Last Friday, I was out walking through the vines on Premiere Coastal Vineyard just north of Los Alamos looking for signs of botrytis, a fungus that can make an appearance this time of year, especially in the chardonnay.

Luckily, I did not find any active botrytis but felt an unusual hot breeze coming from the north. As I looked up toward the hills bordering the vines to the north, I noticed the darkening skies caused by the smoke from the Zaca Fire.

It was the first time the smoke had spread out far enough to partially cover the vineyard.

As I made my way back to my pickup, I listened to the radio and found out the fire had regained strength and was marching toward the Paradise/Rancho Oso area.

My thoughts turned to the folks who live up in that country, their homes that may be in the fire's path and the firefighting crews that have been battling the fire for more than a month.

While I am certainly no expert in controlled burns, I can remember there used to be a lot more of them when I was growing up. Of course, there were not nearly as many expensive homes in the foothills below Figueroa Mountain then.

Ranchers used fire as one of several methods of keeping a sustainable working landscape.

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I read an interesting quote from the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy & Program Review, Draft Report from June 1995: “... many people do not understand the ecological and scientific concepts behind fire. For many, fire remains a fearsome, destructive force that should be controlled at all costs. Smokey the Bear's simple, time-honored ‘only you' fire-prevention message has been so successful that any complex talk about the healthy, natural role of fire gets lost, ignored or denied by broad internal and external audiences.”

Maybe after the Zaca Fire is out, there will be an opportunity for regulators and environmentalists, which include members of the ranching community, to sit down and rethink the use of controlled burns, and we can avoid another Zaca Fire.

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I have many memories of going up to Figueroa Mountain when I was in high school. We always went up in the winter, when the top of the mountain would get one to two feet of snow.

Spring would find us along Davey Brown Creek, fishing for planted trout, or further down along the banks of the Manzana River. We went deer hunting in the late summer, and we would look for mountain quail later in the fall.

Our hunting trips were more hikes than hunts. I do not recall bringing either quail or a deer home from Figueroa, but we loved walking through the pines and breathing the cool, clear mountain air.

I remember my grandfather told me how when he was very small, he suffered from acute asthma attacks. The remedy those days was to keep the patient in bed with lots of blankets and a roaring fire in the fireplace.

I don't believe my grandfather was much older than our little boy, Clayton, at the time.

The asthma attacks were worse in the summer, and for a little 5-year-old boy to be kept wrapped in blankets next to a roaring fire in the heat of summer seemed extreme at best.

It was a sure case of the cure being worse than the cause. My grandfather was not getting any better. In fact, he was becoming very weak, and the doctors did not really know what to do.

Luckily a friend of the family who lived in the mountains next to Figueroa came for a visit and saw my grandfather lying in bed, looking very weak.

After speaking with the family, they decided to take my grandfather Sam up to the mountains for the remainder of the summer, hoping the cool, clear mountain air would help the situation.

I recall him saying that if he had stayed at the adobe at Rancho La Vega that summer, he probably would have died.

He was so weak his mother was concerned that he could not even make it up to the mountain. He did make it and within two weeks had regained most of his strength.

Sam remained on the mountain for the rest of the summer and never had an asthma attack. When he returned to Rancho La Vega in the fall, the asthma was completely gone and he never had an attack again.

I do not remember the name of the family Sam stayed with that summer, but I recall the family's friend was a doctor as well, which is probably why my grandfather's mother and father let him go.

Let's hope Mother Nature cooperates with firefighting crews to get the Zaca Fire contained, and firefighters and residents in the area alike are able to return to their homes safely.

Kevin Merrill is a vineyard manager for Mesa Vineyard Management in Santa Maria. He is president of the Central Coast Wine Growers' Association Foundation and a board member of the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau. He can be reached at kmerrill@mesavineyard.com.

August 12, 2007