| Prescott, AZ |

First impressions count.

And my first impression is that Prescott, AZ seems like a pretty terrific town.

There’s no great reason that I’m in this specific part of the Grand Canyon state, other than the fact that my initial hiking plans in the Tonto National Forest were postponed by the heat – and more importantly the lack of shade – in that immense forest to the Southeast of here.

So I pulled up my trusty Google Maps, found the Prescott National Forest was within a 2 hour or so drive, did some basic research on the hiking options in the area, saw that it’s climate was much more immediately palatable to hiking, and off I went.

And here I am.

And I’m in love.

Or at least, lust.

Now to be fair, I’ve only been here for a half day’ish, and I suppose it’s possible that there is rampant criminality and other such unpleasantness hiding behind whatever a town’s version of their green curtain would be.

But, that seems unlikely.

And in as much as you can make any sort of qualified judgement, in such a comically short period of time, I have.

And I give it my endorsement; for whatever that’s worth.

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Part of the reason for this affair of the heart is the fact that much most of the rest of the state of Arizona – that I’ve seen at least – it’s incredibly beautiful here.

It’s nestled in the mountains and layered in the ways in which a town at this altitude must be.

Main Street is alive with cars, people and other such signs of life that so many other towns lack. I’ve already seen multiple beautiful residential neighborhoods full of well maintained Craftsman and Victorian style homes, and ‘downtown’ lies just a stone’s throw from the Prescott National Forest; another gem in America’s best idea.

In addition to that, I’m currently having a fantastic ‘after-party’ to my hike, at the Raven Cafe ; the kind of place that you (or at least, me) walk into and fall instantly in love with.

It’s got a coffee shop / brew house / winery / avant-garde ethical, organic food’ery with a hipster / live music and trivia vibe to it.

There’s a lot there for your mind to chew on, but I feel like that should paint the picture pretty well.

But enough of my fawning, there’s other business at hand.

There was also the matter of Spruce Mountain to address.

I took yesterday off, and definitely needed to get back at it today,

There’s the biggie National Parks coming up in the near future including; Grand Canyon, Zion and the grand dame herself Yosemite.

And with the big parks come some big hikes. And I’m not there yet, endurance wise. So, today brought a conditioning hike.

Or rather, a forced march.

The elevation gain wasn’t terrible. It was more so the altitude and by design, the pace.

I’ll spare you the majority of the details, lest you think less of my mountain-manly’ ness, but I did clear 9+ miles at about 20:20 a mile – and at altitude, I’ll definitely take the participation trophy for that.

Enough talk of my feats of strength though.

Let’s talk about the mountain, and more specifically, the attempted restoration of this specific forest itself.

For far too long, fire in our forests was seen as dangerous, and the goal was to get any and all fires put out as quickly as possible.

Problem with that approach is that fire is healthy for a forest. It clears out excessive undergrowth, weakened and diseased trees, invasive species, thins out the overall forest populace, and allows the forest to refresh a variety of life cycles.

If you suppress every fire, these cycles grind to a halt, the forest becomes overgrown and when fires do indeed break out, as they inevitably will, they are far more dangerous, because the forest has far more fuel.

Well, times have changed and the Forest Service has evolved in their thinking. My hike on Spruce Mountain showed a forest in an active ‘restoration’ mode.

The Forest Service’s had clearly been hard at work – my guess would be for years – in clearing out this specific forest.

Innumerable Ponderosa pines had been cut down and stacked for removal. Sunlight thus was able to penetrate the forest floor for the first time, in probably a long time; which would then allow small shrubs and grasses to resume their growth, which would then block the pines from over growing themselves again.

I’m not an expert in forest management and there’s probably more to the story, but you get the picture I’m sure.

All in all, kind of a neat thing to see in process.

Nature is pretty good at figuring things out, as long as we get out of her way and let her be.

Unfortunately I have a terribly sad postscript to this story as well.

Every since I decided on heading up to Prescott, I had the damnedest feeling that I had heard of the town, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out where or how.

Well, I figured it out.

I’d wrapped about 3/4 of this post after dinner last night and was headed out of the restaurant when I saw a bulletin board, and stopped in my tracks.

Pinned right in the middle of the board amongst the business cards and other bric-a-brac was this advertisement with a firefighter on it.

That’s where I’d heard of Prescott.

The Yarnell Hill Fire

The fire that overran and killed 19 city of Prescott firefighters, members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

Yarnell is a few miles to the South of Prescott and that fire was one of the deadliest wildfires in US history and the single worst wildfire for US firefighters since 1933.

I spent some time last night reading up on the fire and the hotshots on Wikipedia, and was reminded how awful, and recent that tragedy was.

What I did not know, until I stumbled upon it last night, is that the story becomes even more sad because of what happened in the aftermath of the tragedy.

The ad above is apparently for a review of the movie Only the Brave. A darn good movie that seems to try at least, to not put too much Hollywood spin into the mix.

Which is a good thing because it doesn’t need any spin.

Those guys seemed to have one hell of a brotherhood and died as heroes in every sense of the word.

It’s worth reading up on if you’re so inclined.

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