Chinooks

This New Year's Day is anything but happy in Boulder, County, Colorado.  Many homes and businesses have been lost to fire, animals and lives lost.  What happened?  We forgot.  Native people living in Boulder Valley, before the European settlers came, called the winds Chinooks.  They blow about a 100 miles an hour and bring chaos.  It is often said that God's creation came out of chaos.  Chaos did not go away, but remained in creation.  I remember a Chinook back in about 1982 in Boulder.  No one told me about Chinooks.  It was scary.  I thought our house was going to come apart.  Telephone poles blew down in Boulder.  There was destruction, but in 1982 there was no Superior, Broomfield, Louisville or Lafayette.  Yes, there were places with those names but nothing much was there besides ranches and farms.  Boulder is at 5000 feet altitude and right behind us are mountains that suddenly rise to 8000 feet.  Thus the creation of Chinooks.  But Boulder Valley, being beautiful, people want to live and work here, a bit like San Francisco built on an earthquake vault.  Ranchers and Farmers sold their land, wiring for power went up on exposed poles, rather than underground.  We forgot about Chinooks.  30,000 people moved in and created suburbia.  Drought came uninvited.  A friend of chaos.  And then came the Chinooks, 40 years after the one I remember.  The telephone wires blew down as they do in Chinooks. When we forget, Boulder County near the "Flatiron" mountains becomes a dangerous place to live.  I am thankful for all the people who reached out to the homeless in our suburbia, where chaos lives.  Let us no forget again.