It’s a gnarled and tortured form, charred branches angling, leafless, lifeless. These pathetic limbs sway in the afternoon breeze, a trunk protruding from patches of blackened earth, dirt that once fed this wretched remnant of a bush its life.
Ten months have passed since fire swept this valley near Sun Valley, Idaho, choking the sky and ravaging the forest, driving out its wild companions. To the west, higher still in the drainage, are divisions of towering charcoal trunks, rank-and-file monuments to the sheer power of Mother Nature in her rawest of moods.
My attention returns to the bush. It is quite dead, destined for decomposition, but there’s an unmistakable aesthetic to its form. It’s a beauty accentuated by life threading the encircling meadow. Slender blades of Great Basin wild rye grow in twelve-inch-tall clumps. Yellow bunches of arrowleaf balsamroot and purple bluebells crowd this blackened mat of ashen earth. The fire’s evidence is clear, but the beauty in the rebirth is stunning, a resurrection one might not have thought possible having seen the sheer scale of the flames that incinerated this place.
The sun is slanting through an exanimate stand of timber, and my head rises to meet its rays. I shoulder my pack and work my way west toward the heart of the burn, wondering if it’s where I should go.
There’s a nearby creek that twists and tumbles over a rocky bed and smiles into meandering oxbows. The waters play with happy momentum in the waking day, producing syllables that tell subtle secrets if one pauses long enough to hear. The verve surrounding the creek is unmistakable. It feeds sedges and willows, which are growing with more vigor than parts of the valley where water is sparse. But, still, everywhere things are growing. Everywhere there is life. Everywhere it is beautiful, and that beauty is because of the vigor of the growth, but also the contrast in the landscape, simultaneously dead and reborn.
Much of what burned will never live again. The gnarled bush near the canyon’s entrance is forever gone. But the land is resilient, and it flowers still, growing in new ways, in fact invigorated by its own destruction. So on I walk, plodding toward the center, smiling at my purpose and wondering what will become.
© Greg Stahl
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Questions these words might prompt:
- Is it wise to revisit one’s pains? Where is the intersection between the past and future?
- What is the difference between natural destruction and man-inflicted damage, both to the natural world and to the human psyche?
- Is there any difference between the health of the human psyche and the health of the natural world? In the quest for a positive, forward-thinking frame of reference, might it be wise to examine what happened so that we might learn how not to repeat it? Isn’t this the same question, whether asking about human psychology or environmental integrity?
- And, with the aforementioned question, is there a difference between the natural order of things (i.e. lightning-caused wildfire) and the crimes man commits against nature (i.e. landscape scarring in the form of massive strip mines or unneeded dams)?
there are forests of tree species out west that do not only tolerate fire, but need it. they’ve evolved to require the intense heat to open their cones to allow their seeds the liberty to find ground and grow. fire, and how to deal with it, can be inflamatory. =) after all, the landscape needs it, and has adapted to regular flame on a smaller scale. but humans have interjected themselves into the landscape now, and fire exclusion, livestock grazing, and logging have changed the way the forest lives. now, fires don’t sweep through just a little bit – they become raging infernos.
my thoughts on some of your questions are this: if you take only a moment after the flames have swept through and try to assay the damage, all you’ll see is destruction. if you take multiple seasons of growing and fire and watch what happens with the pioneer species that prepare the landscape for the larger, slower-growing, shade-loving species, you understand that seasons are appropriate and healthy. whether in the moment they seem to stand for growth or death.
how human destruction of the landscape fits in, though, i can’t wrap my head around. probably because we haven’t had a long enough season yet to see visible evidence of the earth’s recovery on a large scale.
going back to your questions about psychology – perhaps an acknowledgement of our pains is necessary in order to not re-create a combustible scenario in the future. we carry with us the lessons learned in pain and try to grow toward a healthier space. two of the greatest beautiful qualities ((Qualities!) of both the human spirit and this earth’s life are the quality of resilience working alongside the ability to adapt. if you take these thoughts and relate them to the idea of perspective to fit all the pieces in place, it’s no wonder that those of us who live the longest tend to have the grandest view on all the seasons of life and how they cycle. what do they say? youth is wasted on the young?
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