Fire was a gift from the Gods. So goes the story of Prometheus, and how he gave fire to mankind, and in the process, was punished for it. When the Greek Goddess Io comes upon him, chained to a rock as punishment for his deed, she intones a question that seeks an answer to the heart of the element and its nature: “Did you do wrong?”
Since the time of the poets Aeschylus and Ovid, the question has been raised and unanswered an infinite number of times over the ages. Fire is destructive. Fire is cleansing. Fire occurs throughout the natural world, in many forms. Fire in the hands of mankind can be wielded for good and evil.
There was a time in the United States, when fire was viewed as something that should be avoided at all costs, where the nation’s forests were at stake. The lush stands of old growth timber, which provided a seemingly endless bounty of lumber, shingles, paper, and other wood products, were the economic lifeblood, the working man’s domain, the call of the frontier, for many across the land from coast to coast.
Evergreen firs. Ponderosa pines. Cypresses. Redwoods, cedars, and oaks. What started as a seemingly never-ending harvest of trees, laid the foundation for understanding the forests, and provided much needed knowledge, in how to care for them, manage them, in order to ensure they would survive as a necessary part of our ecology and environment past more than one generation of Americans.
In this fledging beginning of understanding, appreciation, desire to see the forests preserved and prosper, fire was not considered a friend. It was viewed as “wrong” (to answer the question put to Prometheus) and, most importantly, was to be avoided at all costs, if possible. Burning stands of good timber, whether this occurred naturally from lightning strikes, was not viewed favorably or as an integral part of a forest’s ten-year regrowth cycle. Moreover, forest fires were to be extinguished: not permitted to burn, spread, or elsewise act as a natural force in the forest environment.
These are hard lessons that mankind has learned and relearned down over the ages. In many ways, our shared knowledge about the value of fire to manage forest health stems from the traditions and values of Native populations across our lands.
The inevitability of human expansion was partly to blame for this. Dwellings, towns, populations that abutted up against National Forest boundaries, adjacent to National Parks, or on lands owned and operated by logging companies, all now claimed co-existence with the trees, and in so doing, clamored for protection. Human activity also likewise caused its share of new forest fires: an unnatural variable to the equation of balance within the forest environment. Taken to an extreme, the climate itself now rebels, and forests pay a new and unknown price.
These are hard lessons that mankind has learned and relearned down over the ages. In many ways, our shared knowledge about the value of fire to manage forest health stems from the traditions and values of Native populations across our lands. Wisdom imparted from Stories that tell of the Origin of Fire, retold with titles like: “How Coyote Brought Fire to the People,” “The Bridge of the Gods,” and “How Raven Helped the Ancient People” handed down from inhabitants along the Klamath River in California, to the Plateau tribes of southern Washington state.
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New stories and messengers have rekindled public perceptions about fire. A new American Animal Totem of sorts. Out of the desire to stop the fires, Smokey the Bear was reborn (from the identity of a real bear that survived a forest fire in Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico). His message was clear: Only YOU can prevent forest fires! Smokey was the needed voice of a Wilderness Champion, that fires created out of ignorance, or indifference, or carelessness, or stupidity, could and should be avoided. While the forests were the target of such salvation, to drive the point home the messaging emphasized the real threat of fires to life and property in its direct appeal to human interests.
At the same time, planting of trees to harvests went from 100 years, to 60 years, to 40 years, making the harvests faster each time, but with less product as a result. Fires impeded the harvests, and so prevention became a national watchword for the next several decades. To combat the fires (which routinely came year after year, as if preordained by the gods), legions of smoke jumpers, fire watchers/lookouts, teams of men and women dedicated to stopping the fires for well and good, held the fire lines and saved what they could, when they could. It was (and still is) a noble effort for the protection of life and property.
But one with some unintended consequences. The elimination of fire, or attempts to do so, created forests full of “ladder fuels” – undergrowth brush and accumulated natural debris – which when left unburned, allowed new fires to reach canopy treetops and explode into mega-wildfires that raged and obliterated everything in their paths. The wisest of the forest managers came to see the need and the importance of fire, as a means to clear the way for new growth in the forests, while also providing the foundation of burned elements that nourished the soil, gave new life to the ecosystem, and allowed wildlife to continue their cycle in harmony with the trees.
Herbicides used to try and reduce and restrict undergrowth was a mistake, and along with pesticides, seeped a poisonous cure that served to kill off bald eagles and other animals of the forests. Promising genetic research proposed to make pine trees and their bark more resistant to the degradations of pine bark beetles, could reduce the acres of dead trees that serve as fuel for new wildfires. Yet, such efforts eventually bring the question back again and again: what of fire, and its ability to take care of this?
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The era of the controlled burn was now upon us, and with it, a solution (of sorts; there are on average 70,000 wildfires each year) which acknowledged the role fire plays as part of a healthy forest ecosystem. There is even a new push for “biochar” – building the soil, redistributing it, when cooled, using a smokeless burn process. Or, combining fire with non-fire means of reducing underbrush: mulching, instead of burning. And the development and deployment of New Technologies, such as wildfire sensors that enable early ignition detection (gases and particulates) and fire monitoring capabilities in real-time and thereby lessoning the loss of human life as a result. Tried-and-true messengers, like National Park rangers and the iconic Smokey the Bear, still service the cause for recognizing and reducing the thoughtless ineptitude of man-made fires.
And not stopping all of the fires, all of the time. The realization that some fires are needed, and must burn in order to do their job, and allow for a new forest to grow in the old one’s place.
In other words, a Gift of the Gods. To be used (or not) by Humanity.
