Paradise Lost: THE GHOST MOUNTAIN

…..Mt. Shasta shrouded in smoke yet again, floating above us like a ghost of the madness that WE ALL ARE AFFLICTED BY!

So now maybe the madness will stop. For decades this has been going on, usually people from the “city” who wander into the “high country” increasing their commute by miles, or retiring in “god’s country” and falling prey to greedy soulless developers who build way out from cities in fire laden foothills, on land that is dirt cheap, with no, I mean a absolutely no warning of fire danger.

It is like white rich people think they are immune somehow from nature. That their privilege protects them.

It doesn’t.

I was born and raised in Redding California. I WAS RAISED POOR.

I remember the subdivisions and “houses on the hill” being built, disregarding that building outside of the small city limits posed a great fire danger.

But now, to avoid paying city taxes, to be above “those people”, the wealthy build hundreds of thousands of homes in wild fire heaven. And after a time, even some of the middle class was able to flee the cities and build, always closer to wildfire zones.

Meanwhile, they added miles to their commutes, to escape “those people; they sit atop the poor masses and look down on them. Human beings are primates. Primate “superiors” love to get higher than the “inferiors”…but, they sit right in the bulls eye of wild fires.

And they burn up the gas and diesel. Oh boy do they, making the situation of global climate change much worse.

And the wildfires, caused by nature being not allowed to burn in the positive way that it has for millions of years, provides a practically nuclear bomb sitting right outside the “privileged” doors!

Then, of course, the inevitable happens. The forests that should no longer can burn to maintain the health of the forest, BURN out of control.

And the Insurance Companies hit the panic button of risk and : No insurance.

Paradise is the perfect example. Trump, as usual, called it Pleasure, in yet another gaffe that defies explanation. He also suggested that Californians “sweep the forest” in yet another proof that he is quite frankly insane.

Paradise used to be a very small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It had about 6000 residents, mostly loggers and a few retired folks.

Paradise High School was a small high school, that played in small school leagues.

Paradise was a quaint little village outside if Chico.

Meanwhile, Chico, about 15 miles away down the “Skyway”, practiced NIMBY to the extreme. Chico purposefully limited their city limits, refusing to annex the rich agricultural land that circled it. Chico in shorts refused to grow close, it grew in …..Paradise.

It all comes down to greed.

So Paradise, in the middle of one of the worst fire prone areas in California (and there are a lot of them) grew quickly because Chico was too greedy to grow properly.

In two decades or so, Paradise went from 6000 to 28,000 give or take. Paradise High School suddenly was playing CHICO High straight up and beating them in sports.

And remarkably, people lived in Chico and commuted to Paradise. But most, the vast majority, drove down the narrow Skyway every day to work in Chico. For example, Chico professors at Chico State lived in Paradise, Doctors lived in Paradise, professionals with money live in Paradise. How more appropriate that the ruling class living in Paradise right?

The Skyway, that a snow storm just beginning could stop for hours; a thin windy road that could be stopped by practically anything, could then trap an entire town!

Then inevitable happened and Paradise was Lost.

Look, land developers are not to be trusted. Real Estate swindlers are not to be trusted. If it looks too good to be true, it isn’t.

Move back to the cities. Integrate them. Build smaller houses that use less electricity.

I mean integrate them. Move into “blighted areas” and help your neighbors for once.

Quit being the worst Me First Nation on the face of the earth.

Believe it or not, in the Pioneer days, America was not a Me First Nation. We had to cooperate with others. We even lived close to “those people”.

Of course we enslaved them…and we killed the people who were here first.

Finally, get out of your damned cars, or invest in electric vehicles or hybrids that get over 50 miles to the gallon.

Finally, and this will be difficult, pass laws to get freight back on the rails, pass a law to ease the transition for the drivers and the truck industry to reduce it to short haul only, delivery trucks operating only locally that are also hybrids and electric.

And we can live a little longer…..with the “Ghost Mountain” losing its shroud!