Cabin Journal

Fighting Fire: a Conundrum

Every spring at my suburban home, when the snows finally melt, I start removing last year’s dead grasses and flower stalks and cutting back the bushes, making way for new growth. It has the satisfying feeling of cleaning out your house after a long winter. And yet the latest advice for gardeners, in this age of climate change, is to endure the  messiness for an extra month or two. We should wait until later in spring to clean out last year’s detritus because insects, including bees, winter under the leaves and in the soil. With a worldwide decline in insects, it’s becoming more urgent to protect them, especially when they are the main food source for birds, which are also decreasing in number.

At the cabin, I’ve always let nature tend to itself (except for some watering of the trees in the hot, dry months), and, over the years, I observed that nature knows best. In the east yard this spring, I had to fight the tendency to pull out the dried grasses that were hiding the new shoots of grass and flowers. I’m glad I held back, because I can see that last year’s grasses protected this year’s shoots against cold temperatures and late snow, and provide mulch for the new grasses and food for the small animals.

Mid-summer I  have a beautiful meadow (above) of waving green grasses and flowers. But those tall grasses, especially once they start drying out, can add fuel to any wildfire. This became painfully true when a grass fire last December, pushed by 100-mph winds, destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior, east of Boulder.

As the West warms and dries out, my mountain neighbors have been discussing how to prevent our places from being destroyed by wildfires. We’re thinning trees, especially the lower branches, and sawing down dead ones. I’m bagging pine cones and needles from around the edges of the cabin. I’ve hauled out pieces of wood from underneath the cabin.

As a fire preventive, a lot of my neighbors are cutting down the high grasses around their cabins this summer. This poses a conundrum for me, because I love the grasses mixed with flowers—white yarrow, yellow parsley, purple thistle, yellow and red blanketflowers—that surround the cabin. If I mow the grasses (not so easy on ground that’s more rock than soil), I not only lose this beautiful meadow, but the chipmunks (above) and ground squirrels lose their cover from predators, and emerging insects lose their protection.  

We’ve gotten a lot of rain in the past few weeks, so the fire danger is low (or at least moderate). For now, I’ll let nature take its course, even if that means tempting fate—in this case, the loss of my cabin to a wildfire. I'm not ready to lose the wildness.

Missing in Action

Recently two neighbors commented to me how this year they are seeing fewer birds and small critters, like chipmunks and gray squirrels. One told me he and his wife put out nuts one morning for the squirrels, but the food was still there at the end of the day. What happened to the squirrels?

I’ve also noticed fewer animals. In April, I saw one mountain bluebird in the meadow where residents have installed nest boxes for them; since then, I’ve only seen one. Early in the spring I heard the eerie cry of the Western screech owl at night, but I haven’t heard it for more than a month. I used to occasionally see bats at night, but I haven’t seen any at all this summer, although it’s hard to see their dark bodies in the dusk or dark as they chase bugs.  

I’ve seen one rabbit this spring, and they are usually plentiful, chasing each other through the tall grasses or munching on them. Most mysterious is the lack of the gray squirrel (left), one of the dominant species that I thought would always survive because it’s so industrious: in fall it caches pine cones in trees and other places, which it survives on  all winter long.

Were there fewer pine cones last fall? Did the snow and cold that extended into June kill the insects that the birds depend on? Or is this part of the worldwide decline in insects? Did the fact that our flowers bloomed several weeks later hurt the birds and insects who depend on these flowers for food?

One clue might be the trail cam that my neighbors installed behind their cabin and near the creek. In a week’s time they recorded a bobcat and coyote, two animals that feast on ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits. But that doesn’t explain the decrease in gray squirrels, which largely hang out in the trees.

On the other hand, my neighbors are reporting unusual bear sightings—unusual because an adult and young bear have been seen during the daytime. Bears have become nocturnal to avoid human contact, but one feasted on my neighbor’s bird feeders one morning and then visited another neighbor’s deck. If bears are appearing during the day, does this mean they are more desperate for food or that they are still young and ignorant of the ways of humans?

One particularly depressing loss this year is the aspens, which look thin and sparse, and the willow bushes (above), some of which are completely dead. I’m seeing a lot of dead ponderosas around Meeker Park, and even the ones still alive  have a lot of dead branches. Are the trees dying because we had a particularly dry April this year?

I know that nature has its own cycles. One year an increase in bobcats means fewer smaller animals, but when the squirrel population decreases, the bobcats have less food, thus increasing their mortality, which could mean that the following year there are more rabbits. So many factors affect the rhythm of nature. Are these normal fluctuations or am I seeing the effects of climate change? I guess only time will tell.