From Fire Born

Our region of the Rocky Mountains is shaped by fire.  Wildfires are natural to our landscapes.  Over the last decade, for example, an average of more than 5 million acres of Montana burned each year.  We have around here what we call “fire season,” which pretty much sprawls across the entire summer with fingers extending into spring and toes often reaching late into fall.

 

Most of our forests—particularly lodgepole pine—have a definite shelf-life.  Lodgepole forests tend to be strict monocultures that are intolerant to climate fluctuations.  A lodgepole stand will generally die-out at somewhere near 200 years of life.  Fire often marks the end.  Fire is, in fact, required for fully renewing a lodgepole pine forest.  The heat from fires opens up the compact seed cones and releases seeds for germination.

The forests near my cabin are at the end of their natural cycle.  Many trees are dead standing due to recent attacks by pine beetles.  Parts of the forest are dangerously over-fueled.  Early this spring, as part of long term fire mitigation and forestry practices, a controlled burn was started near my property.  A few weeks ago, when I drove to my cabin to prepare for the summer season, I found the entire understory flat black immediately following the burn.

Yesterday, on a return trip, I found green life threading up from the ash and the shadows cast by dead lodge pole pines.

I am posting a couple of photographs of the new life in early morning light.

--Mitchell Hegman