Several weeks of hot dry weather. Decades of fire suppression in a fire-dependent forest. A long-term drought. Unnaturally dense brush. A lightning strike from a dry thunderstorm. Very low humidity and erratic winds. Any one of these could be a story by itself. But, as John Muir plainly put it, everything is connected. So, when all of these smaller stories got connected the second week of July, a very big story began to unfold. I am now heading up to the place where this connection happened, known as the Mason Gulch Fire burn site.

The fiery connection ignited a flurry of human emotions -- fascination, fear, anger, terror, gratitude -- plus the countless human stories that will be told for decades. And, hopefully, it offered some long-needed education about living in and managing fire-dependent forests. But my goal today is not to consider another human story. I am here to read for myself the first few lines of a brand new story – the story of this land in the aftermath of one of Nature’s most incredible forces – wildfire.

I hike the half-mile to this transformed landscape through dense thickets of Gambel oak, then more open grassy areas, underneath a canopy of mostly ponderosa pines. Everything is green. There is no visual evidence of the fire, so I am following a compass reading determined through referencing a map of the burn area. Before long, the air offers assurance that I am getting closer, as I pick up the strong, unmistakable scent of things that had burned. Many things that had burned, as revealed when I approach the burn site.

Once inside the perimeter of the burn area, black becomes the dominant color. After wandering around a forest of scorched tree skeletons for a while, I am now sitting atop a flat rock large enough to keep me from the charcoal remains of things that were alive and growing just a handful of days ago. And I gaze in awe of the transformation that recently took place here.

Although the landscape is dominated by the black skeletons of ponderosas and oaks, it becomes obvious that the fire did not burn uniformly across the mountainous terrain. There are islands of brown-needled pines. The heat was apparently hot enough to cook the green out of them, but not hot enough to torch them like many of the surrounding black snags. Some trees even show some green amidst the brown, although surrounded by a sea of lifeless remains. In some places, the oaks still cling to brown, fire tinged leaves, and the pines are only superficially burned a few feet up their trunks, their branches alive and well. Such is the nature of wildfire, burning with abandon here, only fingering along the ground there. Looked at broadly, the 11,357-acre burn site is a mosaic of varying burn severity, some areas burned hardly at all, some moderately, others scorched right down to the mineral soil.

The raucous call of a Clark’s nutcracker changes my focus. I add this large jay to the list of birds I’ve already seen or heard here: western wood peewee, Stellar’s jay, northern flicker, hairy woodpecker, broad-tailed hummingbird. The rocks, so much more noticeable and prolific without the green understory to hide them, grab my attention. Mostly white sandstone rocks, some as large as cars, show varying shades of black from the flames that licked their sides. The many cracks, fallen flakes, and broken pieces illustrate that fire should definitely be on the list of forces that break down rocks! I’ve seen many species of ants and spiders busily being alive on this lifeless land that really isn’t so lifeless. Deer tracks punctuate the blackened soil. The story is unfolding.

The rock where I sit has an 8” tall spreading dogbane growing next to it, complete with green leaves and, amazingly, flowers. A small white butterfly flutters from one bloom to another. In some areas, dozens of dogbane plants are sprouting from roots that survived the fiery storm. Oak leaves, some already 6” long, sprout from the barren ground. Even in the places where the fire burned down to bare soil, there are grasses, dogbane, and several other species beginning the process of healing this altered landscape.

Yes, the land says it clearly - wildfires are destructive. Read a little deeper, though, and it also says fires are natural. In fact, fire has been a factor in shaping nearly every plant community in every bioregion in America. However, this fire, burning in a low elevation forest type that hasn’t been allowed to burn in way too long, was so much more destructive than it should have been. The Mason Gulch Fire lasted little more than a week, but the effects of it will be evident for decades, even centuries, on this land. Had fires been allowed to burn every ten years or so in this forest, like they did for thousands of years prior to European settlement, the disturbance would likely have been much lighter. Even so, the land will recover – evidently, the recovery has already begun. The story being told here today on this burn site, less than three weeks after containment, is again captured by the words of Mr. Muir: “By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs – now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life.”

- Dave Van Manen, August 3, 2005