Landscapes

In the path of fire’s fury

 

Pateros was the hardest hit single community, where wildfires burned a swath of homes after the flames raced down the hillside forcing residents to flee with almost no time to grab belongings.
Residents of Pateros, three weeks after the fire destroyed many of their homes, now clean up and pick up the pieces of their massively disrupted lives.
The United Methodist Church of Pateros survived the blaze, despite the fire taking homes to its west and the minister’s home to east. Having a small bit of defensible space without fuel likely helped.
One can see some of the dozens of burned structures in the Methow Valley, like this, driving north from Pateros to Twisp.
The road connecting Twisp and Oknanogan saw some of the greatest damage from the ongoing fires.

This past week I visited areas that were burned in the Carlton Complex fires, which now rank as the state’s worst in recorded history. Part of a neighborhood was burnt down in the small town of Pateros, on the Columbia River. More than 300 homes were lost in the Carlton Complex blaze as of late July, which still is the epicenter multiple fires now burning in Okanogan County.  It is deeply saddening to see a person’s or family’s dreams turned to black ash.

I believe this fire will be a watershed in how this state contemplates dealing with people living and building in the so-called fire wildland-urban interface zones, which are at high risk of wildfires. Insurance companies will no doubt be rewriting their policies. The larger issues of how we will prepare for a drier, hotter, and more fire-prone future because of ongoing climate change remains to be seen. I expect more fires of this magnitude in the future in this part of the West.

I do not know if those with money or big dreams will still be flocking to resort and natural areas like the Methow Valley to live closer to nature, now that we have tasted nature’s wrath. My experience as a former St. Louisan, where I have witnessed two 100-year floods on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, is that people will likely again build and return in areas once destroyed. The pressures to do so likely will overwhelm many of our best efforts to prevent through smart planning the next all-but certain natural disaster. (Click on each photograph to see larger pictures on a separate picture page.)

(Note this post was updated on Aug. 11, to reflect a more accurate count of the fire damage based on media accounts from local officials.)

Fires continue to burn central Washington

 

One of the fire incident command centers is located at the Methow Valley Elementary School near Winthrop, where hundreds of tents are pitched, creating a small city.
One of the active blazes in the Methow Valley, when this photo was taken on Aug. 6.
The many hundreds of firefighters have been welcomed warmly in Okanogan County.
The air is thick with smoke in the Columbia River basin, north from Wenatchee to the Canadian border. This was taken near the fire damaged town of Pateros on Highway 97.

I just completed a trip through some of the most impacted areas of central Washington, where the largest fires ever in the state have left a path of devastation and continued disruption. Okanogan County, a beautiful mountainous and a popular recreation area, was among the hardest hit. One fire alone, the Carlton Complex fire, burned more than 300,000 acres and destroyed dozens of homes. Charred remains of burned buildings can be seen from the roadside, not to mention hills turned black and brown. Thankfully, no one was directly killed. More than 25 helicopters remain deployed in the valley, and several thousand regional firefights continue to fight blazes in the county and now other areas of the state.

I will publish pictures of actual fire damage tomorrow, in Okanogan County and also in the town of Pateros, which lost more than a dozen homes to a fast-moving blaze in mid-July. I have never seen type of smoke cover we have now statewide as I saw the past few days throughout the entire state. (Click on each photo to see a large picture on a separate picture page.)

Wine country in the Pacific Northwest

 

Washington state is one of the major wine growing regions of the United States. According to the Washington State Wine Commission, the state has eight distinct wine growing regions. All told, the industry’s economic impact is worth about $9 billion annually. For most of us, what matters is the taste, but for me, I am much more interested in the people who grow and pick the grapes, the ecology for the distinct products, and way this ancient tradition of viticulture is changing this state. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Drift ice swirl, north Atlantic
Taken in 1997.

The swirl is one of the shapes one sees consistently in nature, from the shape of the galaxies to the form of a nautilus shell to the patterns of whirlpools and tornadoes. I found the pattern mesmerizing as I flew over the north Atlantic in between Iceland and Greenland. I snapped the photo, since I had never seen anything like this before. It was a very propitious trip, as it inspired my later travels to the Arctic, in Greenland and Iceland, starting exactly 10 months later. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Sunset over Seattle’s Salmon Bay
Taken in July 2014.

We have had an amazing string of clear, warm evenings. All of them produce scenes like the one here, as the sun sets over the distant Olympic Mountains and boat traffic quiets down near the Fishermen’s Terminal at Salmon Bay. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Grandpa’s role building an air base at the top of the world
My grandfather helped to build the Thule Air Base, and he took this picture during his stay as a contractor.

In the early 1950s, a sheet metal worker from Detroit providing for his wife and two kids saw an advertisement for his trade to work in Greenland. He flew there, via Newfoundland, and helped to build a new U.S. air base called Thule. It was built where Inuit had traveled and traded for thousands of years, and still lived. Thule played a key rule during the Cold War as an intercontinental ballistic missile station and air station. This also was the time when the U.S. Air Force continually had nuclear-armed B-52 bombers airborne at all times. During the height of the cold war, these nuclear-armed bombers landed and one even crashed there, to the dismay of Denmark, which includes the vast island in its kingdom as a home rule territory. (I read about this story on my flight to Greenland on a Greenland Air inflight magazine.)

This is how Thule looked when my grandfather took this photo. He described being able to bowl at a bowling alley there and leaving before his contract was completed, as he missed his wife, my grandmother. He never met the locals because the U.S. military had strict prohibitions to prevent the contractors from meeting with the resident Greenlanders. At the time, they wore traditional dress, he recalled. Decades later, he gave me the slides he took.

I still would like to visit Thule one day. I never got that far north, as one still needed special permission to visit the U.S. run airbase when I visited Greenland for the first time more than 15 years ago.

Click on the photography to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.

Seattle industrial typology study
One of two views of ducts near the Ship Canal boat yards (taken July 2014).
One of two views of ducts near the Ship Canal boat yards (taken July 2014).

I have always been fascinated by the forms that our modern building systems display. Exhaust, air, heating, and cooling systems are about as basic systems as one finds, and they usually have a place of prominence on rooftops, unadorned and standing like metallic animals and sculptures. Bernd and Hilla Becher called these forms typologies and made a career highlighting them in their master prints and publications. Check them out if you have never heard of them. They, more than any photographers in a long while, have influenced how I see the world and how I think about the ways we construct our physical environment to suit our economic system. (Click on each photograph to see a larger photo on a separate picture page.)

An evening with hundreds of onlookers at Seattle’s Kerry Park

On beautiful evenings, one should try to enjoy the moment and hopefully the outdoors, wherever you are. Here is the spot people love in Seattle, at Kerry Park, overlooking Elliott Bay and downtown.

The hills of Kansas

 

I took this shot in May 2013.

I drove through Kansas in 2013 and took some back roads and found lovely scenery. Here are the hills near the Tallgrass National Prairie Reserve in central Kansas. If you are doing a cross-country trip, consider a detour. Then be sure to head back to the interstate and visit the Dwight D. Eisenhower’s museum in his home town of Abilene. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Summer sunsets in Seattle
Taken July 12, 2014.
Taken July 12, 2014, from West Seattle.

We have had some amazingly beautiful evenings out here in one of the most expensive, and beautiful, cities in the United States. With scenes like these, no wonder speculators are paying $1 million and higher for homes that about five years ago sold for about $600,000. Oh well, might as well enjoy it while I can, and come up with that brilliant business plan soon. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)