It Begins

Smoke from distant fires hovers on the horizon, concealing a red sun.

Arizona's fire season has already kicked into gear.  For the past week or so, firefighters have been battling our first 4 wildfires.  Directly south of us on the San Carlos Apache Reservation is the Elwood Fire.  To the west are three fires: the Bull Flat Fire on the Fort Apache reservation; the Sunflower Fire in Tonto National Forest; and the Gladiator Fire in Prescott National Forest near the town of Crown King.

Today the high winds that make fire season so difficult have roared in.  We've been experiencing 50 MPH winds all day.  Ed, Dylan, and Chris are even now out in the wilderness for the annual church Fathers and Sons Outing.  I hope their tents don't blow away!  Luckily, their camp is east of town at Brown Creek, with is a fire-free zone thus far.

On our way home from Dylan's concert on Wednesday night, we came over a hill and saw the most incredibly huge, radiant, flame-red sun I'd ever seen.  I knew the color came from the light shining through the smoke particulates hanging in the air from the fires, because we've seen some amazing suns and moons through wildfire smoke before, but this one simply took my breath away.

Alas, by the time I found a place to pull over and jumped out of the car with my camera, the sun had sunk down into the smoke and my photo op was spoiled.  The poor picture at the top of this post doesn't even begin to capture the magnificence we'd seen just moments earlier.

Dylan's last performance as a junior high student.  He is the bass player at far right.

At any rate, Dylan's final concert of the school year was also magnificent.  I can never get my video clips to post with sound, but Blogspot has updated their post editing features and hope springs eternal!  If there is no video clip here when you read this or it has no sound, you will know I was unsuccessful once again.  Sigh.