Political Quotes

“I encourage folks to take a close look at this picture of a forest ablaze in Oregon. Right now, there are innumerable fires burning across our State. Some of them are called complexes--a fire complex. Maybe it is referred to as a single fire complex, but that means there may be 10 or 20 different fires within that area. What we are seeing more and more with the changing climate, with climate disruption, is that we have lightning storms that sweep over our forests, will light up and create multiple fires at one time, and then, because the forest is so much drier, they burn fiercely. Just last week, Mary and I were hoping to spend a couple days out on the Pacific Crest Trail. This is the trail that runs from Mexico to Canada, and we were planning to go down to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and experience some of that, but we couldn't because of the intense smoke from fires burning. Fires in the middle of the State had shut down some of the Pacific Crest Trail near Jefferson, so we decided to go up to the northern end of the trail, the trail that plunges into the Columbia River at a place called Bridge of the Gods, Cascade Locks, and walk south. The plan was to go about 18 miles or so and then pick up the Eagle Creek Trail and come right back through to where we had started. But posted at the start of the Pacific Crest Trail was that the Eagle Creek Trail had been closed and that the loop was shut down due to the Indian Springs fire.…”