About The Author:
Stephen J. Pyne spent 15 summers on the fire crew at the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon.
Burning out along the head of the fire is touchy. Trees torch, and we
finesse the burnout by backing the fire against strong, dry winds.
Several spot fires flare up, but at last we tie our lines together. We
let our backfire and the wildfire bum into each other and watch for new
spots. When the two fires meet, there is a rush of wind. The Kid finds
one spot, and Uncle Jimmy another. Yet we are winning. Then we hear the
roar.
The air tanker, a B-17-not expected for another hour: it appears that BIFC
dispatchers have forgotten again that Arizona stays on mountain standard
time-is sighted through the trees. We have no communications with it
whatsoever. We expect that it will make a dry run, establish contact, then
return for a precision drop. Instead, the slurry spills out of the
fuselage, and we hit the ground. The retardant atomizes and settles over
the fire in a pink fog. It knocks out our backfire. Then, as suddenly as
it appeared, the plane vanishes. It is too late for another drop today,
and the plane heads for Cedar City.
We improve our lines, complete some burnout, and note danger spots. There
are a couple of snags on the northeast comer that are too broken to fell
safely. The BI arrives, and we send him to where he can watch the burning
snags. Finally we break for dinner. The fire is contained. We estimate its
size at sixty to seventy acres; the perimeter fire line is more than a
mile long.
Most of the reserves want to return to the Area. Stay for a couple more
hours, I plead, then we will release you. Reluctantly they agree. The
Forest Service wants to remain as long as possible. Someone remembers the
BI, and we find him asleep by the snags and send him home with the
reserves. As regulars, of course, we will remain all night-some on patrol,
the rest to sleep. Around midnight we release the Forest Service.
For the next three days we mop up the Sublime fire. For a while we think
we have discovered a way to get pumpers to the fire line, but we dent one
vehicle and abandon the scheme. Instead, we lay hose up the ridge from the
Sublime Road. We request reserves to assist with mop-up-so vast is the
fire-and we get some. There is even a hot meal from the Lodge. Each night
after the first we leave a couple of Long shots on the fire, while the
rest of us return to the Area. Our exhilaration fades. We are exhausted;
our equipment is a mess; the cache is almost unusable; one slip-on is
dented, and the other disabled; we are down to two cases of C rations. But
we need only one more day to finish the Sublime fire and wrap up the
season. The fire and accident reports should keep us busy for the rest of
the month.
Uncle Jimmy reminds us that' we have yet to recheck the old fires. But we
are thinking about big paychecks and big replacement orders. The fire will
allow us to restock the cache over the winter. It is time to think beyond
this season.
MOPPING UP: OR, TELL ME AGAIN WHEN IT Is REALLY OVER
Uncle Jimmy has a fedco, and Eric a shovel. Eric digs up a chunk of duff,
and Uncle Jimmy sprays it, while Eric flips the duff over, chops it into
pieces, and mixes it with dirt. Then he dips up another chunk, and Uncle
Jimmy sprays that. Wil has only a shovel. He pushes it into the ground
with his boot-good, well-drained soil here-bends over to lift up the
shovel head, turns it over, and chops with it as though he were churning
butter. A small smoke spirals upward from the pile. He repeats his
actions, then he digs the shovel into the ground exactly adjacent to it
and begins allover again. Tim attempts, with negligible success, to do the
same thing with a pulaski, using the grub end to lift and the ax and grub
ends alternately to chop and stir. With shovels Duane and I scrape
smoldering leaders of fire from unburned duff-in effect, installing scores
of small, internal firelines within the general perimeter of the fire. The
smoldering sections are piled, then spaded into holes. "Dirt," Wil yells,
"is better than water." Uncle Jimmy answers back that "water is better
than dirt." But Dana can stand no more of either. With a shout he masses a
hundred square feet of smoking duff into a great mound and ignites the
pile with a fusee. The pile refuses to flame. Instead, it billows in great
puffs of acrid smoke that spread over the fire like smog.
The hardest part of controlling a snag fire is finding it, but the hardest
part of suppressing a fire is mopping it up. It is one thing to know how
to get to a fire, and something else to know how and when to leave it.
Only a small fraction of a fire bums within the flaming front; most of a
forest's fuels are consumed by a disorganized medley of flaming and
smoldering combustion after the front has passed. A fire is not out until
the fire in the duff is out. It is not a lesson anyone wants to hear, and
one only a small minority learn.
There are some places where the surface fuels are light and burnout is
more or less complete; grass and brush are like this. Almost universally,
however, the North Rim has a heavy mat of semidecomposed humus, fresh
needles, and windfallen branches, even whole trees that can bum for days.
There are places, too, where standards for mop-up are lax, where the dull,
meticulous labors of mopping up acres of smokes are superseded by a
loosely conducted "patrol." The South Rim favors this approach and flaunts
it before North Rimmers. But the consequences of leaving unburned fuels
and pockets of combustion untouched are generally unpleasant. It may mean
continual observation or incessant, casual mop-up for a crew; it may mean
that those who return to inspect the fire must mop up for those who first
abandoned it; or it may mean that the fire flares up or even escapes. On
the North Rim our standards are simple: we mop up to the last smoke, and
we return twenty-four hours after the last smoke to check the bum before
officially calling the fire out.
As a result, we know the duff better than any other part of the Rim
forest. The humid understory of the spruce-fir forest has the worst duff.
Short needles refuse to fluff into deep, porous fuelbeds so that sustained
flaming combustion is replaced by a malingering, creeping process of
glowing combustion. Recently cast needles are covered with a cobweb of
fine branches. Underneath they do not rest upon mineral soil but
intercalate with rocks and the stringy lignin residue of largely
decomposed trees; organic soil replaces mineral soil. Fires tend to be
large in area and low in intensity-a hundred square feet of flame and four
acres of mop-up. The real fuelbed in spruce-fir is the tree canopy, and
high-intensity fires are invariably crown fires. Without copious
quantities of water, mop-up in spruce-fire, or in most mixed conifer, is
interminable.
By contrast, ponderosa pine has deeper, more sharply defined fuelbeds of
long needles that support flaming combustion. The deep duff, moreover, is
layered. The boundary between duff and mineral soil is sometimes sharply
drawn, but above the soil there is a shallow layer of finely ground
needles, an organic powder that can, improbably, carry glowing combustion.
Then come several layers of needles, progressively decomposing and
compacting like the transformation of snow into firn. Near the surface,
small branches interweave with the duff, and on the surface are windfall
and� fresh needle cast. Each of these layers has a different fuel
moisture, and each may bum out of sync with the others. The ways in which
wet and dry fuels may combine to bum are endless. Only during intense
droughts is the entire duff equally dry.
There are many techniques for extinguishing all smokes, but a good
strategy is to begin with the large fuels and work down. Drop any burning
snags and protect dead, as-yet-unburned snags by scraping a fireline
around them. Break up the big burning logs into small pieces, chop out
fire and embers, cool each piece with dirt or water, and toss it into a
cleared zone, a boneyard. That sweeps the fire of everything but duff.
Isolate the burned from the unburned duff. Then mix the burned duff with
equal parts of dirt, water, and sweat. Spade it over, spray it, dump,
chop, and mix; then begin again, and again. Divide the fire into sectors,
and force crewmen to stay in their sector until every smoke is
extinguished. For prolonged mop-up, bring in extra crewmen. Wait twenty
minutes from the last smoke until you abandon the fire. 'Typically, some
canteens or a fedco and a few handtools are left behind. Then return
twenty-four hours later to inspect the bum, remove the remaining tools,
and pull the flagging. When you return, write up the fire report: draw a
map, code the fire behavior data, narrate the events. The fire is not over
until its report had been filed. The pen is mightier than the pulaski.
In practice, everyone has his own favorite technique. The simplest and
most direct approach is usually, in the long run, the surest. But one way
or another, mop-up has to be done. That may take a long time. It takes
patience to outwait fire. Duff is deep and complex, like memory. You just
can't abandon a fire after hot-spotting or lining it. Worst of all is to
bury it. Better to let a fire flame on and watch it in casual patrol, or
indifferently tinker with this smoking duff pile or that, than to bury it
and leave. A fire can smolder under dirt or retardant or wet needles for
days. It can smolder for years.
Dana, Eric, Duane, Tim, Wil, Uncle Jimmy, and I have been mopping up for
three days now, and each day has been slower than the last. Rather than
fall back on basics, we are inspired by the tedium into innovations in the
theory and practice of mopup. We are becoming smoke-happy. When we close
our eyes, we see tiny spirals of smoke. There are smokes everywhere; they
emanate from tree trunks; they appear in our firepacks, sleeping bags,
pumpers; they spiral insidiously out of every tiny mound of needles. We
are haunted by infinitesimal smokes for which there is no escape and no
limit.
Dana pounds his smoking mound with a shovel, and Eric joins him, while
both scream incoherently. Uncle Jimmy's fedco leaks so badly his pants are
soaked and become caked with ash, but when he looks down at his boots, he
thinks he can see small smokes emerging from the eyelets. Wil sits down at
the boneyard and stares toward the sun. If there are smokes in his sector
they will catch the light and be quickly apparent. One rises fro~ the
rotted log; another appears in a small hole where he had stirred dirt and
duff. He sighs and drags himself to his feet. That night, as we bed down,
the stars appear like white embers in a cosmic duff.
Dana is sure he sees a smoke emerging from Cassiopeia. This should be our
last day on the Sublime fire. Some pockets of duff remain on the far side,
but with extra hose we hope to get close enough at least to fill up fedcos
from the pumper without the half hour walk that has crippled us so far.
Then the Park dispatcher reports that Scenic Airlines has sighted a smoke
near Swamp Point. It seems impossible. Its location is uncannily close to
the site of the Back fire.
Before we abandon the Sublime fire completely, we request that two
reserves be sent out to watch; then we take the pumpers up the Sublzme
Road to W-4 and onto the Swamp Point road; we request Forest Service
assistance; we order an air tanker; and we suggest to the BI-then, as
always, back in the Area-that he order a hot meal from the Lodge. When we
stop, our vehicles are next to the flagging of the Back fire, and the
bearing that Recon I gives us to the Swamp fire is so close to the old
route that we decide to follow the flags in. The Swamp fire is, in fact,
exactly adjacent to the Back fire. A reburn or an independent start-we
can't say. There is too much fire on the scene to worry at present about
causes. Dispatch informs us that a C-119J will arrive within thirty
minutes.
With saws we clear away a swath ahead of the active north flank-a volatile
medley of snags, heavy fir reproduction, thick needles, and downed
logs-then wait for the tanker. I tell the pilot to split his loadfour
ways, one drop to each side of the fire. Then we back well off. After each
load I rush in, assess the accuracy of the drop, inform the pilot where I
want the next, and retreat. Each drop is exactly on target. The fire is
contained. The slurry and heavy fuels wil make for messy mop-up, but we
are too fatigued-too high on adrenaline and momentum-to care much about
the next day or even the coming night. It is enough that the fire is
stopped. Two Forest Service engine crews arrive, and we cut line together.
Before darkness deepens further,. we drop a few snags and buck up some
burning logs near the lme. Tom locates some large pockets of soil along
the fireline, and we excavate them for dirt and recycle them as boneyards.
Several of the holes are knee-deep.
Then we retire to our packs-what passes for a fire campand to some food.
There isn't much. We have a few spare cans of crackers and miscellaneous
fruitcakes and nut rolls. The Forest Service crews share their rations,
and we promise them a hot meal later. It has been a crazy, extraordinary
bust, and we have ~one far beyond our supplies, beyond what any of us has
expenenced before, beyond what any of us could have believed possible. In
our exhaustion we begin to believe that we can go on-that we can
extemporize-forever.
The Forest crews want to know more about the bust. Nothing so extensive
has occurred in the Forest. Uncle Jimmy assumes patrol duties around the
fireline. The conversation soon deteriorates into BI stories. We forget,
for an instant about the smoke in our headlamps, the cold wind and our
aching, lifeless legs. The Forest crews cannot get enough, and they
contribute some new stories. Neither side will concede the last word, so
the pace of outrageous stories accelerates. In the distance we hear the
scrape of tools as Uncle Ji11JfflY methodically digs in one of the
boneyards and throws dirt on a burning limb. The Forest crews want to know
how Big Bob could have become an FMO, how the Park plans to build a future
fire program. Fossey tells them the future can take care of itself and
proceeds with another BI story. The laughter is infectious. Then we hear
footsteps and see headlamps, and out of the smoke step the BI and a
maintenance than with trays of hot food. Embarrassment hangs over the
scene like smoke trapped under a morning inversion. "Thanks," Duane says
meekly. The BI has already eaten, of course, so we suggest to him that he
patrol the fireline. "Sure," he nods, his lower lip curled. "Right away. "
The food slacks our hunger, but not our sense of guilt. A few minutes
later, some twenty yards away, ~e see the BI's headlamp disappear,
accompanied by a shout, into one of the boneyard holes in the fireline. He
never returns to camp.
There is nothing left but tedious mop-up, brutalizing in its simplicity,
and it is pointless to keep a full crew all night. Without water, mop-up
will be difficult, and this time we will have to stay with the fire to the
last smoke. Yet we also need to rework the cache and recheck the other
fires. All we require tonight is for someone to stay with the Swamp fire.
Uncle Jimmy reappears and promptly volunteers.
He is the oldest of the Longshots and the least known beyond his life on
the Rim. Wiry, indefatigable, compulsively enthusiastic, Uncle Jimmy seems
to be in a state of suspended animation, growing older without aging. He
is excitable and meticulous, ruthless in exercise, a good Longshot. He
despises Big Bob. If he has plans for the winter, he has kept them to
himself. He has told The Kid something about traveling around and maybe
working part-time on the Forest and maybe learning a trade like carpentry.
He once confided to Duane that he might have been better off to stay with
the Army (he was a paratrooper), that his sergeant had told him he would
never make it in civilian life. He was the first recruit this season,
arriving in April, he will probably hang on as long as the fire account
holds out this fall, and he has indicated that he can report next spring
as soon as we can pay. Now he appears before us like some kind of fire
gnome-haloed by a week ~ growth of beard grimy with ash and dirt, thick
stringers of black hair tied with a bandanna around his forehead, bright
eyes in a gaunt face. He has a sad, fanatical look. Like most of us, Uncle
Jimmy does not want the bust to end. Unlike many, he cannot afford to have
it end.
It is decided that the rest of us will retire to the Area, put the
slip-ons and our gear in shape, and return to the Swamp fire in the
morning. Even if we rise early, however, so many things need , to be
reconditioned and so much time must be expended in the drive that we
probably won't reappear until midmorning or later. That bothers Uncle
Jimmy not in the slightest. He is poor with reports but good in the field.
He obliterates a fire with meticulous attention, until nothing is left,
because he knows there will always be-there have to be-more fires, another
season. Besides, I remember, tomorrow is his lieu day. Overtime. The
longer our delay, the larger his paycheck. When we leave we see Uncle
Jimmy scrounging through the campsite, bustling like a shrew, hoarding
unused ration cans.
We reach the fire cache shortly before midnight. For the next two days we
recheck old fires and continue to dry-mop at Swamp. The days shorten and
the nights turn cold with frost. The bust is over.
there is enough daylight left to drive to Sublime and watch the sunset.
"Oh, hell," says Donnie. "Let's do it. Our time." The afternoon clouds are
breaking up, and a twilight wedge, still large and diffuse, begins to take
shape. The wedge is more distinct in the autumn than in the summer because
the air is cooler and more stable, and the refracted light is broken into
strata. Our eyes rove restlessly over the panorama. Too often our view of
sunsets away from the Area is compromised by our need to exploit every
minute of sunlight to locate a fire or fell a snag-everything is refracted
through the prism of fire. But now the fires are extinguished. Now we have
the time to watch.
It is a complex and dynamic scene. The sunset is doubled: there is one to
the east, with the sun, and one to the west, against it. Their effects are
utterly different. One accents Canyon and light; the other, shadow and
sky. The drama repeats daily, with the timeless play of dusty pale light
on butte and mesa and gorge, with shadows washing through the Canyon like
a tide. The rocks dull in intensity and brighten in color. The sky
condenses from diffuse pastels into a brilliant wedge, compressed by an
encroaching spectrum of blues-light blue at the horizon, and above that an
immensely soothing royal blue, and finally a navy blue salted with early
stars. Distant mountains are silhouetted in lavender, then blue.
We study both views, looking equally to past and to future. It is easier,
however, to look back on a season, when everything that must happen has
happened, than to stare at the sunlight with only hope to shield the eyes,
and increasingly we look back. The Canyon fades before a murky, indistinct
grey-the first in a sequence of shadow landscapes. Shadows sweep over the
Canyon in wave upon wave, each layer darker than the last, until the gorge
is swallowed in blackness, and the final drama transfers to the sky. The
darkness grows; the wedge shrinks. Orange fades to lemon along the
sharpened horizon, and as the sun meets horizon, it flares defiantly into
orange and blood red, like a muted fire, before vanishing.
Yet there is more. There is not one process at work but twonot only the
tidal sunset but the breakup of a storm. Light plays not just, as with the
sunset, against rock sculptures-immobile, the dynamism of the scene set by
the sinking, refracting lightsit plays also against the clouds. Here they
tower into pinks and magentas, there they furrow into purples, blues,
yellows, and greys, and everywhere virga shimmers downward like colored
veils. Sunset and storm combine into a fugue of colors and shapes and
motions. The storm breaks apart, the clouds shred and darken into black
ink spots that interrupt and silhouette the enveloping twilight wedge
before they shrivel away with the dying sun ..
It is the supreme Canyon spectacle. Neither sunset nor storm alone but
their interplay makes the scene Sublime; the Grand Ensemble as Dutton
called it, is put into complex motion. It could only be improved with a
little smoke. It is an attribute of wood smoke that the bulk of its
particulates have diameters roughly comparable with the wavelengths of
white light. In daylight smoke can obscure and lessen Canyon scenery. But
at sunset, when the particulates magnify and scatter the refraction of
sunlight, the scene is dramatically enhanced. Smoke intensifies the color
and highlights the texture of sky and earth. Add a little fire and the
scene could be not merely viewed but lived.
Yet the power of the view resides equally in the viewer. The Point
captures two analogous motions in the lives of its observers-one seasonal
and one secular. The experience is not just of a place or a time or an
event but of the whole lot in a crazy, incongruous mix. It is the North
Rim and youth and fire. It IS falling trees and hot-spotting and growing
up and SWFFs and walking through blue night winds and flaming trees and C
rations and moonlight on Canyon clouds. It IS Saddle Mountain and Powell
and The Dragon and Walhalla. It is the endlessly recycled summers and the
irreversible storm of youth in dynamic counterpoint. It is fire on the
Rim.
A few flakes of ink-black cloud drift by. The darkness arcs downward;
stars and moon create a new sky; moonlight reverses the pattern of light
and shadow. Warm winds from the Canyon mix with cool air from the Plateau.
The future has become past. Suddenly we feel the cold. The Point is wholly
exposed. From everywhere there is the sound of distant, rushing winds.
WALHALLA
INDIAN SUMMER ERODES INTO THE BLUSTERY EDGE OF WINTER. The sun creeps low
through trees and sets hastily across towering rims. It is dry enough and
windy enough for fires, but the night suppresses them with cold. The smell
of snow replaces the smell of smoke.
The landscape takes on a used, shabby appearance. Pines become brownish
and shed large portions of needles. Spruce and fir seem endlessly dreary.
Aspen alone give fire to the scene. Day by day their display of colors
evolves as leaves change from a shiny to a flat green, then to a lime,
then to fluorescent yellow and peach, with scattered flecks of
international orange. In a deciduous forest the colors would be considered
modest, and their variety slight, but here they introduce a stunning
contrast. Hillsides of drab spruce become speckled with fluffy yellows and
stabbing oranges, set against yellow-brown meadows and a royal blue sky.
In places-the sites of old, intense fires-aspen dominate the forest, and
the hillsides smolder with color. By the end of September the display is
at its climax. After that, although new leaves enter the display, old ones
fall away completely. By October the forest is littered with aspen leaves
tumbling like gold coins before the wind. There is decay everywhere. The
Rim, preparing for snow, returns to the raw appearance of spring; fallen
leaves become grey and mottled like soot.
The Area, too, empties of summer life. After Labor Day visitation falls
off, and by October even trailer caravans of seniors are gone. The store,
the Lodge, the entrance station, the campground-all shut down. Skid Row is
but half occupied. Most of the fire crew have left. Those who remain begin
the workday huddled around the heater in the Fire Pit with steaming coffee
cups in hand, then reverse the processes by which the fire cache was
opened. Tools, batteries, and rations are stored in the root cellar;
slip-on units are removed from pumpers, drained, and pickled; crewmen
check out. Still, there are many odd jobs, and the days have a quiet
bustle.
The fires, too, are different in character-no longer wild but scheduled.
Our big project is to haul firewood for the Office and select ranger
fireplaces. It is too cold now for evening campfires, and we crowd around
oil heaters instead; even the fires are moving indoors. The exception is
prescribed bums. The fall-late September, early October-is prime season
for controlled burning. But while prescribed fires give a flush of color
and activity, they cannot reverse the inexorable approach of winter.
Almost by definition scheduled burning occurs outside the natural fire
season. It cannot be sustained indefinitely. Fire season must end.
High clouds make the sky ashen grey. Mice return to the cabins. Coyotes
slink around the Area at dawn and dusk. Ravens gurgle loudly in the
crystalline air, and owls cry in eerie harmony with the night wind.
It is early and cool when we gather at the site. A party of
administrators-the Park's tribal elders-will arrive from the South Rim by
helicopter later. We pace around our firelines, inspect the pumpers, and
set up a small blackboard easel. Benson, the research biologist, cynically
suggests that we ought to hang bunting and parade past a reviewing stand.
It is his show, however; we are eager for fire of any kind, curious about
how the prescribed bum will evolve and happy to participate in anything
that the Park apparently values.
The plot encompasses a hectare of ponderosa forest along the Sublime Road,
one of a series of bums projected under an expensive research program
aimed at reintroducing fire to the North Rim. Earlier in the summer we cut
fireline-SWFFs to one side, FCAs to the other in jeering rivalry. The plot
sits within a small swale, and because of the open forest, you can see
from one line to another. The fireline has a somewhat larger perimeter
than _ the plot, and we have strengthened it by dropping a few snags and
encircling a couple of others with bare soil. It is an interesting
exercise. In some respects the problems of ignition and control are
identical to controlling a wildfire; in important ways,
however, they differ. Above all, the two fires differ in their politics.
We commence firing shortly after 0800 hour!!. Benson refuses to enter into
any "management decisions. " He is there only to research, he reiterates.
Anything we do is equally useful to him; he is a scientist; and this is an
operational matter. We ignite the whole plot more or less simultaneously.
There is not much to see at first. Fusees do not put down a lot of fire.
Each spot requires time to build up, and more time must pass before the
whole suite of spot fires merges. After the first flush of curiosity, both
firing and control crews become bored. The morning is cool, the fine fuels
unrecovered from the evening rise in relative humidity. This we sense and
observe, but no one has calculated the fire-danger rating for the site
because Benson has chosen to ignore the national rating systems for a
multiple regression formula of his own devising-referred to as a "Y value
"-which he has not bothered to explain to any of us. Our job is not to
understand the fire but to start it and keep it from spreading beyond our
prepared firelines.
Within an hour the fire builds up and coalesces into pockets of intense
burning. A few trees torch. An immense green ponderosa acquires and holds
fire in its crown. It becomes necessary to start up the pumpers and hose
down portions of the perimeter. The Park elders and Benson retire up the
ridge and out of the smoke. The fire in the big pine will not go out, so
we fell it outside the line, against its lean. The tree costs us nearly a
dozen wooden wedges; the smoke is acrid and dense, and our noses run with
thick black mucus. Alston points out that we will not receive a penny of
hazard pay for this because, technically, the fire had been controlled
from the onset. By noon the Park elders and Benson have departed. The
major thermal pulse of the fire is spent. Plenty of flame and smoke
persist, but not as a dynamic system. Only the fire crew remains to watch.
Originally we planned to return day after day until the fire naturally
extinguished itself. But when do you leave such a fire? Who decides it is
"out"? What is the equivalent of mop-up? There is no one to answer such
questions, and it becomes apparent that patrol will require weeks. The bum
is pronounced a great success-and as a political statement it is. Not a
word is ever published, yet it helps publicize a major restructuring of
Park fire policy and programs. Subsequent patrol is nominal, and we spend
most of our lunch periods at Point Sublime. The research program has three
additional sites along the Sublime Road, each larger than Site A. The
research will continue for many years.
EVALUATING THE SEASON: WHAT DONNIE DOESN'T SAY
Donnie hands over a sheath of forms and asks, "What next?" I look through
the checklist. Close of business-COB-is our last official act as Park
seasonals, and It IS closely monitored. Every stage is prescribed. The
fiscal office double-checks that there are no outstanding charges against
the terminating employee, and it is our last chance to correct errors in
overtime, hazard pay, holiday pay, or annual leave. Maintenance inspects
quarters. Property ensures that each article of government equipment is
returned, from driver's license to compass to radIO to keys, though
somehow or other a fire shirt usually seems to escape. The essence of the
entire process, however, IS the evaluation of seasonal performance, which
determines whether the employee will be granted preferential hiring for
the next year.
The review is designed to create the impression of equality. The Park
evaluates the seasonal, and the seasonal is allowed comments in return.
There should be no violation of due process or unjust discrimination. The
reality is more complex. The Park so controls the process that the
seasonal is nothing more than a migrant worker-in theory, seasonal
employees are entirely dispensable and interchangeable. In reality, the
Park cannot function well without experienced seasonals, so that the.
seasonal needs to be allowed to retiring and the Park needs to have him or
her return. At one time seasonal employment was a kind of farm system for
the Park Service by which prospective applicants would be evaluated for
provisional acceptance into permanent ranks. This equilibrium is upset by
the simultaneous advent of federal hiring freezes, the politics of
affirmative action, and the sheer numbers of the baby boom ..
Returning seasonals become a burden on the Park Service.
There are too many applicants and not enough Jobs, and recidivist
seasonals lessen the size of the annual pool open to new hires. The Park
Service removes the initial screening process from the parks and creates a
national office to review applications. It also instigates a new category
on the seasonal evaluation form (10-180)- "recommended for rehire m
competition which, in theory, means that the seasonal is neither preferred
nor discriminated against but must take his or her chances equally with
the other applicants in next year's job lottery. The Park Service also
dismisses any implied claim or right inherent in a "highly recommended"
evaluation. It insists that it can select from the applicant pool whomever
it wants for whatever reasons. What was designed as a means to limit
political patronage is thus retrofitted to support a different form of
preference and the reformation in fire policy is matched by a reformation
in employment policy. Once, when Captain Zero returns to the North Rim
from his promoted post in the Western Regional Office, he announces
baldly, grandly that the Park Service does not plan to hire any more white
males as ermanents in the foreseeable future. The seasonal evaluation form
becomes unbearably complex, all for the unstated purpose of encouraging
fewer rehires. The uncertainties of season life are multiplied.
In fact, fewer people want to return. Not only is seasonal experience less
useful as an entree into a permanent career with the Park Service, but
fire management m particular is a dead end. For anyone with ambitions in
the Park Service, to remain a seasonal firefighter is a species of double
jeopardy. The evaluation process reminds us forcefully that we live in a
bureaucratic environment, not solely a natural environment; that the
fiscal cycle is as powerful a determinant in fire management as the
monsoon; that civil service regulations, not simply the laws of fire
behavior, govern our conduct. The season begins when the Park hires and it
ends when the Park terminates, and our EOD and COB dates mayor may not
coincide with the dynamics of fuel and weather that shape the arrival and
recession of fires. Yet the agency cannot control the fire program
completely because it cannot control lightning and forests. It cannot
abolish fire by fiat, and that is why we remain.
We live within a crack-an incomplete weld-that joins an industrial society
to a natural landscape. The two worlds, natural and bureaucratic, are at
odds. Our lives as individual Longshots contradict our life as a fire
crew. Even as we grow as individuals, we are put down as a crew. The
evaluation process symbolizes this schizophrenia. Those who return do so
for intensely personal reasons, almost in defiance of Park values, a
decision that only reinforces our progressive alienation. I hand Donnie
his forms and a copy of his seasonal evaluation. "Highly recommended for
rehire. " "So what next?" Donnie repeats. "Get out of here," I tell him
with a laugh. "Yeah," he says 'I'm packed. "
That's the way to do it, I think. Just leave. Once there is no longer any
connection to the fire crew, get out. Stay on the job as late as possible,
then leave the day you COB. As you drive out, wave at the cache; honk at
the pumper crew filling up the slip-on at the hydrant; shout at the
sawyers bucking firewood for the Office. Next year there will be more
fires.
I don't ask Donnie if he plans to return. That is his decision. He has no
desire to join the Park Service, so he won't be compromised by returning
as a Longshot. By the same token, there is no reason to stay in fire when
that is not his career. He is an odd case. Adaptable, well liked, a
natural athlete, he has learned the job as quickly as any rookie ever has.
He was apparently recruited by the Park Service under a minority hiring
program in the mistaken belief that, as the starting shortstop on the
Howard University baseball team, he was black.
If he plans to return, Donnie will mail in an application form over the
winter. He will not jeopardize his rating now by saying one way or the
other, or if he says anything, he will say he is probably returning. If he
does not, he knows that we will mail to him the nameplate that now hangs
over his firepack.
There is no way to get a pumper safely to Site B without some major
felling, so we pack in fedcos instead. In contrast with Site A, Site B is
on a ridgetop, even more open and arid. Benson has upgraded his operation
to include an Army-surplus communications module, which resembles a
heavy-duty camper, in which he can keep his computer and radios. Within it
he can calculate his Y value and monitor the bum. The module is parked at
a pullout on the Sublime Road. Now that the day for ignition has arrived,
he retires to his trailer, and we await his forecasts.
The Y value for the Site A bum was calculated at 6-7. We do not want a
fire any hotter than that. Weather forecasts call for a warn, dry day.
Benson figures the current Y value at 4. 55 and predicts it will reach 8-9
by midafternoon. Does he wish us to proceed with the bum? "That," he snaps
back on the radio, weary with endless reiterations, "is your decision, not
mine. " One bum is as good as another to him. It is all science. The
decision to light up and bum is ours. We look at one another. The only
reason we are here-the only justification for hauling our asses up this
ridge during the summer to cut line-is to serve the research program. None
of the permanent rangers, none of the Park elders, not even McLaren, will
commit to a decision. They all look to me, a seasonal foreman, and I look
to the crew. Benson returns on the Park radio. "Expected Values will
probably exceed nine, " he says. There is a touch of anxiety in his voice.
I compare that figure with the values at Site A; they don't register.
Whatever the fuel moisture at the module, the duff here is still fresh
with moisture from a recent storm. McLaren picks up a handful of needles
and squeezes some water out of them. "Hell, let's bum, " I say with a
shrug. "It is your decision, " says Benson. If the fire is lost, he means,
it will be our responsibility.
Ignition is a disaster. With considerable labor we succeed in torching a
few mounds of the fluffier needles. We send back to the pumpers for
another case of fusees and a flamethrower. Whatever the fusees touch they
char. When they are removed, the flame expires. Tom and The Kid begin
piling up loose branches into small slash piles. Dave and Ralph rake up
mounds of needles with McLeods. The heat from the flamethrower drives
everyone away, but after the residual mix is burned, the fire dies out.
The Kid removes the lid from the flamethrower and pours the mix onto some
stacked piles, then ignites them. The fire hesitates and holds. Benson
calls on the radio. His tone is urgent, wolfish. "Predicted Y values will
exceed the prescription, " he warns. "Does that mean we shouldn't bum?" I
ask. "That is your decision, " he insists.
The Fiasco fire. Now that we have begun we must continue: we can't mop up
the small patches of fire that exist without destroying the plots. We take
a coffee break, then an early lunch. We send a vehicle back for twenty
gallons of torch mix. By early afternoon enough drying has occurred to
sustain some continuous flame across the upper crust of needles, and by
the end of the day most of the plot has been subjected to a degree of
surface charring. The Park elders have long since departed. Benson shows
up at the scene before lunch, muttering under his breath that we are
trying to sabotage his research and vowing that it won't work, that his
way is the future. There is no reason to leave anyone at the site that
evening.
At our morning briefing in the Fire Pit we discuss the bum. Benson's
trailer is the object of derision. Tom picks up an empty wastebasket and
speaks into it with great, hollowing tones. "Pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain!" There is nothing left but to patrol and hope the fire
burns out soon. Duane, anxious to finish a long novel, volunteers.
Each day, however, is warmer and drier than the one previous; the fire
smolders, then, after a couple of days, shows intermittent flame. On the
fourth day there is an urgent message from Duane and Wil as they make
their first, morning tour of the fireline: the Site B bum has escaped Its
perimeter and supports nearly half an acre of wildfire. Response is
instantaneous. We corral the fire, lay in some hoses for mop-up, and track
down the source of the breakout to a creeping duff fire that entered the
catface of a green ponderosa near the fireline, burned in the cavity until
there was not enough heartwood left to support the tree, then flared over
the trunk after it tumbled across the fireline. We have a lot to learn
about prescribed burning.
FIRES OF SPRING
Dave flails at the outbuilding of the old camp with a sledge. Joe and I
gather loose boards and pile them nearby. It would probably be easiest to
attach chains to what is left of the main structure and pull the walls
down with the pumpers or winch, as we did with the Sheep Shed, but there
are so many nails around the site that we hesitate to drive very far off
the road. If, however we dismantle the main buildings with sledges and
crowbars as we are doing with the outbuilding, the project will take
weeks. I elect to crush the major structures by felling nearby trees on
them. The falls will smash the walls and floor, and needles and branches
will add kindling. Besides, Joe reasons, the trees have grown up since the
structure was abandoned and crown scorch would probably kill anything
nearby when we light the pyre.
We pause before the largest structure, an elevated floor with broken
walls. It is hard to believe that this site once supported a CCC camp,
more than a hundred men strong. Now the old camp has been declared a
pollutant in the wilderness, and we have been ordered to destroy it as
part of a general housecleaning of the backcountry. In the fall, after a
snow, the piles will be torched.
The presence of the CCC is manifest everywhere. There were two full
companies on the North Rim each summer; during the winter one company
relocated to Phantom Ranch, and the other to the South Rim. CCC enrollees
built the camp at the Shinumo Gate to support their fence project, and
they probably constructed (or improved) Tipover Spring as a water source.
There was another major camp below Neal Spring. There they dammed water
into a small pond, ran a pipe from the reservoir to a large wooden tank
down the valley, and laid out a full camp in the meadow. Fire road E-3
traveled to the site. A third camp-the main one-was in the Area. There the
CCC constructed nearly every Park Service building; even Mission 66 failed
to rework the Area, and more contemporary Park construction has tended to
retrofit CCC buildings or introduce trailers to supplement the CCC legacy.
The enrollees themselves lived in a tent camp by the heliport. Officers
lived in the small wood frame houses along Skid Row. The structural fire
cache and ambulance now occupy the old CCC fire cache; the Fire Pit
thrives in a niche of a CCC warehouse; the fire cache claims an old CCC
road storage shed; the ranger station is a refurbished CCC mess hall; the
concessionaire's mule barns and the Park's long-term storage sheds are
housed within former CCC structures located on what has become known as
CCC Hill.
They restructured the backcountry, too. Many springs were outfitted with
pipes and troughs made from hollowed logs Fuller Canyon Spring, Robber's
Roost, Basin, Kanabownits, Bright Angel, Tipover, and Harvey. You have to
know they are there in order to find them; you can see the present
entrance road and fireroads from the springs, but not the springs from the
roads. The CCC also made, or improved, small impoundments at Greenland
Lake and Basin Spring. It protected with aspen fences the Rim's natural
ponds-those flooded sinkholes like Swamp Lake-and it erected aspen corrals
at nearly all surface water holes. Although part of the justification for
creating tanks was wildlife enhancement, the greater reason was fire
protection.
Almost single-handedly the CCC created a physical plant for fire control
on the North Rim. Enrollees moved one metal lookout tower-North Rim
tower.-to its present location and constructed a second metal tower at
Kanabownits, erected cabins for both, and joined them with telephone
wires. They established the tree tower network; they laid out the fireroad
system; they put in a communications system, a ground return telephone
net; they placed metal sheds with handtools at key locations in the woods;
they laid out surface trails, some of which we uncover during the
construction of the Bawgd Pass trail; they obsessively swept roadsides
clean of dead and downed wood, partly for esthetics and partly as a fire
prevention measure. The CCC built the first-the enduring-boundary fence.
It built the original fire cache. And it fought fire.
It is impossible for us to see the CCC boys as anything but the original
Longshots-an enormous crew of immense comradely, with a ceaseless parade
of big projects and big fires. The era is imagined as a golden age, and
every relic is treasured. Marooned for a day on the South Rim, Wil and I
pawed through the Park archives for photos of the old camps. Our favorite
is a picture of the original fire cache, circa 1936. Three enrollees stand
admiringly beside a forest fire pumper and a structural fire truck, while
a park ranger, overweight, stares vacantly upward. When we return we
duplicate the scene with our modem vehicles. The two photos, side by side,
go into the FCA Musuem.
It is a quixotic gesture, however. What the CCC built up, we are ordered
to tear down. The revision in Park Service policy that established the
foundations for a new fire program also decreed that all traces of human
presence in the backcountry must be eradicated. We cease to man either
North Rim or Kanabownits tower; the tree towers are condemned; the old
fire cache is transferred to the rangers; the metal toolsheds are
forgotten; CCC Hill subsides into a state of dilapidation; the aspen
corrals are razed; the fireroads are abandoned, one after another. Mobile
trailer homes overtake CCC cabins as preferred quarters. The ranger
station is refurbished into an office, shedding almost all allusions to
its origins; then one winter it is gutted by fire and replaced by trailer
modules. We even pull up and pack out some nine miles of old telephone
wire that once connected Kanabownits to North Rim tower. What is not
ripped up or burned is simply abandoned or retrofitted to new purposes,
and we quit informing the Park where corrals and spring troughs can be
found and note with perverse pleasure the endurance of the western
CCC-built boundary fence. We marvel, too, that the Park will make heroic-
efforts to preserve at Greenland Lake a "salt cabin" putatively erected by
sheep and cattle herders in prepark days yet destroy with fanatical
obsession every vestige of CCC edifices outside the Area. The salt cabin,
however, stands next to a pullout on the scenic drive and provides an
"interpretive opportunity, " a visitor connection, which the CCC
structures, remote in the woods, do not.
Lunch is over, and Joe and Dave toss some miscellaneous boards onto the
pyre, while I wander along the faint trace of W-4C as it approaches the
Fence. Just across the boundary the Forest Service has been logging
heavily, and slash piles sprout like mushrooms; they will be fired in the
autumn along with the other prescribed bums. When the old camp is torched,
no one will notice another smoke among the general pall. Site C has a
little of everything.
Of special interest are a north-facing ravine, a ridge, and some thickets
of white fir-precisely the target for a prescribed fire program aimed at
restoring the natural ponderosa regime. The perimeter of the site nearly
abuts the Sublime Road, and we set up a camp across from it. Alarmed that
tourists might happen upon the scene, the BI has us rout out a sign that
reads: ENVIRONMENTAL BURN. IN PROGRESS. He continues-as he has for several
years-to refer to the fire as a ''proscribed bum. " "Maybe he knows
something we don't, " Wil reminds us. As Duane plants the sign along the
Sublime Road, a tourist in a pickup slows down, studies the sign, and asks
quizzically what fire is not an "environmental bum"? Duane has no answer.
There are no dignitaries this time, only fire and research personnel and
the new North Rim manager, Gonzo Gilliam. The ritual begins with the usual
mating dance about who will be responsible for the decision to ignite.
Benson calculates his Y value and makes his predictions, for which he is
well paid and which we ignore in favor of the National Fire-Danger Rating
System nomographs. But this time our question to him concerns ignition
strategies. And again, we are informed, research is indifferent; one
ignition pattern is as good as another; the decision to bum, and the
choice of technique, are ours and ours alone. Patiently Gonzo, who has
some legitimate fire experience and has shrewdly parlayed it into project
fire positions, tries to explain to Benson that the procedures we adopt
will dramatically affect the outcome. Benson reiterates, as to a child,
that there is only fire, that all fires are equally usable to him.
While these queries rage, the Longshots stand in the ravine with the Park
fire officer. McLaren, so far quiet, picks up some needles. More and more
often he has been on the losing side of Park politics; a man of immense
practical experience and unflappable in the face of emergencies, he
discovers that his career, once moving briskly upward, has halted and he
is condemned, perhaps forever, to be the assistant chief ranger at Grand
Canyon. To the Park Service-to the new era of professional managers and
information specialists-he is a relic who treats a helicopter as if it
were a horse, who believes that all problems, even intensely technical
ones, are really by and about people. Increasingly, he simply withdraws
from political fights, from public appearances with Benson, Gonzo, and the
others of the new regime, and leaves the fire crew to itself. We hear from
him only during fires, and then we are reminded how much real fire
experience he has. Usually bareheaded, he appears strange to us now in a
hard .hat. In a low voice to the crew he announces that the duff won't
burn.
Gonzo and Benson are now eye to eye over the issue of who should control
the fire, or rather who should have the privilege of not directing the
fire, and Gonzo is not only exasperated but excited. "OK, we burn from the
bottom up!" he bellows.
For the next two hours we weave a tapestry of charred lines and rings
across the slope. Nothing will hold a flame. By late morning we have
reached the ridgetop. We bring outfusees, drip torches, and a
flamethrower. Under Gonzo ~ roars and Benson's indifferent stare, we lay
down strips offire, each of which bums into the other while the first
strips are still flaming; unobtrusively McLaren dampens some of the excess
fire-starting, but there is plenty, and the effect is awesome. Within half
an hour the ridgetop is a maelstrom of fire. A smoke column chums upward.
In flashes we sight a large firewhirl embedded within the densest smoke.
Tree after tree-mature ponderosa all, some over four feet in
diameter-swell into flaming torches. When .the great outburst subsides, it
is discovered that the slope, heavily loaded with fuel and thick with fir
reproduction, is practically unscarred, while the open, mature ponderosa
forest has been gutted. Great trees now bear deep catfaces; they will
topple over the road within a few days. Other trees suffer colossal crown
scorch and will not survive the winter. "I thought, " says Wil out loud,
"that the purpose of this bum was to make the slope look like the
ridgetop. " McLaren's lips are pursed, and he looks unnaturally old in his
orange hard hat. "Hey," says Eric, "any-body got a buck I can pass? " .
Wit drives Benson, Gonzo, and McLaren to a helispot along the Sublime
Road, and they depart in midaftemoon. McLaren refuses to be drawn into a
discussion about the fire, which the daily report proclaims another
success of the presented bum program. The rest of us remain at camp and
prepare dinner, a medley of barbecued entrees-every man his own chef. From
rations come the desserts, crackers, fruit. Duane, however, refuses to eat
his hamburger after it is caught in a grease flare-up and chars deeply.
"It�s carcinogenic, " he insists.
EVALUATING SEASONALS: LIFE AFTER THE 10-180.
With seasonal evaluations approaching, I arrange to meet with everyone for
a brief conference so that the final day will hold. no surprises. I
suggest to Priest that! he seems to be half-stepping his way through the
end of the season and ask if he wants to return. "Yes, there is a
problem," he admits; then he seizes high ground and announces that he
cannot in good conscience extinguish any more fires on the North Rim. As
an educated biologist he understands the ecology of the forest. "This is a
dying forest," he declares. "It needs fire." "We all need fire," I reply.
"Do you wish to resign?" "Oh, no," he says, shaking his head. He has
discussed this with the BI. He wants to stay on; he has to stay on. He
will reform the system from within.
We have different reasons for joining the Longshots, and we have different
reasons for leaving. For some of us summer means adventure, a paying job,
a chance to grow up in special circumstances. Others see the fire crew as
an opportunity for career advancement. You can't remain in the first group
unless you like fire. But if you want to make real money, you transfer to
maintenance or to a construction contractor as E.B. and Randy do; if you
want to get into the Park Service permanently, you become a ranger or a
fern feeler or even a fee collector as Tom and Pferd and Bryan and Dave
do; and if you want to work in the woods, you sign on with the Forest
Service as Tim does. If you want to be a white-collar professional, you
return to school and accept the mores of dentists and lawyers as do Duane,
Ralph, and Wil. Even if you continue to remain a de facto migrant worker,
you will eventually become bored with the Rim or disgusted with the
bureaucracy and go elsewhere.
The issue is not whether you leave: you have to leave since your
appointment is limited to a maximum of one hundred eighty days. Ours is a
seasonal existence, circumscribed not only by the cycle of fires at the
North Rim but by the seasons of our own lives. You can't be younger than
eighteen, and you can't be too old-not only because the job will break you
down physically but because you will have other obligations and will have
been inducted into other institutions like families and careers. Even a
true, aging migrant will think twice about seasonal work in fire because
other jobs pay better and the special esprit of a fire crew will be lost
on him. You have to be young for the magic to work. You have to believe
that the North Rim is the greatest of places and the fire crew the most
wonderful of groups. You have to live in that violent geography-that
peculiar season-between adolescence and adulthood. It can last only so
long.
But as a North Rim Longshot you are caught in another transition-suspended
between two eras of philosophy about fire management. Firefighting becomes
profoundly ambivalent, compromised. The Park loses interest, and reflects
this indifference by an absence of leadership; fire management seems to
belong somewhere west of safety management in the geography of its
priorities. Only the persistence of fires ensures our continued existence.
The strategy behind the new era of fire management is that prescribed fire
will ultimately supersede wildfire, and prescribed burning, firefighting.
It intends to reorient fire programs from simple protection into the
advancement of biocentric objectives, into support for wilderness values.
To reduce the damage of suppression, prescribed fire programs will
substitute information for prime movers, and research, for field
operations. And it is a great era nationally for fire research. From our
standpoint, the critical facts are two: fire remains on the Rim and the
Park will support a prescribed fire program. Unfortunately information
does not equal knowledge, and it can't substitute for decisions and
commitment. The exchange of controlled fire for wildfire, if it ever
comes, will not occur at Grand Canyon within our seasonal lifetimes.
Instead, we stand on the brink of two eras, each in disarray and both
incommensurable.
Rich is nonplussed. "Look," he says, holding up a cardboard trap. "It gets
us out of the Area and the Bl likes it. He's a sort of entomologist, you
know." "Yeah," says Randy, "but gypsy moths? Does anyone here even know
what a gypsy moth looks like?" "Of course not," says Rich patiently.
"That's why we have to trap the buggers. We have traps installed at all
the overlooks and parking lots. It's part of our new resource management
mission. The Department of Agriculture guy even gave BI these cloth
patches. Look, 'Gypsy Moths.' Cute, huh? We can put them on our hats."
"Yeah, you bet," says Randy.
They stop at Point Imperial. The trap has a spider, a mite, some pine
needles and bark, a dozen mosquitoes, and a wad of pink chewing gum.
"Nice," says Randy. "I hope you brought a lunch," says Rich. "We'll be
doing this all day."
The control lines for Site D have been laid out several years in advance,
and this time Gonzo will direct the operations from the start. A mature
ponderosa forest is thoroughly invaded by white fir, and fuel loads in all
categories are heavy. On one side the site is bordered by the Sublime
Road. We place our camp on the opposite side of the road along a ridge.
Again there is a debate among ourselves concerning how we ought to light
up. Uncle Jimmy suggests that we torch off a snag and let the fire spread
from there. "It's more natural." Dana suggests that we offer a sacrificial
victim, and Eric volunteers Dana, who allows himself to be strapped to a
snag while others rake up branches and needles around the base. Gonzo
orders the firing to begin-loudly, authoritatively, over the Park
radio-but never decides how ignition should be conducted.
Since it is our choice by default, we elect to begin firing at the top of
the ridge and bum down into draws on the north and south flanks. Benson
arrives late and refuses to be involved in any decisions. We torch off a
snag, then ignite concentric circles around it. Flame builds up slowly but
steadily o. only when the fire enters thickets of fir reproduction is
there flaring, and then there is a rush to the scene with cameras and
notebooks. Most of the fire is quiet, almost retarded. Dan worries,
however, about the patches of young conifer. "I don't like all this fir
repercussion, " he says. "Yeah," Rich agrees. "It's pretty serious. "
Perhaps ~ third of the seventy-acre site is burned the first day. The
following two days, while the remainder is fired, we are pretty much on
our own. We lay down parallel strip fires around the perimeter, back the
fire down the south slope with contoured strips, and on the north slope
bum a chevron pattern, a straight line from top to bottom that fans out as
it progresses downhill, until it is apparent that there is too much fire,
that another two days of drying and a heavy concentration of drip torches
are too intense. There is one spot fire, possibly from radiant heat, that
appears in a punky log located embarrassingly close to our camp. Otherwise
for the next three days we patrol. No one else from the Park shows up.
As the fire ends, however, interest rekindles. Before Gonzo will allow us
to depart, he insists that we fly the fire perimeter with him in a
helicopter. The pilot, Joe Ugly, cruises the bum in fast, tight circles,
better suited to a stock car race than a fire recon. Wisps of smoke rise
everywhere in the bum, but there are no flames. The next day the BI, who
at the time of ignition had conveniently retired to his house on the South
Rim, tramps around portions if the fireline and denounces the entire
operation as unprofessional and unnecessary. Benson informs the
superintendent that the Sublime burns are complete and that the North Rim
is ready to go operational with a full-scale prescribed fire program aimed
at massive reconversion of fir understories to open ponderosa.
The early-morning smoke report a day later thus comes as a surprise. There
have been rw storms, and it is too long since the last round of lightning
for it to be a sleeper. Recon I pinpoints the fire at Site D. Afire has
indeed escaped-half a dozen logs, many aspen, lying in a meadow across the
Sublime Road from the bum. The fire bums from log to interlocking log, the
interstitial grass too green and wet to carry any combustion. The cause of
the fire is a mystery, for there is rw obvious connection to the Site D
bum-no toppled trees across the road, no reservoir of punky wood that
would be receptive to a firebrand, rw source of radiant heat. There is
only the fire, which we extinguish in a few minutes with pumpers. Back in
the Area the BI gloats and struts. And back in the cache we admit that we
don't understand prescribed burning. Wit suggests that maybe the BI has
been right all along. "It looks like a proscribed fire to me," he says.
FIRES OF AUTUMN
The heat drives us back. Dean from Mars is flabbergasted-both alarmed and
thrilled-by the amount of heat the flamethrower has generated, but quickly
fires off another burst against the boulders, and another. The air has a
sickly smell of diesel and soot. The limestone appears to bum as the
residual fuels coat it and flame. "OK, OK," says Pferd. "Enough. Let
someone else have a turn." Dean says he wishes all our training courses
were this much fun .� , Just mix diesel and gasoline, pump, and
shoot," he marvels. "No," says Pferd, ever cautious. "Fire doesn't work
that way. It's not the mix of gas and diesel in the torch that matters;
it's the mix of fire and fuel in the woods." "Yeah," Dan agrees. "There's
no fuel like an old fool. "
Enthusiasm for prescribed fire is everywhere, and it is almost everywhere
justified. The fire crew needs a prescribed fire program, and we know it.
It is clear that the Park Service will withdraw from classic fire
suppression; our only salvation is another fire program to which it will
commit. Prescribed fire is clearly the informing genius of the new era,
and there are many selfish reasons for us to welcome it. It could extend
our duty season into the fall, stabilize summer project work, and improve
fire skills. It could allow us to jump on a Park Service bandwagon and
recover some status within the agency. Any kind of fire is better than no
fire; any project work, even line construction, is better than none at
all; and to conduct prescribed bums, we have to learn about a lot of tools
and techniques-such as firing out-that we would otherwise not know.
The problem is that Grand Canyon's superintendent has determined that no
program will go operational until Benson completes his research. That will
take years. Research is not being asked to supply vital information but to
stall. Simultaneously, fire expertise within the Park Service is being
supplanted. Whatever the outcome of Benson's research, the smart money
says that there will not be a program because there will be no one
knowledgeable enough about fire to translate a philosophy of prescribed
burning into field operations. By the time the research is completed,
evaluated, and translated into projects, no one presently in the Park will
be around to assume responsibility for it. As a result, Grand Canyon can
muster no more than the parody of a prescribed fire program.
There is little understanding of fire, marginal enthusiasm for a
full-scale fire suppression program, and no mechanism for a genuine
reconstruction based on prescribed fire. Instead, prescribed
burning-especially the prospect for � 'prescribed natural fire"-
becomes a convenient rationale for the Park to disinvest from fire
management altogether. The Park wants a minimal organization, just enough
to keep fire from becoming a public embarrassment, and it appeals to the
convincing philosophy of prescribed fire to reduce its overall fire
management obligations. It does not replace a program of fire suppression
with a program of fire management; it simply guts the suppression
component.
A bona fide fire management program centered on the concept of prescribed
fire demands a heavy investment of agency time, resources, and personnel.
It originates out of the belief that the positive reintroduction of fire
into natural systems is essential for wilderness management. It requires a
sustained commitment, a political will. No administrator at Grand Canyon
wants any of this. On the contrary, the Park would be delighted if fire
would simply vanish and leave the Canyon to people. That way rangers alone
could run the Park, and the Park Service could keep a direct liaison with
its constituencies. The reality is that resource management follows
tourism, and the visitor is on the River. The Park's real research thrust
is on the River with him.
The Park Service takes pleasure in declaring that its management
philosophy for natural areas-announced by the Leopold Report in 1963 and
encoded into administrative handbooks in 1968-pioneered the practice of
wilderness fire management. There is some truth in that claim, but it is
limited to particular individuals and particular parks. Nationally the
Park Service simply lacked the system-wide technical expertise to manage
fire. Only after its inexperience became a source of public notoriety,
especially after a natural fire escaped and threatened a community outside
Rocky Mountain National Park m 1978, did the Park Service establish a
Branch of Fire Management and begin promulgating more methodical
guidelines and standards for training. With few exceptions, the Service
did not see prescribed fire as an opportunity to change its management
philosophy or its mission; it did not see the concept as a means by which
to promote positive programs of wilderness management. Its values lay
elsewhere. That some parks do succeed in establishing prescribed fire is a
testimony to local genius. There IS none at Grand Canyon.
Yet, in the end, what did it really matter to the average Longshot? Almost
none of us stay for enough seasons to feel ~e decline. We have no personal
memory of the past. Meanwhile, preparing firelines, setting up camps,
firing off blocks-all are good jobs, certainly preferable to the Fence.
!he status of fire management in the Park becomes unbearable if and when
there are not enough fires. Only when fires fail must we rely on the
agency for sustenance, and only then does the inequality in our
relationship-that the Park matters more to us than we do to the
Park-become demoralizing. Whatever its wishes, however, the Park cannot
ban fire from the Rim. And fire is our one indispensable requirement-snag
fires by the score, prescribed fires wise and foolish, and big fires, the
kind that start and end worlds.
Pferd explains that he prefers the fusee because It puts ~e least fire
down with the greatest Control. He remembers his hotshot days when he
watched burning crews plaster hillsides with fire the backfires worse than
the originating one. But most of us like the drip torch, and Dean studies
the flamethrower longingly. "It's not the tool," Pferd continues
pedantically. "It's how you use it. You have to understand fire behavior.
You have to pattern your ignition. You have to get your timing right. You
hearing this, Dean?" "Sure, sure," says Dean from Mars, lost in unfamiliar
abstractions.
"You know," he says slowly, "I think we can forget about Mr. Benson's Y
value. With enough of these things we could bum down the fucking country.
" The site is fine; the timing is dismal. Spring burns are the treatment
of choice where the primary fuel is grass. The Walhalla site, however, is
veneered with needles, and under the fresh needle cast are layers of wet
duff and mulch-disastrous for a fire aimed at reducing fuels. No matter
that we can ignite only the upper epidermis of needles. What matters is
that the Park does not want to bum when everyone else in the Southwest
burns-in the late fall-because that would mean extending the seasonal
employment pattern. That would mean more money and a longer-lasting, if
not larger, fire crew. If there is going to be a prescribed fire program,
the Park decides it must occur during the regular fire season. That is the
prescription that counts.
Early in the morning the fire will barely sustain a flame. We force
ignition; we broadcast fire with drip torches as though we were spraying
to control some malevolent insect. Meanwhile, the environmental conditions
change. The air desiccates the forest floor, and southwest winds rush by
straight out of the Sonora Desert, strengthened by Canyon updrafts. By
late morning the fuelbed crust flashes into flame. Fire spreads quickly,
more like a gas fire than a solid fire. Soon firewhirls form behind trees,
flames rush up the bark of huge ponderosa, islands of pine reproduction
blast into flame; crown scorch is devastating. By lunch we refuse to light
any more, and by evening the fire is virtually out.
Only the top quarter inch, or in places the upper half inch, of duff has
been consumed. Virtually no large logs have burned. Reproduction has been
torched into naked stems, and the crowns of mature pine wilt into yellowed
palsy. A few pockets of duff continue to smolder; left alone, without
precipitation from storms, they might succeed in creeping across much of
the site. But they will not be left-cannot be. They will have to be mopped
up. In time the tree kills will cause the total fuel load of the site to
increase dramatically.
ON THE FIELDS OF WALHALLA
There are many signs that announce the entry to Walhalla, but the one that
matters to us is the extraordinary ponderosa that declares the hidden
entrance to E-4, the first of the Walhalla fireroads. Lightning has split
the tree in half longitudinally, and nothing is left but the enormous
bole, its exposed heartwood glistening in the sun like burnished steel,
rising swordlike out of the ground. A hundred feet beyond, overgrown with
fir, is E-4. Jonathan steers the engine down the road, and a second
pumper, driven by Leo, follows.
Once you reach E-4, the dominant character of Walhalla is quickly
established. Walhalla Plateau is a gigantic mesa, almost completely
isolated from the rest of the Rim by the transcanyon Bright Angel fault.
In geologic times to come, Walhalla will be in fact segregated from the
rest of the Kaibab, but for the present it is grafted by a narrow isthmus
through which the scenic drive corkscrews up and around. Most of the North
Rim resembles a hand that reaches down, its peninsulas-such as Sublime and
Tiyo and The Dragon-like fingers that are slightly curled and separated.
But Walhalla is divorced from the overall curvature of the Kaibab, a
nearly level mesa, with fingered peninsulas of its own. It tilts slightly
from north to south and from east to west. Its interior resembles a gently
rolling plain, a great forested field unlike the rest of the Rim.
Ponderosa pine dominates the biota, though it grades into dense mixed
conifer to the north and into open grassy glades to the south. It is a
good place for fire.
The western flank of Walhalla is one of the hottest sites for lightning
fires on the Rim. As we drive down the road, the memory of old fires
flashes past: the Knoll fire, nearly lost along the Rim; the Reunion fire,
where Dave returned from the South Rim to assist his old crewmates with an
unheard-of initial attack by pumper; the Hippolyta fire, nearly escaping
control when it surged into fir reproduction until slurry drops cooled the
fire down and Forest Service engines arrived; the Mariah, the Rookie, the
Star fires; innumerable snag fires along the points Matthes, Ariel, Obi,
Komo. We hold the last day of fire school on Walhalla; here we induct
recruits into the reality of field operations and the etiquette of
firecamps. And now there are prescribed bums.
Walhalla is attractive as a natural fire province. Within its boundaries
lightning fires could be left to behave in their natural state, subject
only to surveillance. But the plateau is not truly isolated, and it must
be sealed off or be made capable of sealing off a fire should one move
into the isthmus. That calls for some fuel modifications. More compelling
for management, however, is the argument that fifty years of fire
suppression have so distorted the fuel complex that some prescribed
burning is essential to reestablish a suitable base level. In particular,
the white fir beneath the mature pine must be removed.
Copyright 1989 by Stephen J. Pyne.
