Thinking Like a Forest Fire
An emulation of Aldo Leopold's famous piece Thinking Like a Mountain
By Allison Gee
The snapping of the embers beginning their dance lingers into the darkness of the night. It is felt within every living thing; within the passion inside of their hearts.
Every nonliving and living thing alike knows the power within the bright. To the cheatgrass, it is an eager opportunity for success; to society, a threat to their existence; to the elk, a stress against its own refuge; to the soil, it's an unspoken word ready to be expressed. But behind all these truths and beliefs, there is a deeper meaning known only to the fire and flames themselves. Fire is the only thing to have the power to destroy so much life, be so much life, and create so much life.
The presence of a fire is felt within every living creature. It is the calling to survive and the fierceness in their eyes. It is the drive with which everything living is born. Only the immature can believe that fires have the potential to be controlled. Only the foolish will be tricked into believing that fire is a hazard, not a keystone of life.
My own relation back to this topic comes from my many years as a forest firefighter. I started straight out of college, and while at first it was an easy job to fill the weekends, soon enough it taught me the ego humans encompass. One particularly hot day in mid-September, a simple fire changed my perspective. My crew and I trod across a smoky meadow in the Big Horn Mountains, known as home to an abundance of moose. This fire was raging. The trees were infected with blister rust and pine beetles; they were more susceptible to burning. From the first look, this fire proved to be the same as the rest: daunting and powerful, selfish and conceited. My buddies and I have always had a passion for fighting fires, for fighting for control. However, I now understand my great fault in such a belief.
We had been in the field for no more than an hour when Chief instructed us to change plans and hike to the next ridge in hopes we could stop it from spreading over. The dryness of the grass echoed throughout my mind, knowing we could be out here for longer than I’d like. Immediate rage swept over the top of me, and I could feel myself resisting the decision. With no other option in sight, I began walking, one foot in front of the other. With each breath, my lungs were tighter, but with each breath, I was trekking closer. I took a few more steps up, and I could finally start to see the burning landscape below.
I was initially appalled by what appeared before my own eyes. After a closer look, however, the flame that blazed and raged across the forest somehow completely skipped a section in the middle. After all my years working this job, we’ve never seen anything quite like this. Sometimes, the tannin that's weaved into pine needles manages to keep fires away; however, there were no pine trees in the area. Curiosity quickly stuck. We fiercely worked our way to the middle to find a group of black-footed ferrets all huddled around one another. Their homes are found in prairie dog burrows, but they have been pushed above ground due to the fire. The species that once was questioned as extinct survived one of the biggest fires of the year with no explanation.
In that moment, I realized and will forever know that every move a fire makes is intentional. After all these years of fighting for control and trying to silence the rage within a fire, I realized fires do not rage; fires rebirth what mother nature can’t.
Before I was able to see the world in this way, I always feared the fire. I always thought it rebelled and was trying to speak for the many injustices and mistreatments of this world. But since then, I have lived to see that fire is caring and respected among the wild. I have seen the dependence the ecosystems have on the renewal of life, created by fire. I have watched serotinous cones fulfill their purpose and seen forests rebuild. I have gazed at the mosaic pattern instilled into the earth's ground, almost as if God were painting it himself. And because of all of these things, I have learned the trust within the fire and the flame. I have learned there is a way known to the wild, and every little detail is put in place for a reason.
The immaturity we all have to fear what is bigger than ourselves shows our mistakes. It should be no surprise that recklessly searching for safety leads to destruction and pain. Fire is destructive beauty that creates effortless balance. Fire is a keystone of life that cannot be caged nor controlled. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the snap of the dancing embers, deeply known within the wild but never understood by society.