Last Saturday, as we were finishing shearing our sheep, I noticed a plume of smoke to the northeast of our home place. Looking between the blue oaks behind our back pasture, I could tell it was coming from down toward Orr Creek - and that it wasn’t a burn pile. The S-2 fire plane arrived on the scene a few minutes later - and we watched it make a drop after circling for a quarter hour. This week started with a Red Flag Warning here in the Sierra foothills, and another one is forecast for this weekend. Fire season, it seems, is here - and earlier than I can remember.
I’ll admit to a strange relationship with wildfire. I think my fascination with fire in the foothills started with hanging out with one of my earliest friends, Brett Hansen. Brett’s dad flew crop dusters in South Dakota in the winter and spring; he flew S-2’s here in the foothills in the summer and fall. Brett’s family lived near Sonora during fire season; in Pierre, SD, the rest of the year. We overlapped at Curtis Creek Elementary in the fall.
Brett’s dad, Pete, let us hang out at the fire tanker base at the Columbia airport during the summer. He even let us sit in the cockpit of his S-2 when he taxied out to “run-up” the engines in the morning. What a thrill for an 8-year-old!
The first big fire I remember probably happened when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. As I recall, the fire was east of Lyons Dam and north of Highway 108 in Tuolumne County - I could be wrong. I do remember that Pete’s plane had an engine problem, and he crash-landed safely somewhere in the Stanislaus National Forest. I distinctly remember the photo of his plane in the newspaper - the right wing bent at a 90-degree angle. And I remember that Pete was okay.
The next big fire I recall was the Stanislaus Complex in the late 1980s. My college buddies and I had been camping on Sonora Pass, and I came home to my folks’ place to thunder and lightning - a storm system much like we experienced last August. Multiple starts burned into a single huge fire - the biggest I’d ever seen. I can remember pulling a stock trailer out towards Tuolumne thinking I could help my high school friend Ken evacuate some cows (we couldn’t get to Ken’s place). And I remember driving a forklift at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds unloading supplies for the evacuation center.
Each of these early experiences formed a habit of watching the skyline for smoke and fire planes. Of channeling the adrenaline from a crisis into service and focus. Of wanting to help.
But fire behavior has changed as I’ve grown older. My first realization of this change came with the Rim Fire near Yosemite. The day that fire blew up, my family and I were driving back to Auburn from a soccer tournament in Pacifica. We could see the pyro-cumulus cloud over the fire from the Coast Range. We knew it was bad. Later, I saw photos of meadows where my friends grazed their cows in the summertime - conifers torching in the background, with cows huddled in the meadow.
A year or two later, I was in a plane returning from Denver when the Butte Fire blew up in Amador and Calaveras Counties. Flying over an out-of-control wildfire is an eerie experience; knowing that I had friends (and possibly family) in the fire’s path was terrifying.
Since the Butte Fire, though, every fire season seems to set a new record. The fire behavior that frightened me in 2013 and 2015 seems commonplace now. The King Fire, the Camp Fire, the North Complex Fire, the Creek Fire - not to mention multiple fires in the North Bay and Mendocino County - have all blown past our understanding of fire behavior.
I think it’s easy to feel powerless in this new fire regime. What can I do, as an individual, to prepare for - let alone prevent - these new conflagrations? How can I cope with having to work outdoors in the smoke and heat? My family is so fortunate to have not been directly impacted by these fires, but I know our number will come up at some point.
I’ve realized that I can do small things in my own community to address this challenge. Our sheep can help reduce fuel loads here close to home. I can help my fellow ranchers develop plans for keeping our livestock safe in the event of fire. I can make my own home safe and defensible. I can learn about other techniques for reducing fire danger, like using prescribed fire. I can keep a fire tool and a backpack pump in my truck from May through November - and I can learn how to use these tools.
Fire has always been a part of life in the Sierra foothills (the landscape I consider my native habitat), as well as in much of the North American West. Climate change, resource management policy, land use patterns, and other factors, have intensified the problem. For me, at least, while these challenges can seem overwhelming, I also think that insurmountable problems have always ever been solved by individuals doing what they (what WE) can do. We need to make changes, certainly, on a grand scale - and I need to contribute to this policy change; we also need to make changes as individuals. That might be more difficult.
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