Hot Takes: There's No "Good Fire"
There's also no "Bad Fire", there's just Fire
This is one of those rare times when a topic is so relevant to both wildland and prescribed fire, to where I feel the need to cross-post something across both publications.
So, if you get the notification for this twice and go “dude, c’mon”, know that this will be a pretty rare thing. The Stacks are split for a reason.
Hot Takes is another theme I’m going to try: questioning some of the common wisdom and individual ignorance related to wildland and prescribed fire topics.
I’d like to lead with a story:
The first days of February 2016, I showed up to the snowy Blue Mountains of Northeast Oregon, as a brand new Fire Prevention/Mitigation/EducationOutreach Specialist on the Malheur National Forest, Blue Mountain Ranger District.
Let me set the stage: Ammon Bundy & Co, who took over the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge the previous month, had just been arrested, compounding rising tensions for a community still reeling from the incredibly-destructive Canyon Creek Complex late summer of 2015. At the time, the Canyon Creek Complex was the most destructive fire in Oregon history in terms of structures lost.
And here comes me, ol Mark Howell from the land of Kings Canyon: Giant Sequoias and Lodgepole Pine that need fire to not only sustain their habitat, but allow their seeds to germinate, the land of prescribed burns and “wildfires managed for resource benefit”, and yep: “Good Fire”.
As Brent Skaggs, back-then Forest Fire Management Officer for Sequoia National Forest/Giant Sequoia National Monument coined it: “Right fire in the right place at the right time.”
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that “Good Fire” or “Right fire/place/time” would be an absolute non-starter in John Day, Oregon, even if the public didn’t, loudly and frequently, decry prescribed fire and anything but an “aggressive full-suppression policy” (that ironically created the wildfire problem we’re in).
Emotions ran high amidst broken, mistrustful relationships between the public and government agencies, and even the agencies themselves, and there was no way you were going to tell someone who feared for their life, and lost everything in the Canyon Creek Complex that there was ever such a thing as “Good Fire”, or a right place or time for the “right fire”. Saying something like that might at best get you cussed out, at worst, well…let’s just say the show “Yellowstone” could just as easily have been a docudrama in John Day.
The problem runs deeper though, than one community and one fire, or even every community that’s experienced a big, destructive wildfire. As I commented on Amanda Royal’s excellent work on thinning and burning practices in Yosemite NP…
We face a beast of our own making
Remember Bambi? Everyone’s seen it, and you know where I’m going with this: the big forest fire scene where Bambi and friends run for their literal lives and make it, but return to the destruction of their homes and habitat. Tugs at your heartstrings a little, doesn’t it? Makes you fear and dislike fire on a raw emotional level, “all those poor animals!”
Then there’s the 2nd most recognizable character in the world behind Santa Claus: Smokey Bear (no “the”, he has no middle name). Let’s look at that guy for a second:
Cute fuzzy face √
Sympathetic origin story √
Likable and relatable √
Delivers a simple, unequivocal message √
Our dude Smokey is the perfect purveyor of propaganda. Like Bambi, he elicits an emotional response that skirts the logic and reason of your conscious mind to hit your subconscious with its favorite kind of statement: simple, elegant, often wrong. This is the kind of stuff the subconscious will glom on to and defend forevermore with all the “feels over reals” and cognitive dissonance it can muster.
Even reading this right now, you probably have your hackles up with a knee-jerk emotional response: “What?! How dare you attack Bambi and Smokey Bear?!?!?”
Hang on to that emotional reaction for a sec!
Sit with it, turn it over, really examine it. Did I actually attack Bambi or Smokey? Go back and re-read again carefully. If anything, I’m praising them, they’re masterworks of messaging! But boy even the hint of questioning those cherished characters has you ready to punch me in the face, doesn’t it?
Going back to that knee-jerk “WTF?!?!” reaction, this is exactly how most people feel and will react when you mention “Good Fire”. That knee-jerk rebuke, the dislike, the instantly-broken connection. “The hell you talkin about, ‘good fire’?!? Haven’t you seen Bambi or heard of Smokey Bear?!?”
At that point, most of us, like the good little fire nerds we are, trot out all the facts, figures, and info we can muster, not realizing we already lost the audience. We point to maps, graphs, historical documents, fire ecology studies, dendrochronology…and wonder why the other person is crossing their arms, rolling their eyes, giving every possible sign of rejection of your message AND the you it rode in on, short of the middle finger.
Sometimes, like a bowl of Wendy’s chili, the middle finger is included.
A really wise thing I read went something like:
Figure out what the argument is really about: facts or feelings, then bring the right tool for the job. “Facts don’t care about your feelings”, well, at the same time “feelings don’t care about your facts”. Argue facts with facts and feelings with feelings, never one with the other.
Once the subconscious feels you’re an enemy or interloper and drops that iron curtain it’s GAME OVER. The proverbial brick wall would be a better listener at this point because at least it’s not actively arguing against you. All there is to do at this point is disengage from the conversation and maybe take another tack next time.
Alright, so what tack SHOULD I take?
Glad you asked. There’s no “Good Fire”, there’s no “Bad Fire'“, there’s just Fire.
As I tell people in fire classes I teach:
Fire is a chemical reaction and physical force that doesn’t care who or what started it, or what’s in its way; it obeys the laws of physics and follows fuels, weather, and topography wherever they lead it.
Fire itself isn’t good or bad. Now, the outcomes of a fire, that’s what we assign as “good” or “bad”, “desired” or “devastating”.
Our goal should be fire outreach, not “education”
Outreach means meeting people where they are to try to bring them along on a journey to where you want them to be.
Education implies superiority, “I know better than you.” Maybe objectively you do, but most people over the age of 12 will puff up and bristle, dropping that subconscious iron curtain at the idea of being “educated”, even if they voluntarily sign up for a class or workshop. They signed up to learn something, not be talked down to.
How we prepare for and react to fire is likewise a mixed bag: what’s “good” for a community or home may not be ecologically desirable (xeriscaping outside of dry environments), and ecologically desirable prescribed fire can escape, proving devastating to homeowners and communities. With fire, what’s good for the goose is, at times, not good for the gander.
All of this creates a morass of “it depends”, something our subconscious abhors. Thinking? That’s work - conscious brain stuff!
So how do we avoid “triggering” the subconscious?
Step - click - BOOM! is not the preferred method, but the one most of us end up taking for lack of a better way.
The first step in avoiding landmines is knowing they’re there. The second step is to TREAD CAUTIOUSLY, and lastly go around them. Instead of directly charging through the middle of the minefield, take a lesson from our buddies Bambi and Smokey, and take the indirect route, skipping a lot of the mines along the way.
Instead of arguing, attacking their position and defending yours, stop and listen.
Nobody’s going to listen to you when they feel you’re not listening to them. So listen.
Listen to the words, listen “between the lines” too.
Acknowledge their reality. Say it out loud. “I see you’re really passionate about grazing and think fire harms that. What about fire harms grazing?”
Learn about where they are now, and be open to their experiences and feelings. Pay particular attention to their biases, because those are the little bumps in the ground that can show you where some of the mines are buried.
Often, the simple act of listening and acknowledging people helps disarm a lot of those landmines. We live in a “noisy” society, and we’re so used to people talking over and at us that when someone takes a moment to really listen, that feeling of being seen and heard, can shatter that iron curtain.
Can. It won’t always, but it’s a lot more likely than arguing.
Bringing it all back around: there’s just fire
As we step away from FIRE being “good” or “bad”, we can focus on the OUTCOMES, which is really the point anyway. Fire is just the means, but as we de-anthropomorphize it, make it just the “thing”, the “phenomena” that it is instead of “the enemy” to be conquered, we can detach and disentangle ourselves from some of the emotions and biases swirling around it.
That allows us to gain clarity and use our cognitive minds to think of strategies and solutions, disengage from some of our limiting beliefs, and work together to build relationships and resilience.