By Alyana Contant
Coming to California has been a life-altering experience. The range of biodiversity, topographical diversity, and cultural diversity that exists in this state is something to behold. What I have found to be the most hoppin’ conversation within the service term has been fire and its applications. As a GrizzlyCorps Fellow based in El Dorado County and working in a research forest, fire has become a part of my life in an unexpected way. While I never claimed to be a pyromaniac, I have found the fire to be the conversation happening in my, and many different minds, at any given time. Often, prescribed fire is used at my station as an effective and cheap tool to manage surface and ladder fuels, clear understory, and achieve a multitude of management objectives. But it is strange to think that so many moments and differing perspectives led to this point in forestry. Coming from Upstate NY, where snow and ice are the biggest concerns for communities, it was odd to think so frequently about an element that rarely occupied my approach to weather.
As part of wanting to understand fire in California, both as a culture, tool and as a natural phenomenon, I attended an Eco-Cultural Fire Training with Tribal Eco Restoration Organization and The Watershed Training Center. What I learned was that fire has been on this side of the turtle for centuries, well before Europeans and well before me.
Through that training, I got to meet many amazing and passionate people who work with fire- reacting to wildfires, managing prescribed, and training the next generation of firefighters. The world of fire is as large as the imagination with many people working to make it a safe and accessible tool for landowners and communities to blacken the land. As a resource and tool, it’s an odd contradiction, but it also required me to think about my own relationship with fire. One woman, Jasmine, who was from Mexico and wanted to be in the firefighting world, spoke to her own cultural experience with fire, frame in a categorical sense. My interpretation may differ from hers, but it helps contextualize fire in this way:
Home: There is the fire within the home, the one that keeps you warm and the one that brings people together…
Kitchen: There is the fire that we cook with and create tasty meals, and is the fire our palette co-evolved with…
Cultural Fire: There is the fire of work that exists within cultural practices to manage the land, fire that is utilized as an ecological tool to activate certain processes- Indigenous people have been using fire for thousands of years prior to colonization in California.
WildFire: There is the fire that rages and destroys, consuming people and homes; and often the one that brings fear into the conversation.
There is fire within our lives, that we often associate with to meet basic needs like warmth and meals. And there is the fire within the world that can restore and destroy. While it is easy to separate fire from ourselves, it is much closer to us than we realize. It was in this training that I realized that I entered a conversation for which I had no context and all the questions. There are so many elements to this conversation and so many communities who are a part of it simply by living in the state of California.
What have I learned?
Living in cabins with a fire stove as the only heating, fire is a necessity in my day-to-day life. It warms chilly nights, chews away at the logs we cut earlier in the season, and sometimes burns my fingers as a warning for getting too close. This is the fire of the hearth, and when treated with respect, this fire is a crucial and integral part of my sanity and comfort throughout the dreariness of winter. But this fire is also finicky, requiring so much attention, constant fuel input, and intentional management.
There is also the fire I need for the propane stove that has absolutely no temperature control and burns every meal that I attempt to cook. This is likely a matter of design but also requires care and attention to ensure that this fire is used to create tasteful meals. This is the fire of the kitchen that when used with intention contributes largely to one of my favorite parts of being alive—eating delicious meals.
The fire in my work, however, through prescribed application, is a tool often approached and discussed with great strategy and care. When we use fire, it comes with a variety of safety mechanisms and planning that ensure the fire is managed responsibly and within certain weather windows for the best outcomes on the landscape and for the community. In this way, fire is still very influential and powerful in my life, but also allows connections to community members and landowners who prefer managed fire over unmanaged.
The fire in my work also has me looking out over the dystopian standing dead of the Georgetown Divide, remnants of high intensity and high severity fire. The same fire, the Mosquito Fire, ripped through the young forests of the landscape leaving behind acres and acres of standing dead just two years ago. What remains is a tragically clear view extending into the other side of the American River Canyon and onwards to the Rubicon.
What I have seen is the way fire, when thought about intentionally, surrounds us every day. Much like the sun, soil, water, and wind- fire also has its place within the natural world. As a young person entering the conversation, I am grateful for the context provided by the teachings from the EcoCultural TERA training. Fire can often feel like an overwhelming conversation in the broader scope, especially as we contend with the realities of the LA Wildfires. Perhaps, if we had more cultural and prescribed fire in our lives, we would have a more holistic understanding of fire and its applications. From a Grizzly getting to know this side of the turtle, the fire in my life is one I intend to nurture. A fire that at the moment gives more than it takes away.
As I reflect on fire’s multifaceted role in my life, I am by no means attempting to dismiss the tragedies of those impacted throughout the state of California by past and ongoing wildfires. The extent and devastation of wildfires, most recently in the LA region of Alta Dena and Palisades, has put many in a state of uncertainty and loss. My thoughts are with the resilient communities, the skilled firefighters risking their lives on the frontlines, and the countless individuals working toward recovery and resilience through this difficult time. This reflection is shared with respect to those experiences.
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