Red Sky at Night Gives Me a Fright

The Northern Lights seen in eastern Colorado (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

 This past week has seen the Northern Lights visible as far south as Texas Here in southern Colorado they were photographed in the San Luis Valley, at a latitude of 37° -- pretty far south,

I live surrounded by hills and ridges, with no view of a horizon anywhere except a hint to the northwest. On Wednesday, November 12,  maybe the peak night, I walked Marco the dog after dark and saw nothing but stars. The following night, M. and I drove out to a place with a good view to the east and north, slightly interrupted by the distant lights of Pueblo -- and saw no aurora. Apparently we should have been much farther east, in say Otero or Bent counties, to get the full effect.

But that's OK. I had my "red sky at night" experience back in the Reagan Era, and it was a Cold War Baby's meltdown.

M. and I had been married a short time and were living in a converted summer cottage in Manitou Springs (740 sq. ft.!). Manitou is in a canyon as well, on the western edge of Colorado Springs. It's where the real mineral springs are flowing; the "Springs" in "Colorado Springs" is just real estate developer slop, circa 1875.

I had walked to a friend's house on Ruxton Avenue -- that is the side canyon that goes up to the Pikes Peak Cog Railway station.  I came out well after dark, and the sky to the north was red!

I knew what it meant: Soviet missiles had hit Denver, and more were coming to Colorado Springs, which has lots of military targets. They would impact in seconds. I could never get home to see M. again. 

If we were not all vaporized in the initial blast, we'd be stumbling through a nighttime hell of fire and radiation. This was the end. 

Meanwhile, my rational mind was pounding on the door with both fists: "Dude! It's OK! Those are the Northern Lights! Dude! You're not about to die!" 

After a second or two, the panic drained away. Yes, that was the Aurora borealis, and when I came home, she had been watching it too.

Down at the Colorado Spring Sun office, someone one had re-built the front-page layout to include a color (still rare then) photo of the lights in time to put it on the the presses for distribution the next morning.

I have seen many aurora photos on social media this week. No one has mentioned ICBMs or Mutual Assured Destruction. So that's an improvement.

Death of a Wildlife Protector

 

I started donating at the "get a logo ball cap" level.

In 2018 I went with some other Backcountry Hunters & Anglers volunteers to clean up a cartel-run marijuana grow on national forest land in southern Colorado.

Although the growing crew had been arrested and the plants pulled up and piled. there was a lot of non-biodegradable trash to be collected for later helicopter pickup: a mile of plastic irrigating pipe, soggy sleeping bags, wire, chemical containers, food trash, etc.

We hiked in escorted by two Forest Service law-enforcement rangers armed with pistols and a AR-15 rifle. They scouted ahead to see if anyone had snuck back in (nope), and then we went to work. I thought at the time that with all the public-lands volunteer work I have done since Boy Scout days, this was first time that I had had an armed escort.

Central Africa, of course, is a different story. Armed escorts are a fact of life.

Rory Young (Chengeta Wildlife)

I learned about Chengeta Wildlife from Alan Bunn of African Expeditions magazine, which tracks a lot of poaching issues.

Unlike some well-known groups fighting poaching (mainly for the rapacious Chinese market) in East Afica, Cengeta works in central and western Africa — in nations such as the Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Chengeta trains and equips anti-poaching rangers while also conducting "Education and outreach to ensure that the current generation and the next are aware of the need to conserve wildlife and protected areas" and attempting to create "Social pressure to deter and prevent wildlife crime: Working through traditional and religious leaders to positively influence local behavior.."

Its co-founder, Rory Young, was born in Zambia to Irish parents. 

On April 26th, Young was with two Spanish documentary filmmakers, Roberto Fraile and David Beriain, working on a film about anti-poaching efforts in Burkina Faso, when they and their escort were attacked by fighters from Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, yet another Muslim jihadi group. All three were killed.

According to Chengeta' Wildlife's statement,

Rory was leading a wildlife protection patrol in Arly National Park, Burkina Faso on 26th April 2021 when they were attacked by terrorists, which resulted in his death and that of two Spanish journalists who were capturing his efforts to protect precious wildlife. 

The Spanish government flew their bodies back to Madrid. Here is video of their arrival at the Torrejón  Air Base. The cooperante irlandés would be Young.

The work will go on. Meanwhile, you can donate to a separate fund for help Young's wife and children. I did. I wouldn't feel right about wearing the cap unless I had.

"Fields End Freedom"

Harvested cornfield and corn bins, North Dakota

"As centuries, then millennia passed, the areas open for retreat [back to a hunter-gatherer way of life] dwindled, and farming culture became ingrained and habitual. The assumption of its  'superiority' has likewise become ingrained in us, its modern inheritors.This is the assumption that we now have to question. Superior it certainly was in most cases as the mode of production at the base of a new competitive complex — the militarized urban-agrarian state. But in terms of the quality of life for the general run of the population at the time of its introduction, as opposed to the elite? It seems doubtful. It must be remembered: fields end freedom. Whatever the astonishing subsequent achievements of civilization, it had a little-recognized price: humanity itself became one of its own domesticated species. We enslaved ourselves to conquer."

Mark Elvin

Chapter 5, "War and the Logic of Short-term Advantage."

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China, 2004.