d have to go backanother 58 days to find a hundredth of an inch at nearby Portland Airport, back on June 16.

Newspaper comment sections and my Facebook page have been buzzing with rage and sorrow. Folks are mourning the destruction of “our playground,” our pride, the glorious Columbia River Gorge. People have called for violence, long jail sentences, and public shaming for the 15-year-old suspect, his friends at the scene, and their families.

I have shared in the rage over the stupidity and destruction; my wife and I hiked the Eagle Creek trail and camped overnight in that wilderness early in our relationship. I have also braved (and cursed) the dirty yellow air: on Tuesday, I led two Portland Walking Tours to show visitors from Albuquerque, New York, D.C., San Fran, Pennsylvania, and Vancouver BC our downtown sights. My throat and sinuses continue to ache.

But as so often happens, the rhetoric has o’ertopped the trees, burnt or otherwise. Conservatives have minimized the harm by saying it will all grow back soon enough, and placed partial blame on federal forest policy, declaring, this wouldn’t have happened if clear cutting or thinning would have been allowed. They add that aggressive firefighting of wildfires in the past preserved more dry timber/tinder than would have been the case after natural fires.

In this instance, thinning and natural fires or controlled burns probably wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. This land is within national forest boundaries, on terribly rugged land that a private timber company would probably not have found it cost-effective to log; that is, if it had been able to get through the lengthy and arduous permitting process.

On the other side, despite the handwringing of my friends, Portland is not going through “hell.” Hell is what the wild plants and animals went through inside the fire. Humans have been very lucky so far: not a single fatality, and only one home and four outbuildings destroyed at this point.

Although the western half of the state and much of the rest of the Pacific Northwest is battling a broad number of wildfires and atmospheric smoke, this is also not necessarily that unusual. If you look at fire maps from years past, the amount of land and timber involved then was not less; just less accessible from larger communities.

The biggest complexes of fires are in southern Oregon and northern California (not to mention British Columbia, which has spent nearly half a billion dollars to fight 1,200 fires that have destroyed nearly 500 structures across more than 4,400 square miles). Eagle Creek is getting a lot of attention out here (but probably not elsewhere in the nation, given Hurricane Irma) because it is the most popular hiking trail on the Columbia, and within easy access of the city it has been choking this week.

And what should be done about the suspect responsible for all this? In contrast to the rage and vitriol, some of my friends who are teachers or particularly empathetic souls have pleaded for understanding. Teenagers do not have a fully developed forebrain, they write; we all did stupid and inconsiderate things when we were young. The magnitude of the results shouldn’t dictate the destruction of the rest of his life.

I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know what charges or punishment should be applied. I do not doubt that he had no idea or intention that it might go this far. But what’s essential is that he sees just how far it’s gone.

I’m glad he’s not been charged yet. If he had been locked in a cell, he would have had no chance to see and hear the vast array of public anger and regret, the graphic video clips of the trees and hillsides engulfed in flames, the evacuees and their pets cowering on the TV news reports . . . all the repercussions from his simple, silly act of flouting the law and foolish play.

If he were unable to see all that, but were looking at only four walls of a jail cell, his experience would be little different from school detention, and his likely response would have been only resentment.

He’d be in the way if he were forced to fight the fire; he’s unqualified to do so. Even people who are trying to help the professionals have been bogging them down.

But if he’s compelled to participate in the cleanup and replanting after the flames are all out. . . if he has to help salvage the damaged human structures . . . if he has to help find and bury the burnt carcasses of bears, deer, birds, and fish . . . then he might start to get it and change his ways.

SEPTEMBER 8 ADDENDUM

I’ve been struggling with this for the last couple of days because I felt the rage and sorrow I saw other people voicing, but didn’t feel right calling for blood. That’s why my blog post above did not take a final position.

Today I think where I was ultimately going with this, and didn’t quite get there explicitly, was that I believe this kind of thoughtless misbehavior is at least partly a function of disconnection ... as, indeed, I believe most crime, racism, refusal to respect laws or science, and even the most minor mishaps and ugliness on the street and in everyday life are functions of (perceived) disconnection.

The suspect was not aware -- did not feel -- that he and his actions are connected to the greater whole; that the things he does, can and do have direct consequences for everyone around him. I think we should all behave as if this were so for ourselves, even if and when it could be objectively shown in some instances that it is not. To carry oneself, to make one’s choices, AS IF it were always so, would result in a better world, I think. Along with punishment, the suspect could most use a firm and deep lesson in how interdependent we (and by “we,” I mean the animals, plants, rocks, and air as much as humans) are upon one another.

That’s the lesson he may or may not learn (I am not ready to go along with the empathetic folks’ assertion that “he will carry this with him the rest of his life,” either), based partly on how the rest of the world treats him in the weeks to come: as an evil, worthless moron, or as a still-forming human being who committed an egregious error, but who is still capable of learning and becoming more responsible, given an opportunity.

Sure, I still feel very angry and even contemptuous toward him, but that’s not the ideal prescription for deciding what’s best to do about (and for) him.