Afternoon reflections

Sitting beneath the Chinese Elm gently (and not so gently) whipping around in the wind, my mind flits to the white mountains of once beautiful pristine Arizona where everything we knew and loved there has been ravaged by fire...still 0% uncontained, and it's been raging since May 29 when a campfire was left unattended. Our many friends there have been evacuated. The torment of the unknown hovers. 0 % uncontained. How can this be? I heard that the man in charge forbid water be extracted from Big Lake because of an endangered fish. Truly? Have we come to this? That human life and human homes are trumped by an endangered fish? The last I heard, they were trying to save Terry Flat where we used to ride the horses....that's the exquisite meadow at the foot of the climb to the lookout. My heart aches for those whose homes are in jeopardy, for the firefighters so hampered by wind, smoke and command. I pray for God to have mercy and grant that the winds cease their merciless onslaught and the fires be quelled. And I weep...that I must remember these things as lost.