Red-pine Renewal

Global warming, overpopulation, wars, natural disasters, hyenas. Hyenas are perhaps the ugliests things ever. Regardless of my morphologic bias, it is evident that we are living in interesting times. Steamboat is booming, as Bennie Beall greases the wheels of development and ushers in new bigboxes and casinos. Gas prices make a steady climb and may in fact make the American people revisit our culture of excess. And along the Yampa, Green, and Colorado, Tamara's Diorhabda elongata munch on Tamarisk in our efforts to further manipulate a manipulated ecosystem and thus restore a "balance."
And closer to home, the hillsides turn red without the Fall Foliage photo-tourists, as the Pine Beetles kill Lodgepoles and Ponderosas hasta el horizonte. Some people are very sad, and rightly so. Trees are big, powerful, old, and they breathe opposite us, filling us with such joy. However, this beetlekill is altogether natural. We've suppressed the natural fire regime for the past 150 years, and whereas these forests should be touched by wildfire every 70 years, leaving a heterogeneous landscape, what we see across the Rockies is a homogeneous and overmature forest. As we learned in Jurassic Park, "nature finds a way," and this clever girl has found the beetles a useful tool for the turning of the wheels.
So, as sad as it is to witness change, mog on little bichos!