I'm sure that visitors come to Alta Lake State Park for many pursuits and find a wide variety of pleasures here. For me, Alta Lake is about the edginess of the place. Born in the unimaginable power of a glacial outburst that scoured this depression at the edge of the great continental ice cap, fed by underground springs seeping from the eastern margin of the lofty Cascade Range, this place now finds itself at the shifting boundary between forest and grassland. It is here on this edge where one chapter in the great drama of our era is being written into the landscape.
We arrived at campsite #110 late after a long but enjoyable drive after work and quickly set up our tent. As the poles and pegs and guy lines fell into place, we adjusted to the dramatic change in our surroundings. There is the sense of aridity, first and foremost. Our bodies, conditioned to the coastal drizzle of Birch Bay, attempt to adapt. Nasal membranes dry out, mucous thickens and clogs the sinuses. The familiar but missed fragrance of sagebrush triggers old memory connections. And there is that subtle yet insistent smell of burned wood....
Alta Lake State Park has been touched on its edges by two recent wildfires-- the 2012 Goat Fire, a 7,378 acre blaze started by people shooting at exploding targets, and the giant 2014 Carlton Complex Fire, a lightning-initiated fire that burned 256,108 acres, destroyed 353 homes, and caused an estimated $98 million in damage on its way to becoming the largest single wildfire in Washington history.
The Carlton Complex started as four small blazes separated by more than 15 miles on July 14, 2014. Three days later, separate fires had merged, covering more than 7,000 acres and spurring evacuation orders for hundreds of residents and the campers at Alta Lake. By the end of that day, the fire's footprint had mushroomed to 167,712 acres, creating flaming whirlwinds carrying burning material aloft to start spot fires up to a half mile away. By evening, the fire had swept into the town of Pateros, burning 30 homes there and 40 more near Alta Lake State Park. By July 21 the fire crew of more than 1,600 people had begun the slow process of containing and mopping up. Full containment was achieved with help of torrential rains on August 24th.
The intervening years have softened the obvious effects of the fire. Homes have been rebuilt, trees have been planted. Yet the evidence is easy to see as I take an early-morning hike on the thigh-burning climb up the park's Overlook Trail. Charred snags, eroded soil from post-fire flooding, and....a profusion of wildflowers!
The state of Eastern Washington's forest health is, in a word, sick. In 2017, the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) released the 20-Year Forest Health Strategic Plan: Eastern Washington. Drawing on research from foresters and ecologists, the plan details the current condition of the region and sets goals for improvements and strategies to accomplish them.
The report calls out three primary stresses that have created the potential for conflagrations such as witnessed in 2014. Drought has become more severe and frequent. Infestations of beetles surviving warmer winters have killed significant numbers of trees. Many years of fire suppression have increased the density and changed the mix of species in the forest.
The first two of these three factors are linked to the changing climate; the third is a result of a dramatic change in forest management in the 20th century from thousands of years of Native American prescribed burning and uncontrolled natural fire to a policy of fire suppression. The DNR plan addresses the third factor by prioritizing areas for thinning and prescribed burning, recognizing that both are necessary for improving forest health. Thinning alone leaves large quantities of forest litter and duff to fuel fires. Prescribed fires managed after thinning can create a more healthy stand.
We know that worldwide industrialization and the burning of fossil fuels that powered development has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by over 40% since the 1700's, concurrent with the Euro-American colonization of Washington. Along with other heat-trapping gasses, this has warmed the surface and lower atmosphere of our planet. In Washington, most of the state has warmed one to two degrees (F) over the last century. This is implicated in the retreat of Cascade Mountain glaciers, a 20% reduction in annual winter snowpack since 1950, and decreased flow and higher temperatures through streams in the summer.
Those are the dry facts as reported by researchers who have dutifully compiled data over many years and locations.
Perhaps more compelling are the effects witnessed by those who saw firsthand the fury of the fires in 2014, especially with a perspective spanning generations. Kent Stokes, a rancher from a family that has lived in the area for five generations was quoted saying "there's pretty good family history of big events...but they never talked of a fire like this....it just wasn't to this scale."
Perhaps even more compelling is the thought of what our grandchildren will face in their lifetimes. “What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like,” says Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this type of environmental disaster.” The DNR report extrapolates that more than 4 times as many acres in Washington will burn annually by 2080 than the average over the last century.
Climate change has become a battleground of values in the United States. In the face of an existential threat to our survival-- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called climate change "the most systemic threat to humankind" -- interviews with Americans show that the clearest predictor of people's views on the matter is whether they identify as a conservative or liberal. To the extent that solutions (reductions of greenhouse gas emissions) are identified as governmental intrusions into personal liberty or protections for the common good, polarized attitudes have become entrenched, stimying policy changes. In spite of the roadblocks to progress toward climate solutions, significant change is happening. 70% of new power generation being built to come online in the next three years in the US is renewable energy (particularly wind and solar). Cities around the world are building and expanding transit infrastructure, and experimenting with blueprints for Transportation as a Service (TaaS) using self-driving vehicles. Electric cars are being mass-produced. All of the nations of the world except the United States are party to an agreement to reduce the production of greenhouse gases.
Meanwhile, I take a breather to survey the scene from the trail high above Alta Lake. The azure water of the lake is the center of attention. Surrounding it is a mosaic of edges--forest to grassland, grassland to orchards, orchards to homes.
I feel we as a society of human beings are on an edge, too.
I am reminded of the words of the Chinook prayer carved in stone at Cape Disappointment State Park:
We call upon all those who have lived on this Earth,
our ancestors and our friends,
who dreamed the best for future generations, and upon whose lives our lives are built
and with Thanksgiving we call on them to
Teach us and Show us the Way
--David