Human Stupidity

as at the root of fires like the Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

This is what happens when clearcutting of trees from the Gold Rush era to the obscene development of the region in recent decades is allowed. Lake Tahoe should NEVER have been allowed to have been developed. It's like having the assholes take over Yosemite, or take over the Grand Canyon, or take over Crater Lake. It should have been a national park, not a fucking playground for the megarich.

It's a travesty, and I have to laugh at locals who sport "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumperstickers on their cars or SUVs when they have homes up there which helped create the goddamned mess.

Now the Angora fire has spread.

Early this afternoon I went hiking--yes, hiking--up Galena Creek Trail, which is a ways off Highway 431 on the way to Incline Village (the north shore of Lake Tahoe). The air was smoky, but not too bad as I was hiking the trail behind the obscene McMansions of Montreaux (the wealthiest part of Reno). About an hour later, as I was walking back, the sky was more full of smoke, and that must have been around the time the fire jumped over to Highway 89.

By the way, the south part of the lake is hardly working class, despite nonsense from sites like Democratic Underground. The average home in that area is "affordable" if you're upper middle class: In an article in today's Reno Gazette-Journal, it pointed out the average home was over $400,000. This isn't a poverty-stricken area, not even the south shore.

The east shore and north shore are the most obscene of all, with homes averaging over a million dollars. And the worst of the worst is along Lakeshore Drive in Incline Village. You can't see the goddamned lake because of the fucking mansions blocking the view. You are not allowed to enter the beaches because they are "private." It just pisses me off just thinking about it. It sounds cruel, but it's too damned bad the fire didn't start there and rid the world of that extravagant shit. As you recall, I used to post pictures of those eyesores which came on the real estate market in the days when my scanner worked.

Much if not most of the area surrounding the lake is public land (including Sand Harbor and the spectacular Emerald Bay), but the entire region surrounding the lake should have been. Now Lake Tahoe is paying the price with the damage to its environment.