Wildfire Resilience Initiative
We are delighted to report that, with funding from the BESS and Lenz Foundations, we are developing a retreat for wildland firefighters in 2023. This program will support wildland firefighters by providing a place for them to gather, heal and build resilience after a tour of duty. [Top photo: Fireshed field tour at Drala Mountain in 2021. Photo by Jake Marlow] For 51 years, Drala Mountain Center has been a presence in rural northern Colorado, where we steward a property of more than 600 acres, hosting meditation retreats and programs from an array of Buddhist teachers and other wisdom traditions. A wildfire here in 2012 forced evacuation and loss of summer revenues. More recently, we lost eighteen structures in the Cameron Peak Fire of 2020, the largest in Colorado’s history at the time. The National Interagency Fire Center reports there have been nearly 41,875 wildfires to date in 2022, with roughly 5.9 million acres burned. There have been 20 line-of-duty deaths in 2022 so far, including 27-year-old Collin Hagan, a firefighter based in Craig, Colorado, …