What the Western wildfires should teach you.  Maybe you're a
movie star, maybe one of the newly rich e-commerce cadre, or
just a member of the transient elite who drifts from trend to
trend.  You've moved to a pristine mountain valley in western
Montana, leaving your home in Dallas for the pastoral life
offered by the West's wide-open spaces - sheltered from the
masses in your new earth-tone home.  As bluebirds flitter to
their little houses and a grizzly prowls in the distance, you
vow this splendid scene will remain yours forever. You're used
to taking control. You crowd out a rancher and import a wolf,
buy a mountain bike and close a road, and teach your 2.2 kids
that trees have feelings, too.  Now that your life is centered
around preserving the resources you think you've adopted, you
ask how everyone else can be such terrible managers. Your answer
is to let nature take its course - and let it go back to the way
it was.  Well, pal, there isn't anything natural about what's
happening in the West this summe