#ashtext

so, first of all: fire on the landscape is both a natural phenomenon and a tool humans have been using for millennia. if you've ever read about the unnaturally wide and clear forests that europeans found when they first landed in new england ? those were created in part by indigenous people setting fires, usually every spring and fall.

fire is terrifyingly destructive but has enormous ecological benefit. fire has enormous ecological benefit but is terrifyingly destructive. the continental united states and canada have been dealing with the consequences of extreme fire suppression in both areas. it turns out that if you dont let the small fires burn through and remove fuels every so often, things get very dangerous very quickly when all that fuel goes up at once. it also turns out that a lot of plants (and animals in turn) need fire.

you've probably heard of pinecones that only open when exposed to the kind of heat that wildfires provide, but it's more than that. some plants are what is called 'shade-intolerant': they grow poorly in the shadow of other trees. regular (as in, returns in roughly the same intervals) ground fires can thin out a forest, allowing shade-intolerant plants to thrive. combustion reduces nutrients to easily-absorbed compounds, allowing resprouting plants to be packed full of them. resprouting plants are also really, really good for insects: young green plant growth is much easier to eat than hardened twigs if you're a caterpillar.

the hangman thought here: how does he act on his ecosystem (aew men's division) as fire ? who does his violence remove from the picture ? who is sprouting in the ashes he leaves behind ? who needs to pass through the flame to break into the next stage of their story ?

---

second: the thing that will kill you, as a wildland firefighter, is thinking that you know better. if you do not take fire seriously, if you assume your knowledge will save you, if you dont pay attention to what's happening around you, you are in danger.

tree stumps can continue burning for a long time, down into the root system. if you arent looking where you're going and step on a circle of white ash, it's very possible you will step straight through it into a burning pit. one of my professor's colleagues on their hotshot crew did that once, and got serious burns up to the knee despite their thick leather boots and nomex (fire-resistant) pants.

two of the most infamous tragedy fires of the 20th century, at least for the american fire services, are the mann gulch and storm king fires. mann gulch has a great folk song written about it, from the point of view of wagner dodge, the foreman on the smokejumper crew that had been sent to fight the fire. that crew was caught in, to quote richard c rothermel's paper, a race that couldn't be won. they were running uphill from a fire that was burning through extremely combustible tall grass: dodge only lived by setting an escape fire, which consumed the fuel in a small area before the rest of the inferno could reach him.

the storm king fire (properly the south canyon fire) was a race that could have been won, were it taken seriously from the start. incoming weather pushed a fire into a blowup that accelerated it to an 11mph rate of spread. from fire, by sebastian junger:

the hangman thought here: who thinks they know what they're getting ? who actually does know ? who's looking out for the signs of danger ? who will be able to set an escape fire in time, and who will be willing to give up and run fast enough to save themself ?

---

third, also from sebastian junger, these three quotes: