A Free Lance Writer from China wrote me asking if I had family who was in danger from the "Camp" fire burning in Northern California. The writer then commented:
“The Xinhua News Agency said the Campfire Fire is now
the most destructive fire in state history.”
One of the things I have noticed in this young generation of reporters who report on the United States of America is that their bosses are asking them to find and report on possible unstable situations in the United States. The bosses may not be intentionally hoping for the United States to collapse. However, they appear focused upon that very hope. The United States is portrayed as fragile and in chaos.
My response was not just to put the fire in perspective, but to also give assurance that this is not the beginning of the end of the United States. Nor is it in any way, part of a trend of deterioration that will end in the destruction of the United States of America.
The most destructive fire in California's known history:
“The Campfire fire has now burned more structures than any other fire in recorded history." However, there have been recent fires which have burned more acreage. Four other fires in the past 2 years have each burned between 200,000 - 300,000 acres. This one has burned more
structures because it began close to a small town and there was not enough time
to evacuate the residents in an organized manner or to set a fire line to
protect the town.
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| Largest California Fires of Record - 2018 11 26 |
The Source:
As you can see from this map, when President Trump mentions fire mismanagement, he is talking
about a problem we have all over the Intermountain West, not just
California. In my extensive travels by car back and forth across the United States, I have come to the conclusion that we are in trouble across our whole nation in this one problem, the mismanagement of our forest land.
Most mismanagement of forests is on Federal Land because they have the largest holdings. However, many public and private entities have followed the same policies. This is especially true in California. The forests around homes and towns in California are being mismanaged by following the practices taught by the Department of Agriculture which manages all Federal Lands which include extensive forest lands.
It is in California that the international news is made and the wealthy actors and drama queens dominate. It is where these fires endanger civilization. Therefore, I suggest, this is why California fires get so much attention.
The Story is Repeated across the USA:
My husband and I have Master’s Degrees in Agronomy
and Horticulture, respectively.
And I spent my preteen
and teen years in Asheville, North Carolina which is next door to "The Cradle of
Forestry" for the USA. I spent many
hours being taught the original theory of Forestry in the museum there. I visited it often with my family and school classes. Now, the theory of forestry is much
different from when the "Cradle of Forestry" was established. The current one is a lazy, and dangerous one. No other country in the world would have such practices, since no country in the world has so completely lost touch with its aboriginal people.
We used to keep our forests clean and accessible. The aboriginal people showed our ancestors how to do this. We added to this tradition the long held practices of Europe when we established "The Cradle of Forestry" in North Carolina. The Western States were never as carefully cared for. The forestry laws of the east began with where timber harvest laws were established early on to control the use of this precious renewable resource.
Now, our forests across the USA are often full of "trash trees"
and understory that is crowded with unmanaged growth. I have traveled the USA extensively over my
61 years of life and I have watched the forests deteriorate into neglected
messes of uncontrolled growth and death.
The Aboriginal People of the USA managed the forests by
timber thinning and in the west, by also using managed fires in the chaparral country to keep the land
well cared for. They thoughtfully
followed the patterns of action their ancestors had used for millenniums to avoid endangering life or structures to a wildfire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajPpP3vbD5c&t=163s (at 5:00 Min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4ZmxmrVCaQ&list=PL6SYmp3qb3uOTYPP0POWMA7FOi-A08X6u&index=7
Climate Change?:
We can argue climate change all we want, back and
forth. Archaeology tells us that we will
fight a losing battle on either side of the argument. The argument exists for those making money on the action of arguing. Contention is destructive and does not deserve our attention. Conflict is normal and can resolve into a balanced upwardly spiral. I think that is what makes America great, that upward spiral.
A Pattern is Repeated:
There are records, here in the USA, in the ancient ruins of cities from 6,000
B.C - 1600 A.D., which record times of drought, and water abundance. Along with those drought and abundance cycles,
nations have risen and collapsed. Unlike
any other continents, archaeological evidence in the North and South American
Continents shows that both continents have been overrun by large nations which
have survived for about 200 years and then been replaced by others. In a few cases, nations have survived a
thousand years in isolation. The records in the earth testify that the water cycles have directly influenced those rises and falls.
As these civilizations in the Americas grow to interact with other large
groups, they eventually self-destruct. The survival of a nation in the American Continents has always depended upon their wise
management of water. Those nations who
have built and maintained reservoirs; have timbered (cut the largest and the
dying trees to keep the forest “thinned”); as well as used "controlled burns", to manage their scrub areas; and have maintained local agriculture in spite of
international commerce, have survived the longest.
(Evidence: One evidence of international commerce is in Arizona, where archaeological digs have uncovered pottery which appears to be from
ancient Chinese and Japanese cultures.
But no one here is going to toot that horn. There have been many large and affluent
nations on the North and South American Continents which have had interaction with the islands of the Pacific and the coast of China. None have remained viable when they have
neglected the management of their natural resources.)
We have had hot spells like our current one before in the USA, as well as across both continents. And the archaeology points to those times of 80 years of drought. Even in the past 300 years of record keeping, we have had times of drought, though none as extensive as the past 80 years. However, during those droughts we have not neglected our forest resources as we have had in the past 40 - 60 years.
The Difference between the East and West:
One reason we have not had the fires in the East of the
USA like we have burning in the West is the two large bodies of water which
feed extra water into the Jet Stream as it comes from west to east. But that does not excuse the mismanagement taking place there which are lending themselves to other threatening issues like rodents and the larger animals which follow them as well as lack of access.
Civilization gives way to Tribalism:
The east does have some record of ancient
civilizations which archaeologists have found. However, those civilizations have often,
through war and mismanagement, fallen into tribal warfare that destroyed all structures of their civilizations.
Between the periods of the civilization destroyed,
the land has been lived in by tribes which are nomadic and have no desire to
establish permanent dwellings. They shun
and avoid the places which contained established civilizations as haunted
places of death and destruction.
It
takes many hundreds of years in the east for the structures to disappear and be forgotten. Eventually all that is left are the mounds of earth where
once the structures stood upon or between them. In the arid west, the structures of stone and baked earth
have survived more intact for thousands of years. But, even now, they are
avoided and shunned by the aboriginal people.
"Most destructive fire...":
As you can see, the
label "most destructive" is a relative thing, depending on what you
want to talk about. Fires have varying levels of destruction, depending on if you are looking at acreage or structures. Loss of life is never acceptable.
There are fires that have
burned more forest area. But there has
never before been one that burned a whole town. That only happen because there was not
enough time to respond to the fire.
Just in the last 18 hours, during which I have been working on this essay, two new fires have begun to burn in the
Western States Region.
There are hundreds of fires burning across the west. Only a few are being worked with the intent to stop them. That is only because they are where there are people and homes in danger. The others are allowed to just burn
themselves out. This is the policy of the National Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, coming out of their headquarters in the Eastern States. This is a consequence of several factors, most especially the environmental lobbyists living in big cities and believing a political agenda fed to them as scientific policy.
And then the people in the east wonder why we all have such bad
air quality. I suggest that the national government and the lobbyists who shape much of this policy are out of touch with several, if not most geographic regions of the United States.
Regional Differences Across the World:
It is my experience that every nation/state/county/city is in a geographic area which suits
their population. That geographic area creates the culture that part of civilization must
live by in order to thrive in their geography. When a nation reaches beyond its geographic boundaries
to interact with other cultures, there are big risks being taken.
If the people of that nation begin to compare
themselves and forget their origins, ....their family and geographic connections, through interaction with the world outside their geographic boundaries, that is
often when they forget how they became a good, viable nation. They lose touch
with their history and their real purpose of civilization, which is to create strong,
viable families.
A Viable Civilization:
Civilizations exist for one purpose. That purpose is to create the safe structure parents want in which to raise families. The citizens are able to provide this only as long as they are able to maintain in their
minds "the reason and purpose of the civilization's existence is to
nurture and nourish their families."
When protection of one civilization turns into conquering other nations, then
a civilization begins to crumble. The
dynasties around the world may take generations to be lost, but in the American Continents, it
only takes one generation.
Comparing Ourselves:
When we begin to compare ourselves to other cultures and try
to imitate them, we begin to loose connection with the laws of nature which
created our nation's culture. This need to be connected to the geography of a
nation is why immigrants to any nation gradually let go, through the following 3-4
generations, of their ancestral culture and embrace their local culture. That local culture is created by the demands
of geography, not the national government.
Family Persists because it creates Civilization and Society:
One of the things impressed upon my mind, this year, as I traveled
across the countryside of China, from Xi’an to Shuangshipu, Fengxian, China was the persistence of
family structures and the acreage of land maintain by local families. The buildings are changing,
and the transportation is evolving. But
the culture of family remains.
For all the times China has changed governments,
the caretakers of the land, in every corner of China have maintained a
traditional culture of that area. A culture in tune with the geography and
focused on the family. It is the same in
every nation, in every demographic of every nation.
The Pattern World Wide:
I have seen the same pattern in my hundreds of drives across the United States, my driving tours of Mexico, Canada, The United Kingdom, and various parts of Europe. As I reach out to travel in other nations of the world, I expect to find the same reality. Families are what matters. And geography shapes our cultures as much if not more than our ancestry.
Some of my ancestors are from Denmark. Yet, some of my maternal
ancestors from Denmark have dark wavy hair and often have brown eyes. On my father's side, some of them have dark
hair. Some of them have blond hair.
Even though my Uncle, my father's brother, has three eighths
Danish ancestry (his mother was 3/4 Danish), his DNA tests are reported as totally Irish and Scottish. He has
one ancestral line that is Irish and Scottish.
But it is not in Ireland until we go back to the 1600’s. It is not in
Scotland for at least another 100 years before that. That far back, there are so many other lines,
and none of them are from Ireland or Scotland. They are all in England and before that, some lines are French, German and Swiss. So, the only way he could test so completely
Irish and Scottish including in his mitochondrial DNA, it would seem that all of his mother's Danish lines had some markers in common with
the Irish and Scottish. The same would have to be true of his English lines. (I realize this is a very loose analogy).
This concentration of Irish and Scottish blood in someone who has ancestry from across Europe is only possible if one considers the possibility that Vikings might
have come from the west and traveled East. And that similar migrations have gone the other way. Few in Europe and the Eastern United States would allow such a theory to
be entertained, much less, researched. But, then why do so many English folk
whose family lines go nowhere but England back as far as they can go (around
1400 A.D.), test their DNA and find markers in common with Native (or
Aboriginal) Americans?
Interestingly, Chinese also have DNA markers which they share with Aboriginal Americans. The world appears to be a much more fluid place than we have supposed in the past. Boundaries do not hold people in place, only cultures. I suggest that cultures are exchanged as people move from place to place.
We all claim our ancestry is from the land our ancestors are
from. But we only look at the first nation they came from, generally some time in the past 200 years. However,
when I look at the National Geographic picture of the Chinese people in the Olympic Stadium in
Beijing, all dressed in blue, I do not see a single face that is identical to
any other. I see faces like ones I have
seen in pictures of folks from every country of Europe and Africa, like the people I have
met in every state in the United States, and like the people I meet from the
islands of the Pacific.
It is only the uniforms they wear that unites them as
citizens of China. Their faces tell another story. I even see, in their eyes, a
fold that is found in the same eye of all of my paternal grandfather's 15
siblings. And the skin of those blue clad citizens looks like the
skin of my ancestors when it is tanned.
Back to the Fires:
So, I say again: These wild fires in California are not necessarily the most destructive. Only in our current short recorded history. The way I interpret the situation is these fires are a
symptom of a much greater problem. The decay of a nation of people and their government which has forgotten its geographic origins. The rise of voices which have forgotten the original civilizations of the American Continents and their how their traditions allowed them to survive and thrive on these Continents.
I suggest that it is possible similar fires in ancient times at the end of decaying civilizations taught the aboriginal Americans how they should manage the forests so as to avoid such devastation. These forests have been cleared many times through the history of the earth. We are not the first to harvest trees or to break our civilization against the laws that govern the forests.
A Look to the Future and the Past:
The only difference this time from ancient times, which gives us hope for international peace, is that there is a
group of people in this nation, as is found in every nation currently, who understand the ancient history
of these lands. They understand that though their ancestors have come from
every nation and land of the earth besides Antarctica, it is this land they
live upon that shapes their destinies, their culture and their
relationships with the world. And there is faster communication and travel which allows us to work for greater stability without sacrificing our geographic cultures.
This land of the United States of America shapes its people in a
rough and tumble way. To the rest of the
world, it looks like we will shatter to pieces at any moment. We appear to move from crisis to crisis. But, as long as we remember that this seeming
chaos we live in is the culture that will always develop in the American
Continents. No matter which nation the people's voices create to rule them, there will be a way to survive with a
government intact.
I suggest that as long as we, the citizens of the human race, all remember
that we are one human race; as long as we all remember that nations are only
geographic civilizations limited to the culture that a geography creates; as
long as we remember the geographic cultural truths which have operated through millenniums across
the earth, our nations will survive and thrive and support each other.
The chaos of constant change is what makes and keeps us
strong. No one group will ever
completely dominate for longer than the blink of an eye.
The End of Civilization:
The end of a civilization comes only if the members of one
civilization forget, more than another group, that this apparent chaos is
normal for these lands. If they covet the stability of the rulers of other
nations and forget that those rulers are mortal, as are their dynasties, they
will soon follow the way of all who forget the laws by which civilization is
built.
The only unending, immortal force on the earth among the human race is the basic family unit which perpetuates the race and builds civilization to do so. Those who break civilizations against the laws that govern by geography are the ones who do not survive. But those who build families do survive.
New Beginnings:
In order to avoid such destruction as the California wildfires which have burned for a few decades in California, the people of our nation might want to remember that it is by their voice and participation that government is created and maintained. Governments are created and maintained to provide a
stable environment in which families can flourish and survive in abundance. And
it is the voice of the people which creates and maintains government. And those people come from families.
