First and foremost, Happy Independence Day! All that we love, all that we cherish, is made possible by this great American way of life!

We now digress to a more sober thought… millions are suffering the heat of summer. Power outages contribute to the problem, leaving some metropolitan areas sweltering.

We consider ourselves very lucky. For those of you who have visited the Black Hills, it is rare for the nights to stay hot. About 7 p.m., it starts to cool and many nights you are reaching for jackets in the evening and covers before dawn. Even at Rally time, yet a month away in August, we shiver to see someone riding motorcycle late afternoon into the Hills, hoping they have leather in the saddlebag. A 100 degree day quickly cools to the 50s and 60s, dipping even lower in some of those “icebox canyons” we know so well.

We’ve already had a few of those nights that fail to cool, or like last night we get a late afternoon rain shower and then it warmed back up!

This year the problem is compounded by smoke from forest fires. You hesitate to open windows in the evening when Hills fires dampen because every valley has waves of smoke drifting by.

That thunderstorm that dampens the smoke and dust puts firefighters on alert for the next spark.

Many fireworks shows have been cancelled. The grandkids are all groaning because there will be no fun with bottle rockets, Roman candles…

We’re old enough to remember M*A*S*H the first time around. This past week, it was a sobering thought each morning to hear the Black Hawk helicopters going out each morning to fight the war against fire. Each evening they returned, signaling the end of that day’s fight. The local news filled in details of casualties of the day… acres burned, homes evacuated, percentage of containment.

We’re lucky enough to live in the Northern Hills, where Ponderosa Pine are still predominantly green. That allows us to breathe a little easier, but a recently controlled fire at Crow Peak and a new fire near Newcastle keep the air smoky and all of us adults on constant alert.

So it’s 9 a.m., the a/c is on (sigh) and as we listen to the morning update on Hills’ fires, we schedule our day on what should be an August routine of things to do around home until late afternoon when we can hopefully escape the heat by driving up the gulch to a claim!