I’m out of breath as I climb the steep hill that leads to the burn site. I haven’t been here since last October with a group of students studying fire ecology. It’s almost two years since I first found my way into the southern portion of the Mason Gulch Burn, guided mainly by the charred smell just a few days after the fire was officially out. Since then, the feet of over 500 students have created enough of a trail that navigating is easy. Several deer have evidently been using the trail since the last group of students was here last fall. Oops, I’ve lost the trail. In spite of all those feet, there’s less trail than I thought.

With most of the climbing behind me, the land has leveled near the burn. No charred smell today as I walk through a forest of ponderosas and green grasses, the last stretch before entering the burn. There is a conspicuous absence of wildflowers in this unburned forest, unlike the first part of the hike, which was a bit more open. I enter an edge area that burned at a low intensity. The green of the grasses is punctuated with flowery color: the blue of low penstemon, pink wild onions, white and yellow fleabane daisies, bright orange wallflowers, and gold golden banner. There’s even an orchid, a red-stemmed spotted coralroot growing next to a lightly charred but still healthy ponderosa. Some of the Gambel oak that was nipped by flames has recovered, sporting many green leaves. Oaks that were hit harder by the fire have new leafy branches growing from their roots, some 4 feet or taller. Several conifer seedlings are poking up here and there.

A western wood peewee’s scratchy song from further into the burn calls me to continue walking. I nearly step on a fox scat. A poke with a stick reveals several small bones. Forest Service data indicate that 68% of the burn was severe, 31% burned moderately, and only 1% was lightly burned.Walking into a section that burned severely is like walking into a wild onion farm in which the farmer let the grasses get out of control. And not only onions and grasses – wallflower, penstemon, milkvetch, senecio, and skullcap are everywhere, with black tree skeletons standing like tall scarecrows. I proceed deeper and find an area with less grass, more exposed soil, and some different flowers, especially scorpion weed. Wooly mullein, considered a noxious weed and found pretty much everywhere in Colorado, is widespread. A few more steps, and dense grasses again dominate with dozens of tall western wallflowers showing off their pretty orange blooms. Ponderosa pine seedlings can be found here and there.

Every ponderosa snag shows evidence of woodpecker activity, exposing brown bark as they chipped away the black, and surprisingly thin, charred veneer. Large white mushrooms appear to be oozing out of several large snags. A few blackened trees have been blown off 15 to 20 feet above the ground. The remains of juniper trees are losing much of their black, becoming the silver sentinels that will remain here for years, witnessing this land continuing its post-fire life.

After exploring for an hour, I find the same white sandstone boulder I sat on when I first visited 23 months ago. I climb up, take an apple out of my pack, and survey what was an inferno, and then a virtual moonscape, in July 2005. Right now, it would be hard to call this a destroyed landscape. From where I sit, a riot of green has taken over this land, interrupted here and there by white rocks and the bright colors of flowering plants. Hundreds of burned snags remind me of the forest that was once here, and the forest that will once again be here, decades from now when the conifer seedlings grow tall.

My focus has been on the ground, where, along with dozens and dozens of plant species, I noticed prolific deer sign. Looking down most of this time, I haven’t seen the many birds that I’ve been hearing – hummingbirds, juncos, woodpeckers, house wrens, spotted towhees. So, my plan is to put the journal away, take out binoculars, and find my way out of here spying some of the bird life that is hanging around the burn. The flames certainly changed this land, but there is no question that this land, two years after the Mason Gulch Fire, is brimming with life.

~ Dave Van Manen
June 12, 2007