I just came back from a week of backpacking in the Gila Wilderness. I hiked from the hot New Mexico desert into cool moist canyons lush with blooming yellow Columbines and omnipresent poison ivy all the way to cool dry peaks where firs, pines and aspen formed healthy green forests. In places, wildfires have killed trees whose boles will retain the stored carbon for years to come providing great drumming opportunities for the local woodpeckers and flickers. We discover these while pitching our tent under a patch of remnant green trees in a large burn area.
