Life in 'the real world' can be awfully hard at times. It is the generous soul and spirit of the people who make it great over the long haul. In our most rural areas, we long ago learned we must help one another in order for our communities to survive and be great places to live and raise families. Kids learn from a tender age that helping one another makes us happier than ignoring problems that seem not to affect us personally.
The scope of those 'southern' fires is hard to wrap our minds around. The Cottonwood fire, a few thousand acres, nearly joined some weeks later by another one to the north and west, big and devastating to the land as it is, really is a dot on the map compared with those huge fires in not so far away states. We were blessed here to have no lives lost. Bad as losing the cattle is here, it is just hard to comprehend the massive numbers lost down there. It will take a long time for their pastures to recover, let alone to rebuild entire herds of cattle. Green grass is already returning here on the Cottonwood fire site, but it will likely be several seasons before it is anywhere close to what it was before the fire, and likely will be a similar story in the states with the huge fires.
mrj
