FEMA is inspecting my government-burned homestead today. Before that imbecile Las Vegas/Pecos USFS district ranger Steve-O burned 341,735 acres (...534 square miles...1,383 square kilometers) of beautiful forestland, 1,500 homes housing thousands of people now homeless, these would have been seasonal sights emerging there right about now this fall.
Thinking back to the first day I set camp on the property twenty-four years ago, spent the first night and began exploring its landscape and rich diversity of life the next day and throughout the week, it's sickening as all hell now to see what Steve-O has done to it with one careless act of striking a match to start a prescribed burn on schedule to keep his faraway boss happy.
. . . producing a swath of ruination as deep and scarring as any war zone would be rendered.
What a horrific swath of destruction Steve-O inflicted upon land and people inhabiting it.
I'm having a great deal of difficulty summoning any inkling of empathy for what old Steve-O must be feeling these days. I don't really give a damn what the imbecile is feeling, except that I do imagine he is experiencing a lot of deep, constant, severe mental and physical pain.
All well deserved and I have no inclination to hope it diminishes at all for him anytime soon.
Which I understand all too well is no way to be, but fuck it. I'm homeless and pissed off because of what Steve-O so carelessly, stupidly did to all of us so happily living along the slopes of the Sangre de Cristos for so many decades before he decided a schedule was so much more important than simply listening intently to the people of the land and heeding their sage advice.
May the imbecile suffer forever after.
