AS THE YEAR TURNS OVER, I’m drawn back to a memory from last spring. For several weeks in April and May, northern New Mexico smelled like smoke. The immense plume of the Hermits Peak Fire, filled with the ashes of the burned village of Mora, hung over the mountains, and refugees from the fire flooded into Santa Fe and other nearby communities.
The fire, which started as a prescribed burn and grew to be the largest in