I didn’t say it directly perhaps, but I support the policy of management fires and I’ve overcome my childhood “Smokey Bear” conditioning to think that all fires are bad things – I now regard them as a normal and natural part of the life of the forest and other wildlands. I also like to photograph them, though I’ve so far found it a big challenge to get images of burn zones that I like! (I am happy with some that I shot near the Mariposa grove of big trees in Yosemite.)

However, in this case there are several things that upset me – more things, in fact, than I alluded to in the main post. There I mentioned the fact that NPS staff caused this fire by, it seems, choosing the wrong conditions to start their “controlled” burn and then apparently not managing to control it. I also mentioned the fact that this fire is double-tragic in that it re-burned an area that was finally recovering from an earlier unnatural fire that had been made much worse than would typically be the case by decades of wrong-headed fire suppression policies.

I did not mention that the NPS did not exactly take responsibility for what happened at the time of this recent fire. Their position seemed to initially go no further than “we followed all of our policies.” Clearly, their policies are insufficient if a small management fire grew so quickly out of control, taking many days to get under control, closing portions of the park, threatening the residents of Foresta, and costing tremendous sums of money to control.

And finally, even for this person who understands and appreciates the natural, stark beauty of a post-fire environment, this scene presents only a tragic image. The damage here is not the result of a natural process at all. The tremendous damage from the previous fire (completely consumed old-growth forest) was the result of bad (though perhaps innocent) policy and now the re-burning of what had been an area starting to show signs of recover also appears to be caused by official acts and it has set back a natural recovery process by decades.

So when I pass through this new burn it isn’t easy or perhaps even possible for me to see “nature at work.”

Dan