Heat lightning, glimmering soundless behind the western peaks. Then the
first low rumble. At first the flashing had been from cloud to cloud,
but now, as the storm nears, the first ground-spears appear, lighting up
the night. Here is a big storm, many-celled, engulfing more and more
territory beneath its angry bulk. Lightning dances into the dry August
forest. In their towers the lookouts stay awake.
Close strike and a flare-up! The ridge snag burns like a Roman candle,
sending bright embers down. Valley, ridge, and peak blink on and off
with blue light as the storm roars like night-firing artillery.
Passing overhead, the low cloud belly brings a sudden lash of rain. But
it is not enough: tomorrow will mean long hours of fire watch.
The next day dawns clear, a morning of heavy dew. The ridge strikes did
not ignite the forest. Inspecting the storm path, aircraft and lookouts
find no evidence of fire.
But two days later, in a morning of high wind, thin smoke plumes rise
upward. Smoldering in the thick duff of the forest floor, a lingering
hot spot explodes with the fanning wind. It quickly spreads from a
hectare to ten while the quadrants are called in and the hot-shot crews
dispatched; then to a hundred, bringing in the smoke jumpers and
mobilizing the vast fire-control network. A thousand hectares, perhaps
ten thousand might burn this week of big fires.
In the resulting skeleton forest, the scene of devastation is almost
overpowering: life seems forevermore excluded from this blackened ruin.
But fire is nothing new to forest communities. We may think fire demonic
because it takes from our life span this block of mature forest, a sight
we will never again see in this place. But nature does not operate in
terms of human time scales. This forest is simply pushed back closer to
its starting point, to begin again its long progression toward a climax
vegetation cover.