HERE and THERE: a FIRE SURVEY to the Last Smoke

HERE AND THERE: A FIRE SURVEY To the Last Smoke . Volume , Florida: A Fire Survey Volume , California: A Fire Survey Volume , e Northern Rockies: A Fire Survey Volume , e Southwest: A Fire Survey Volume , e Great Plains: A Fire Survey Volume , e Interior West: A Fire Survey Volume , e Northeast: A Fire Survey Volume , Slopovers: Fire Surveys of the Mid- American Oak Woodlands, Paci c Northwest, and Alaska Volume , Here and ere: A Fire Survey STEPHEN J. PYNE HERE AND THERE A Fire Survey e University of Arizona Press www .uapress .arizona .edu © by e Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published ISBN- : - - - - (paper) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Cover art: Lesnoi pozhar by A. K. Denisov- Uralsky [detail] Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data are available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America ♾ is paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z.- (Permanence of Paper). To Sonja old ame, eternal ame CONTENTS Series Preface: To the Last Smoke ix Preface to Volume xi Acknowledgments xiii FIRE NEAR Our Coming Fire Age: A Prolegomenon Coming to a Forest Near You Science Supplies the Solution The Red Prescribed Longleaf Cockaded Wire Grass Burning Refuge Slouching Toward Gatlinburg FIRE SIDEWAYS An Endangered Process Act Subprime Fires: A Socratic Tutorial Spotting Pack Rats Fire Scars Smokey’s Cubs The Cash- Value of Fire History From Story to History VIII CONTENTS Prometheus Shrugged The American Fire Community’s Euro Moment The Wrath of Kuhn Untamed Art FIRE FAR East of the Wind and West of the Rain Strabrechtse Heide In the Line of Fire Portal to the Pyrocene Burning Ban A Journey to the Source Note on Sources Notes Index SERIES PREFACE To the Last Smoke HEN I DETERMINED to write the «re history of America in recent times, I conceived the project in two voices. One was W the narrative voice of a play- by- play announcer. Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America would relate what happened, when, where, and to and by whom. Because of its scope it pivoted around ideas and institutions, and its major characters were «res or «re seasons. It viewed the American «re scene from the perspective of a surveillance satellite. e other voice was that of a color commentator. I called it To the Last Smoke, and it would poke around in the pixels and polygons of particular practices, places, and persons. My original belief was that it would assume the form of an anthology of essays and would match the narrative play- by- play in bulk. But that didn’t happen. Instead the essays proliferated and began to self- organize by regions. I began with the major hearths of American «re, where a «re culture gave a distinctive hue to «re practices. at pointed to Florida, California, and the Northern Rockies, and to that oft- overlooked hearth around the Flint Hills of the Great Plains. I added the Southwest because that was the region I knew best. e interior West beckoned because I thought I knew its central theme and wanted to learn more about its margins. Alaska boasted its own regional subculture. en there were stray essays that needed to be corralled into a volume, and there were all those relevant regions that needed at least token treatment. Some, like the Lake States X SERIES PREFACE and Northeast, no longer commanded the national scene as they once had, but their stories were interesting and needed recording, or, like the Paci«c Northwest or central oak woodlands, spoke to the evolution of «re’s American century in a new way. I would include as many as possible into a grand suite of short books. My original title now referred to that suite, not to a single volume, but I kept it because it seemed appropriate and because it resonated with my own relationship to «re. I began my career as a smokechaser on the North Rim of Grand Canyon in . at was the last year the National Park Service hewed to the a.m. policy and we rookies were enjoined to stay with every «re until “the last smoke” was out. By the time the series appears, years will have passed since that inaugural summer. I no longer «ght «re; I long ago traded in my pulaski for a pencil. But I have contin- ued to engage it with mind and heart, and this unique survey of regional pyrogeography is my way of staying with it to the end. Funding for the project came from the U.S. Forest Service, Depart- ment of the Interior, and Joint Fire Science Program. I’m grateful to them all for their support. e University of Arizona Press deserves praise as well as thanks for seeing the resulting texts into print. And I’d like to acknowledge Kerry Smith for his meticulous copyediting, which has once again saved me from my worst grammatical self. PREFACE TO VOLUME OST OF THESE ESSAYS grew out of travels while I researched what became Between Two Fires and the other volumes of To M the Last Smoke. Not everything I found and learned «t into a regional framework because some topics were grounded in ideas or disci- plines, not places. A few essays resulted from conferences or workshops, or spun o¹ from «eld trips or stray thoughts. A handful found publication in specialized journals or as op- ed pieces not likely to be read by the «re community. A few were written before this speci«c project and are dated in their newsiness, but I intended the whole series to serve as a cross sec- tion of the American «re scene as viewed by a consistent voice and vision, and felt they contributed. e group under “Fire Far” describes scenes outside the United States. ey are gathered here because I «nd that we know things by context, by contrast and comparison, and because, in my mind, these pieces are the «nal surge of a wave train that began nearly a decade ago and went as far inland as my energies and talents allowed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OST OF THESE ESSAYS in this book, though not all, were written while I was researching a «re history of the United States M with funding from the U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and Joint Fire Science Program. I’m grateful for their support. e following essays were «rst published in some form as indicated: “e Cash- Value of Fire History: An Apologia,” in Proceedings, rd Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference, International Association of Wildland Fire (October ), – . “Untamed Art,” Forest History Today (Fall ), – . “Coming to a Forest Near You,” as “Box and Burn: e New Reality of Western Fire,” Slate ( July , ), http:// www .slate .com /articles /technology /future _tense / / /box _and _burn _the _future _of _u _s _wild«re _policy .html. “East of the Wind and West of the Rain,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (Winter ). “e Wrath of Kuhn” as “Problems, Paradoxes, Paradigms: Triangulat- ing Fire Research,” International Journal of Wildland Fire (), – . “Slouching Toward Gatlinburg,” as “What the East Can Learn from the West in Fire«ghting,” History News Network (December , ), http:// historynewsnetwork .org /article / . XIV SERIES PREFACE “Portal to the Pyrocene,” as “Welcome to the Pyrocene,” Slate (May , ), http:// www .slate .com /articles /technology /future _tense / / /the _fort _mcmurray _«re _climate _change _and _our _fossil _fuel _powered _society .html. “Smokey’s Cubs,” History News Network (September , ), http:// historynewsnetwork .org /article / . “In the Line of Fire: An Overview of Wild«re in Korea,” Forest History Today (Spring/Fall ), – . “Burning Ban¹,” ISLE . (Summer ), – . HERE AND THERE: A FIRE SURVEY FIRE NEAR CACHE OF ESSAYS that speak to «re in the American scene, though not grounded in any of the regions that To the Last Smoke A has surveyed. Some are themes, some are topics, a few are cat- egorical orphans. But the American «re scene has ever resisted simple pigeonholing. OUR COMING FIRE AGE A Prolegomenon In I gave a TED talk on “Fire, a Biography.” I distilled the whole history of re into minutes. Here, I allow myself some more words and space for a useful digression or two. What follows is a thumbnail history of re on Earth. T NIGHT, VIEWED FROM SPACE, the cluster of lights looks like a supernova erupting in North Dakota. e lights are as distinctive A a feature of night- time North America as the glaring swathe of the northeast megalopolis. Less dense than those of Chicago, as expansive as those of Greater Atlanta, more coherent than the scattershot of illu- minations that characterizes the Midwest and the South, the exploding array of lights de«ne both a geographic patch and a distinctive era of Earth’s history. Nearly all the evening lights across the United States are electrical. But the constellation above North Dakota is made up of gas ¾ares. Viewed up close, they resemble monstrous Bunsen burners, combusting excess natural gas released from fracking the Bakken shale. In the ¾ares burned nearly a third of the fracked gas. ey constitute one of the most distinctive features of the U.S. nightscape. We might call them the constellation Bakken. While the ¾ares rise upward, the «re front is actually burning down- ward into the outgassing drill holes as surely as a candle ¾ame burns down its tallow stalk. e ¾ames are descending as rapidly as their fuels are rising. ey are burning through deep time, combusting lithic landscapes 6 FIRE N EAR from the geologic past and releasing their e¿uent into a geologic future.

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