Grand Lake and pine beetles

So tomorrow is Jan’s birthday. And I, of course, scheduled three client meetings in a remote town 200 miles south of here, one tomorrow and two Tuesday. Brilliant, though, I am and fully considerate. You can see that, no?

So, we took an early birthday road trip for three days to Grand Lake, Fraser and Granby, Colorado. It was absolutely amazing. We had no schedule so we just got up when we wanted to and wandered aimlessly.

A discovery we made is that in Grand Lake, very few people are up and about at 9:00 am. We parked wherever we wanted to and sat by the beautifully placid lake, right on the dock, and watched fish jump, couple of little kids casting toy rods (they readily admitted they had no hooks), and read our Hebrews study for Tuesday night.

Here are a couple of photos Jan took during this quiet time. (I took the cheesecake one)

Later on, things got busy and people were milling around, but that wasn’t until nearly 11:30.

I learned something else very interesting, I think. I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but the pine beetle infestation has nearly covered many of the mountain sides around here. In real life, this mountain side appears just plain gray! It is very sad and has concerned many for years now.

But what I learned from our “boat driver guide” when we took a lake tour in the afternoon, is that things are looking very much better than we might expect if we just look at the gray mountain. About 100 years ago, this particular mountain was devastated by a forest fire. It grew back to what you see now. When the beetle infestation began on this mountain about 10 years ago, it attacked mostly the old trees, those about 100 plus years old (which is close to the life expectancy of those trees anyway.

She said she had hiked to the top of the mountain a couple of days ago and was amazed at the beauty of the new growth: pine and spruce trees already 3 to 6 feet tall, green and healthy plus lots of green undergrowth and aspen. She said she and her colleagues are quite optimistic now. Maybe we need a cleansing forest fire or some aggressive logging. But, it doesn’t bode as sad as I have been thinking.

So if any of you have thoughts, expert or otherwise, about pine beetle solutions, chime in. I’d love to hear your take on this thing.