Grassy Ridge wildfire exposes loads of trash left by humans

An ash-devil created by the warm breeze, appeared to chase me as I trekked across the hard baked soil of the recent Grassy Ridge wildfire off the Red Road in Fremont County. The rain from two weeks ago had welded the sandy ground so hard that I left few tracks as I hiked through the blacked skeletons of the sagebrush. Patches of baked prickly pear leaves appeared as shriveled up as an old cowboy’s ears.

After driving several miles into the interior of the more than 99,000 acre fire scar of scorched grasslands and brush, I stopped to take a three mile hike. What I found in what had been grazing pastures for cattle and critical brush for wintering elk, moose and deer, was exposed human trash scattered through the stalks of sage and bitter brush. Using my GPS I walked a mile south toward the Sand Hills, then a mile west toward Hamer before returning to my truck. Ugliness was everywhere.

RELATED: VIDEO FROM THE AIR: Grassy Ridge Fire burns nearly 104,000 acres

Bottles, most of them cracked or broken from the intense heat of the fire, beer and soda pop cans, wash tubs used for cattle salt, and camp trash was everywhere. Rarely could I not see a piece of trash left by someone but I was thankful that all the plastics were gone.

Except for grasshoppers, the burned desert appeared lifeless; no animal tracks, no birds until I found a pocket of sagebrush that had miraculously survived the inferno. There I found a tiny horned toad and a lonely old sage grouse. No jack rabbits or cottontails, no kangaroo rats or mice, no sparrows or raptors; from time to time I would find a few lonely spears of green grass fighting their way up through the hard soil. Some of the bottles had baked rodents where they had appeared to hide from the fire; no, I did not try them for a snack.

After I finished the three mile walk I drove until I intersected another road and followed it to the Red Road that acted as a fire break for the raging fire. A large puddle of ash-covered water created by the rain, was teeming with life. A Black-tailed jackrabbit hopped across the road into the thick sagebrush while Mountain bluebirds, Sage thrashers and several types of sparrows flew to the stunted aspen and chokecherry bushes by Split Rock.

RELATED: GALLERY: Photos of the Grassy Ridge Fire from the EastIdahoNews.com helicopter

I parked by the puddle and waited for some of the birds to return so that I could get a few pictures of them before I used my GPS to visit two sage grouse and one sharp-tailed grouse leks. The brush the hens used for nesting around the leks were gone. It will be interesting to visit them next spring to see if any birds come back, but without the cover they are probably a part of history. What was at each location was ugly human trash of all kinds.

The Grassy Ridge fire started on July 26, by lightning, burned 99,502 acres, required 243 personnel to fight it using 14 fire engines, six dozers, seven water tenders and three helicopters. Several dozen cattle as well as many wildlife were killed but were not the only loses. Several ranchers lost pasture for their livestock and the wintering big game herds have lost their winter food.

The Idaho Department of Lands reports that this year over 400,000 acres in the state has be burned by wildfires. When I think of the effect that will have on the beauty and pocketbooks of Idahoans, I am saddened.

For a mile across the desert I picked up 131 cans but as I tried to pick up bottles that appeared unbroken, many shattered at my touch. Maybe a thousand years from now, after another fire, people will be collecting the “desert glass” created by the shifting sands. I will continue to explore the roads across the scorched desert to see if I can find a treasure or two in all the ugliness left by careless humans.