Summer is over. We had a day of light, cold rain which settled the dust and gave the mountain its first dusting of snow, followed by the first frost of the season.

Tourist season is over until the ski park opens in mid-November. Which means that when I walk past the malt shop with my dogs early in the morning to get the paper, I usually swap waves with the owner and one "employee" – usually a family member volunteering – who are waiting for the grumpy and tight fisted locals to show up and complain about the price of coffee. It’s a pretty discouraging time of year.

But last week, there were over 500 fires burning around Siskiyou County following some thunderstorms, and over 250 big fires in the west. With the rain, and the ensuing cool, damp weather, a lot of firefighters were en route from beaten fires; to another fire for some, back to their home station for a couple of days of badly needed rest for the luckier ones.

The malt shop is justly famed among the Hot Shots and BLM and CDF crews and the CCC and USFS personnel. So as a result, every morning this week, there would be one or two pale green or white or red fire units parked in the main road, and the restaurant was filled with tired, dusty, sooty, hungry, but happy firefighters wolfing down 8" half-pound "Logger Burgers" and sucking on the genuine chocolate malteds. (The coffee is Farmer Brothers. We won’t talk about the coffee).

Officially, the fire season isn’t over until we’ve had a couple of big storms out of the Gulf of Alaska, bringing snow or at least a lot of rain to the area. And nobody’s pretending it’s over now; the forecast is for hot, dry winds out of the north beginning today (they did) and continuing for at least a week. Those guys will see a lot more action before they finally get to stand down for the winter.

This fire season, mild here, but savage through most of the west, has had an extra element tossed in: accusations and cross-accusations that the fires resulted from politically motivated arson. One such theory involves black helicopters, and for a wonder, there actually were some black helicopters in the area just before the fire was spotted. Putsch was coming to the town of Sisters to push his "Healthy Forests Initiative," which consists of letting lumber interests "thin" the forests to prevent fires. The rumor has been – excuse me – wildfiring up and down the Cascades that the Secret Service detail in the helicopters set the fires deliberately in order to provide a dramatic backdrop to Putsch’s "anti-forest-fire" speech. The Portland NPR station even covered the story, and it got a write up in Salon E-zine.

Given the generally loony nature of the story, I thought the mere fact that I was reading about it merited coverage, and passed the Salon story along to my newsfeed.

It’s pretty hard to start a forest fire from a helicopter in a way that isn’t, well, conspicuous. Even in an area as remote and lightly populated as south-central Oregon, something like three black helicopters is going to get noticed, and if they’re dropping napalm, or phosphorus, that’s going to cause comment. Add to that the fact that pyroforensics is a fairly exact science, and those guys, who are generally unamused by arson, are GOOD at locating the flash point and determining what, if any, accelerants were involved. Even for an administration as arrogant and stupid as this one, it seem a fantastically risky stunt to pull just for the sake of a backdrop.

Folks who will cheerfully swear that Putsch farts in elevators and stomps on puppies would balk at that one. The only thing worse than a dumb conspiracy theory is a truly stupid conspiracy theory.

A counterrumor sprung up that environmentalists had started the fire. This one was even loonier, since it didn’t make sense that anyone would signal their opposition to a bill that supposedly addressed the issue of forest fires by starting a forest fire. But some locals, convinced by Rush Limbaugh and big timber that all environmentalists were evil and crazy, embraced the rumor with fervor.

While the two groups in Oregon were spinning madly and snapping at their own tails, the Sacramento Bee, reporting from the land of reality, noted that the Administration, as part of its "Healthy Forest Initiative," was reallocating some $4.5 million in firefighting funds from Northern California to Southern California.

California, it will surprise some folks to hear, is one of the most heavily forested states in the Union. Along the coast, one finds redwoods, Douglas fir, and hardwoods. Along the Sierra and in the Shasta/Cascade region, there are large tracts of pine, cedar, fir and in the valley, oak.

But 95% of California’s forests are in central and northern California. South of the Tehachapi forests are pretty much limited to the tops of the mountains, and scrub forests in areas such as the Los Padres National Forest. It’s possible, in Southern California, to see a sign saying, "Welcome to San Bernardino National Forest" and beyond it, not a single tree in sight.

What Southern California national forests DO have is many expensive homes nestled in the canyons and among the chaparral, and this year especially, those homes are getting gobbled up by fire like popcorn gets consumed by teenagers.

With funding already desperately short on both the state and federal levels, this was bad news to the forest areas of Northern California, especially Plumas, which took the brunt of the reallocation, losing $1.2 million in firefighting funds to San Bernardino.

I ran into the local head of our town Fire Safe Council, and told him of the reallocation. I expected him to be livid. Well, he’s a Republican and the exercise will do him good.

So I was somewhat surprised when he noted that he had expected it, and that he didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

He pointed out that southern California, normally a dry place to begin with, had been in a severe drought for the past few years, and as a result, trees, badly stressed by lack of water, had fallen prey by the millions to insect infestations, with the result that there were dead and dying (and thus extremely flammable) trees all over the place, and a quick vigorous response to fire down there could save dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives, and many more homes.

All of which is true. I lived in southern California off and on for some 20 years, and was there at the end of the drought in the late 1980s, and was caught in a firestorm that swept down the canyon and destroyed my entire neighborhood. I know as well as anyone how fantastically dangerous fire is in southern California.

But none of that prevents me from pointing out the political lunacy involved here. The Healthy Forest Initiative is offered as an approach to prevent forest fires from wrecking the forest. As a part of that initiative, money meant for fighting forest fires is taken away in order to fight brush fires 600 miles away.

So instead of budgeting an extra $4.5 million (how could it matter at this point? That’s less than 1/100,000 of the existing deficit!) for southern California, he lets the forests burn – in the name of protecting them from forest fires.

Hmmm.

I think I know what happened. I know what lies behind the "Healthy Forests Initiative."

Shortly after he was born, three black helicopters came along and dropped napalm on George W. Bush’s house. Just some of the Texas Air National Guard, having some fun, right.

While he escaped the flames, he went six minutes without any oxygen...