When I was a junior in college my then-girlfriend drove from Atlanta to Savannah to break up with me, and it ended up being one of the better weekends we’d had in a while.
We strolled under Savannah’s leafy live oaks, hung out on the beach, and enjoyed each other’s company in a way we hadn’t in a long while. The coming loss sweetened the time we had left, each moment replete with a sense of forlorn beauty – at least that’s the way I remember it now, with my twenties well in the rearview mirror and my forties coming up fast over the horizon. As anyone who was my friend during that moment will tell you, that’s not the way it really was.
Time and absence – the two most potent seasonings of human experience.
This year I flew to Colorado to break up with the west – or more specifically, the kind of western mountain town I currently call home.
My twelve-day journey along the Collegiate Peaks Loop in Colorado was the result of a confluence of all-too-common western circumstances – a failed bid for a bucket-list permit on a different trail and a set of raging fires and choking smoke in my home range of the Sierra Nevada.
My hiking partner Nick and I try to do a big trip every year. In 2020 we actually scored a Wonderland Trail permit but had to cancel due to air quality in Mount Rainier National Park, which was how we ended up on a seven-day loop in the Smokies at the last minute. This year we had a more finely-tuned backup plan. When we failed to win the Wonderland permit lottery, we set our sites on the Colorado Rockies and met in Denver in early September. We let Nick acclimate for a few days (I live at 6,500 feet but he lives at 971) and then hit the Old Dusty, heading south out of Twin Lakes. The route follows the Colorado Trail East spur, then turns north along the Continental Divide Trail / Colorado Trail West spur back to Twin Lakes. The loop is 160 miles of sub-alpine aspen forest, high passes, and tucked-away lakes.
It seemed like a fitting breakup hike. And so we took our time in the first few days – Nick to allow his stressed cardiovascular system to acclimate a little more and myself to savor the unique western backpacking experiences that – I think – I may soon be leaving behind.
As Nick and I mosey along through the just-beginning-to-turn aspens, taking our time in camp and enjoying mid-morning stops for coffee and leisurely lunches, it might be worth explaining why I’m thinking of breaking up with the west. Like all lovers at the tail end of a relationship, I have not only my reasons but my doubts – and a strong desire to communicate both to anyone willing to listen.
So thank you, dear reader, for meeting me for coffee in this expensive western mountain town coffee shop – metaphorically speaking, I guess.
I’m not a western native. That’s the first thing you should know and it may color which side you take in my breakup story (you don’t have to take sides, but this is a breakup, so you probably will). As I mention quite a lot in my writing, I’m from the more shady, misty mountains of the southeastern United States. When I first moved west I was shocked to discover that strangers don’t necessarily wave to each other on the street or from front porches as we do back in Appalachia, and after spending some time in a western climate I’m convinced this is because in the southeast people are only two seconds away from slapping each other in fits of humidity-related rage.
And so my theory is that a certain degree of surface-level politeness has evolved, culturally speaking, to prevent old church ladies from bludgeoning each other over potato salad recipe disputes because it’s 97 degrees and 100% humidity at the Fourth of July picnic.
In any case, when I first ventured west in 2015 to thru-hike the Colorado Trail, I was smitten, as most everybody is. For one thing, when it rains on you, it mostly only does so for a few hours, and when it stops you and your gear can dry out as opposed to just slowly being eaten by fungus. The classic Colorado Rocky Mountain weather patterns held true for Nick and me, and we relished the cooling rain at low elevations early in our hike, knowing that we’d be warm and dry minutes after the showers passed over.
But of course, there’s a flip side to every coin, and the new reality of the west is that when it isn’t raining or snowing it might be about to catch on fire.
The implications for backpackers are obvious and immediate – increasingly difficult logistics, canceled plans, and stressful, hazardous hiking conditions being the most obvious. In 2021 I pulled the plug on a long-planned-and-trained-for Sierra High Route trip because I couldn’t make the risk assessment work in my favor with the High Sierra laboring under drought conditions and extreme fire danger. Canceling hikes like that has professional as well as personal ramifications for me. But forget backpacking for a second – let’s talk about just living in a certain kind of western mountain town right now.
My wife and I currently call the Tahoe basin home. It’s an astonishingly beautiful place to live, and also an astonishingly difficult place to live if you don’t happen to be Mark Zuckerburg, a Silicon Valley remote worker, or a black bear. Our housing crisis has made national news – twice – in the last year, and our rent doubled in 2021. We stayed afloat, barely, and consider it worth the effort and extra side-gigs we both take on to make ends meet in order to live in a beach town in the mountains with unparalleled outdoor access. But the work of being a normal person and living in an expensive western mountain town – like Tahoe, or Jackson, or Bozeman, or Whitefish – is not worth it if you can’t enjoy said mountain town, which we couldn’t with Tahoe’s air quality the worst in the world for a large chunk of the summer due to the Caldor and Dixie fires.
I realize that may sound trite in light of the massive property damage and evacuations those fires caused. But when you are sitting in your rented living room, knowing you’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in your area, surrounded by bills you aren’t sure you can pay, and your pregnant wife is wearing an N95 mask indoors because the AQI outside is 800 and the ash is raining down out of a sickly orange sky at 1:00 PM and you haven’t been outdoors or seen a blue sky in two weeks, you start to question the nature of your relationship with western mountain towns. To summarize – I can maybe live with an increased cost of living in western mountain towns, or increased impacts from wildfires – but maybe not both.
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I live in the Midwest, but have had a long standing desire to move out west to be closer to the mountains. Family has been the main reason this hasn’t happened, but climate change, forest fires, and water access issues have also been contributing factors.
Interesting article. Thanks for writing and publishing.
The Guardian (UK newspaper) has some excellent interactive maps showing a variety of impacts from climate change likely to be associated with different levels of temperature change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/oct/14/climate-change-happening-now-stats-graphs-maps-cop26
sorry missed it the first time!
And so in one form or the other the concerns expressed in the classic “The Carbon Flame War” thread live on. Philosophically speaking.
I’ve tried to hold back, but just can’t contain myself.
Too late, there seems to be awareness that controlling fires in an up-front, manageable way (controlled burns and letting natural fires extinguish naturally, among other techniques) was/is the right solution to simply watching Mother Nature have her way, or jumping on every fire with our Smokey the Bear approach. As a park service ranger I spent considerable time extinguishing smallish fires because some tourist spotted a smoke plume and threatened to “contact their congressional rep” if something wasn’t “done.” It wasn’t funding, it was politics. Had we learned and applied the European model of forest management many years ago, we wouldn’t be dealing with today’s messes.
Having lived in Bellingham during a number of those park service years, I’ll leave my slot to those who want it, and won’t be adding to the Bellingham conjestion. -:) I got my fill of drizzly, gray winters and sloppy wet snow that tried to pass for ski-mountaineering conditions.
Stay…go…to each their own.
The High Sierra, the Mojave, or some nameless canyon or plateau in Angeles National Forest or Los Padres….and then there’s the Pacific Ocean. All this at my fingertips.
If I cannot find contentment where I stand with so many choices, then I don’t know what to say for myself. Yes, there will be adaptation. Yes, I will likely watch my favorite places burn at some point. But this is still home. Most moves I imagine would lead to a staggering lack of diversity as compared to my norm.
And it’s obviously more than just the outdoors. I have trouble seeing myself living somewhere without immediate access to a city that is genuinely cosmopolitan.
Andrew – thanks for bringing all this up. Really.
I’m a rare third generation Californian, probably not leaving anytime soon, despite it’s many, many flaws. Tried living and visiting elsewhere, always glad to get back.
Part of my subconscious plan was to find the “least bad” part of this large and diverse state and live there. Thought our last move almost two decades ago was “it” until the 2020 firestorms came uncomfortably close. The “move or not” conversations continue, though most end in “not.”
I spent (too many) years studying biological and geological transformations at widely varying time scales. Everyplace – every place – has risks, and constantly changes. “Adapt or die” has been true for a few billion years.
It’s still sad, painful, and ultimately deadly. Also true of many other parts of life, including wild inequalities based on income, class, gender, race, religion, vocation, and on and on.
Several years ago there was a fascinating TV series called Dirty Jobs hosted by Mike Rowe. In later interviews, he marveled at how people working in the most “difficult, strange, disgusting, or messy” occupations were almost always happy. Happiness is a state of mind that can be cultivated in nearly any setting.
Yes, there is a lot of real suffering in this world, but even more is self-imposed. The trick is finding a way to minimize the suffering you can control – like the second kind. Not easy.
— Rex
Obligatory backpacking content: Some of my happiest memories come from backpacking. Just need to find other places, learn to enjoy watching burnt-out landscapes evolve, and adapt gear and skills.
Congrats on the baby! THIS is what’s important – you will find backpacking wilderness in other places, too. Plus check out “The West Without Water” by Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam to set a little bit bigger a perspective on all the climate-change chit chat.
And mind well: Who is making money with it? A third of the human poluplation always has lived upon making the rest feel guilty and pay them for absolution. I was brought up in a scientific environment, valueing the achievements of the Enlightenment. And I am quite taken aback realizing how little effect it has on peoples everyday behaviour…
happy fathering, and happy trails!
Reading the posts up thread again reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson; particularly “The 3 Californias”
His work is labelled Sci-Fi but just because of a projection to the future, imagining 3 potential future Californias. Specifically Orange County but generally L.A./SoCal.
Made a bit of a splash recently with his new book ” Ministry for the Future”
And his work does directly and specifically relate to the subject of the post. He is noted for doing his technical homework.
My dirty little secret is…I love it here. I don’t want to move. And the few places I would move to have fires as well. Also, my community is here and I’ll never find anything quite like it elsewhere. But then I’ve lucked out with affordable housing in a very fine neighborhood minutes from a huge park covering lots of square miles through undeveloped hills. There are classical concerts in people’s homes (!) nearby (Groupmuse) and others, cheap, happening in halls and churches nearby all the time. Beaches are close by. Rural wine country is nearby. Tahoe is three hours away. It’s quiet where I am.
If many people decide to move on, great! Climate change is going to follow people no matter where they go. It’s not just a California issue.
The elephant that’s being ignored is that large parts of the west are struggling for water, both for drinking and agriculture.
Andrew, thanks for sharing this, and congrats! In terms of health and safety, close proximity to wildfire potential is a huge point of stress for raising a family, to say the least. I’m not sure any of us can fully outrun the smoke, but going east you’ll be out of the worst of it.
To your point about longing – the expansive grandeur of the west is certainly attractive, but we could use more voices and imagery that challenge the dominant landscape aesthetic that puts the high mountain west above all else. This is what Dave C. wrote about last year, and Ryan echoed in the recent wildfires podcast.
I guess I’m siding with you in the breakup. Nothing wrong with the Smokies. Higher biodiversity there than most anywhere. And lots to explore, as you described so well. Your kid will love it!
After spending a good stretch during and around “the college years” traveling and living in a few beautiful touristy locales, I’m happy to be living where I’m from. Granted, I’m fortunate to be “from” somewhere… And a large cosmopolitan Midwestern city at that. Though we have our own developing housing crisis, at least there’s an exciting ongoing rent control campaign that I’ve been able to participate in. I don’t mean to bait political arguments on BPL, it’s just to say that it feels good to be able to engage with issues on a societal level and not just be passively subject to these trends. And for me that comes out of a long, committed relationship with the place – because I’m FROM here and accept it unquestionably, and that unquestioning acceptance has proved to be existentially soothing.
Thanks for the article.
Apparently some of the issues we (or Andrew) are discussing are becoming a subject and we (BPL and Andrew) beat out the New York Times by 4 days.
From the article linked above:
“Two fires this year tore completely across the Sierra Nevada from west to east, the only known times that flames have made that crossing in recorded state history.”
OK didn’t know That
In Rex’s wildfire series, he noted that:
The fire crossed the divide over barren tundra. The unburned swath where the fire “jumped” the divide (presumably some sort of windblown fireball/ember cluster) was more than 3/4 of a mile:
Great article and echoes a lot of what I’ve been thinking about. I’ll add another wrinkle – as a non white person, the West has always been a difficult place (especially since 2016…) and now when thinking about how to marry my love of the outdoors with feeling safety day to day, from citizens, from police, etc. I really like western North Carolina, but the areas immediately outside Asheville (and even within) start to feel a little wonky. California always felt like it was a good mixture, but as it becomes less available, the question is where to go next…
So the uplift on the west side blew/lifted embers high in the air over the crest, Sprague Pass and they settled on the east side still hot enough for ignition. Pretty dramatic!
We built-in a woodburning fireplace when we built in 1987. The flue was almost 30 feet tall. Helluva draw, like a shop vac to the sky. Couldn’t leave the damper even partly open and go to bed ; the thing would suck all the heat right out of the house and you’d wake up cold. Duh. I walked out one evening when we had a nice fire going and observed embers flying through the rather loose chimney top grate and wayyyy up in the sky and glowing for an uncomfortable long distance as they drifted away. The next morning I was on the roof with a much finer mesh wire screen.
And relatively speaking it’s really wet around here. SO maybe something like that? In that film ‘Better bring a brigade” they said the 2 things that get houses are:
Vegetation right up against the house within 5 feet that ignites and then starts the siding burning
Embers that get sucked up into the soffit vents and catch the attic area on fire. The fire creates so much heat and expansion and lift that the soffit vents just hoover embers up into the attic. Once the attic/roof is on fire you can forget it!
Andrew,
I really appreciate that this essay is about struggling with an important question without the certainty of having solved it. Great article, and good luck.
Yeah, increasingly people are no longer migrating to the west and those of us here are being squeezed by higher costs of, well, just plain living. And then there is Ma Nature who is becoming increasingly ill with climate change. Here in the Las Vegas valley we are STILL growing with Californiua expats escaping stupidly high state taxes. But Our water source, Lake Meade is below its full level by the height of the Statue of Liberty – and still dropping. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
So… yeah I’m thinking of “leaving Las Vegas” too. Three months in an increasingly hotter hell, rising congestion, lower air quality, you name it. I want to sell my house before too many people also realize Las Vegas is becoming less habitable and the more value goes down. But I will miss the very good things about this valley like the scenery, the growing sense of community, the home into which I have put so many hours and dollars improving, all that and more I’ll miss. “Breaking up is hard to do.”
And I’ll move to, of all places, Thousand Oaks, California. Why not back to Pennsylvania, my home state? My wife and I want to be near our youngest daughter and grandkids. It’s yet another transition in a life filled with them. So not breaking up with the west, just Las Vegas.
FWIW an interesting 3-d graphic of pyro-cumulus clouds generated by the Dixie fire. May encounter some sort of paywall requiring sign-up for free access.
Related it looks like another La Niña is forecasted for the US. For most places it’ll be hotter and drier .. Well at least we won’t have to visit the Sahara if this keeps up.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046313870/la-nina-winter-weather-us-temperatures-rainfall
Thinking a black pocket add-on to packfaces facing the sun, so northbound hikers can at least “solar” cook a microwave burrito!!
In the gist of the OP, researchers have found that it’s hard to escape the ill effects of the wildfire smoke. Eastern residents, while not getting the immediate smoke in their faces, ash on their cars, etc.. (but prettier sunsets!) can still inhale the small particles with sometimes fatal results (the particles get into the lung tissue)…
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/21/us/wildfire-smoke-health-impacts-east-west-climate/index.html
It’s just due to population density that more eastern US residents fall ill and die due to smoke, the study found.
That said, think there’s the visible quality of life to contend with as everyone dies of something.
Then there’s the economy and how people interact with that, city/town life, etc..
It seems there is no perfect place. I live in the southeast but love visiting the west and do it whenever I have the chance. We have some decent backpacking and world-class climbing. But the west is such a draw with its bigger scale on everything. For people who love the outdoors, it will continue to be a huge draw regardless of permits, droughts, and fires.
One way to extend this is more recycling sewage water which is perfectly safe, yet distasteful for many on a psychological level.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-19/toilet-waste-to-tap-water-welcome-to-the-future-of-recycled-sewage?utm_source=url_link
Imagine a lot of people will go with a bottled water service, vs the energy it takes to transport water (as the US military coped with in Iraq with just bottled water). West of Phoenix some of the ranchers will likely petition the Arizona state government to allow more subdivisions based on their 100 year groundwater supply. Maybe there’ll be a desalination deal by the time 200 years rolls around? Doubt I’ll be around even as a rum-based lifeform.
Well funded cities and towns will probably fare better than rural areas in implementing technology based solutions. The cost of supplying water will probably push even more consolidation of many metro areas vs what it’ll do to taxes, utility usage and fees, etc… Then again my winter wardrobe will be based on 10” Carhartt shorts.
Also some California farmers are pumping flood waters into aquafirs before the state takes over in 2035 iirc, but it could lead to agricultural chemicals in the drinking water ..
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1037370430/water-is-scarce-in-california-but-farmers-have-found-ways-to-store-it-underground
Humans are pretty clever but then again the Pueblo cliff dwellers of the southwest may have thought the same too before retreating en masse to the Albuquerque area on the banks of the perennial (well up there) Rio Grande.
One of the early Spanish expeditions had a priest who published a chronicle that described Alta California as a land of wildfires, mud slides, and earthquakes.
Today in the 21st century we need to add the high cost of housing to that list.
I recall reading Vegas bought water rights from upstate Nevada to eventually pipe in water. Nevada doesn’t have too much claim to the Colorado River though the hydroelectric electricity could suffer. Other jurisdictions plan to pipe water too. When Texas faced its mega drought, they started a project to pump and pipe even small aquifers throughout the state (then of course, flooding happened).
In California, even mostly tony Marin County (north of the Golden Gate Bridge bounded by the Pacific and San Francisco Bay) is considering a pipeline to buy agricultural water from inland or even renting mobile desalination plants … pumping water from the Bay side. Their in county water supplies are down to 1/3 rd their original
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-s-Marin-County-could-run-out-of-water-16554942.php
From the piece
To be fair to California a lot of that is going around. One thing California and the rest of the West coast has is desal (see Marin county above). It won’t be free though. Maybe if Arizona plays nice with Mexico, they could extend the CAP pumping stations into the Sea of Cortez one day with some solar desal? Other inland states may have it tougher. Speaking with a rancher around New Mexico’s Gila last year, one ranch in the next valley got plenty of rain but her own didn’t not. How do you combat that? (well extend the Gila after buying out surrendering ranchers cheap .. hint hint). If I were young I’d consider at least a stake in the Great Lakes states (YMMV).
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