Introduction to the Series: My Story of Restoration Part One
Greetings, readers. I'm Captain Hedges, and this is the beginning of a story I never thought I'd be telling. It's a story of loss, survival, and, against all odds, the slow and ongoing process of finding my way back to a place I can call home. It's a story that spans decades, marked by both the destructive power of nature and the enduring strength of the human spirit. It's my story of restoration.
Blog Post 1: The Ashes of Home: The Dude Fire and the Beginning of a Long Journey
The Mogollon Rim. For me, it's more than just a geographical location; it's a place etched into my memory, a 'forested home' both loved and lost. The power of that wildness was seared into the landscape and my own life in the summer of 1990, during the infamous Dude Fire.
It had been beastly hot, 100 degrees Fahrenheit even at 6,000 feet in elevation. Down in the desert, Phoenix was suffering a record-breaking temperature of 122. The forest was stressed by drought. Precipitation the winter of 1989-1990 had been below normal, and everything waited for a spark, like the proverbial tinderbox. Years of poor forest management had left the forests overgrown with small, unhealthy trees and underbrush. The philosophy of the 20th century was to put out all forest fires; however, fire was a natural part of the ecosystem and a valuable tool for Mother Nature to eliminate undergrowth and promote new, healthy growth.
The afternoon of June 25th, 1990, a bolt of lightning from a dry thunderstorm sent a deafening explosion echoing over the ridge from the direction of Dude Creek, north of Payson. (Dude Creek is so named because a fellow named Frank McClintock, who once settled there, was thought by old-timers to be something of a city dude, not familiar with the wilderness under the Mogollon Rim.) About twenty minutes later, a small airplane flew over the canyon.
You can find a copy of the map and article i found here at this link
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