Long overdue for a family vacation, my wife and I packed up the kids and headed to West Texas and New Mexico for the week of July 4th.
After visiting relatives in El Paso, we made our way to Ruidoso, New Mexico, where I had the opportunity to spend many summers camping in the Lincoln National Forest and Mescalero Apache Reservation back in the 1980s. It had been about 10 years since our last visit, and we were eager for our 6- and 4-year-old daughters to see the mountains for the first time.
We love camping in the Texas Hill Country, but there’s nothing quite as special as spending the night in a coniferous forest that grows in the cool climate of high altitudes. After telling my girls stories about all the horned lizards, garter snakes, and cutthroat trout I caught with my bare hands in and around those mountains as a boy, they were ready for a real adventure.
VIDEO: Little Bear Fire Climate Conditions
Before we got there, we warned them that New Mexico and Colorado were battling record wildfires. Those 2012 blazes included the Little Bear Fire, which burned more than 43,000 acres near Ruidoso, destroying more homes than any wildfire in the state’s history. In the southwest portion of the state, the Whitewater Baldy fire burned more than 200,000 acres of rugged terrain, setting the record for New Mexico’s largest wildfire. The previous record was set the summer before when the Las Conchas Fire threatened Los Alamos National Laboratory as it burned more than 170,000 acres.
The frightening images of the Little Bear Fire left some in my family to wonder why I would take my kids up to the mountains. Before we headed west, the Little Bear Fire had been contained, and I read enough stories in the Ruidoso News to know that the center of the town was safe and the city was struggling with perceptions from all the sensational images.
We were happy to see that the town was still intact and charming as ever. And it is still very much a lovely place to visit! However, there was no tent camping to be found since most of the tent camp sites were destroyed in the fire. We found a nice cabin near the center of town along the Rio Ruidoso.
There is no denying that the fire left a huge scar on the landscape outside of Ruidoso, which was primed for blazes by a record drought and pine beetle infestation that has devastated coniferous forests across North America. This was another reason I was eager to return to the mountains – to survey the damage that an increasing number of scientists are linking to climate change that’s exacerbated by human activity and/or CO2 emissions.
Having had the opportunity to camp near Ruidoso and Colorado Springs as a child, I have paid close attention to the stories of the record wildfires in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The drought conditions that triggered those fires helped fuel record fires in West and Central Texas the year before. In 2011, the hottest year on record in Texas, drought depleted many reservoirs and fire destroyed much of Bastrop State Park outside Austin. During that same summer, Arizona recorded its largest wildfire: The Wallow Fire burned more than 530,000 acres. The previous Arizona record was set in 2002 when nearly 470,000 acres burned in the Rodeo-Chediski Fire.
It’s a common refrain in media coverage of these incidents that no single weather event can be linked to climate change caused and/or exacerbated by human activity. But it’s pretty apparent that a devastating pattern has emerged with a changing climate.
As my kids ask me to explain the cause of all these fires, I can only say that, back when I was a kid, we didn’t have these kinds of droughts, fires, and beetle infestations. Something has definitely changed. I just hope things will change for the better by the time they are my age.
If you don’t believe the climate is changing, take a trip out West to see for yourself.
robertmcrowe 
What an adventure for everyone. Glad you didn’t let the fires keep you from visiting and making new memories.