Forest and Friends August 27, 2026

​Oops.  It is already the end of August and the last Thursday of the month.  That means it is time for Forest and Friends… later today.  Yeah, this is the shortest possible notice, but we’re on this evening from 5-7:30 at Cascadia Pizza.  Anyone with no plans tonight who cares about trees, smoke, wildfire, and doing something about it should come on out to talk with like-minded individuals.

​Personally, I’ve been over to Spokane about a dozen times this year including the week before and week after the fires.  Seeing the smoke rising over the city skyline and the retardant plastering apartment buildings was a trip (a bad one).  The damage on the ground re-emphasizes how dangerous the WUI is and how fire resilience requires community scale coordination, not individual acts of resistance.  The conditions led to this outcome, even if a specific human initiated the event on purpose.  That start location implicated the train for locals and those observing from a distance, the start was near the top of a long climb out of the city and that’s a very high traffic corridor – fire is expected.

​The talk now is about withholding red-flag warnings to keep people from abusing the community safety, but I think that’s the wrong response.  Some of the big fires in Eastern Canada a few years ago, that smoked out the East Coast very dramatically, were human initiated because folks were burning their trash under dangerous fire conditions.  Normal human activities can initiate fires, we need to put faith in good faith and give people a chance to not mow the lawn or cut that chain link fence on days where any stray spark may lead to tragedy.  For the rest that’s a bigger conversation, but preparing our communities to receive fire seems increasingly important no matter where you live.  Next week I’m going to be down near Reno, I frequently pass through places there that have burned this year: Elephant, Bug, and now the Hawk Fire burning right into Reno.  Our cities are not safe from smoke, and increasingly from the flames directly.

​Feel free to join us for pizza and a pint as we talk about climate! We’ll be geeking out, enjoying the taplist, menu, and friendship while we talk forests, startups, GIS, policy, etc.  I’ll be wearing a hardhat and cruising vest – feel free to walk right up and join our table.