So, I live in a semi-rural area where burning brush is still permitted. This is almost unheard of in California anymore, what with all the efforts to clean up our air. I think we have something like 6 of the 10 most polluted air sheds in the nation.
However, in rural areas like mine, people still regularly burn brush on their property. It's pretty easy: you just get your annual burn permit from CDF* and when you're ready to burn, check to make sure it's an authorized burn day. You really don't want to be that property owner who burned on an unauthorized day and started a wildfire. But, since we are at about 1500 feet elevation, we're generally out of the Valley smog and muck, so they figure it won't have that big an impact on the air.
During the cooler months, you can drive around our area and see people sitting in lawn chairs, cup of coffee in hand, watching their brush pile burn as if they were sitting before a campfire. In fact, burn days can be a pretty social affair. Neighbors chat over a fire, compare brush piles, give each other pointers on how best to set it aflame, and, keep it from spreading.
And of course, kids love a good burn. It's the one day you can see kids, from 5 to 17, happily helping with the arduous chore of clearing brush and making piles. There's nothing so motivating as a good bonfire. Besides, when else do you get to roast marshmallows in your front yard?
The down side to all this efficient, neighborly lighting of the sticks is that the air is thick with smoke. Find yourself a hilltop perch, and, for most of late fall through winter, you can look out across the rolling hills and little valleys and see swirls of white smoke every few hundred yards. And hanging over you, just brushing the ridgetops, is a veil of gray-white haze.
We left the "Great Valley" two years ago to get out of the horrible air-- air that was making my son sick. Most of the time it's clear and clean up here. And he's not sick anymore. But on days like today, when my neighbor starts burning a brush pile the size of Rhode Island, and more and more houses go up in our "town" bringing more and more commuters to the area, I wonder how long this place will remain a haven for people like us who refuse to compromise our family's health for cheaper cost of living. For people who want to be able to actually see the Sierra Nevada. For people who came here to escape the sprawl of the Valley.
But then I realize, we are the sprawl. We depend on the city 25 miles down the hill: for jobs, for shopping, for services. The people who live here are fiercely loyal to "local business." And they're deeply proud of these little communities. They love the hills and the mountains that loom above us and the streams that flow from the glaciers deep in the backcountry passes.
But as I see our communities grow and changes, mostly for the better, I still wonder, how much can the land and air and water take. How long before we love it to death?
*CDF= California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection
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