By Mary Stuever

For the past four years I have worked with an exceptional group of folks from the White Mountain Apache Tribe on stabilizing and rehabilitating forests, woodlands, canyons, and ridgetops burned in the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. We have accomplished a lot, through many bouts of laughter, tears, sweat, screams, songs, dreams, prayers, and just plain hard work. Looking back at the miles of fences built, acres of logs contour-felled, baskets of seedlings planted, miles of culverts cleaned, pounds of seeds scattered, and seemingly endless collection of dozens of projects, I see they are all amazing accomplishments and add up to some darn-good stories to tell. 

We should write a book, I told my staff. The impact of the fire will live with Apache people for hundreds of years. These stories need to be written down so their great grandchildren will understand how Apaches responded right after this fire. The first time I suggested the task, I was met with disbelief. One staff member reminded me that Apaches live by an oral tradition, very few Apaches write Apache, and writing is not a favorite task when it comes to communicating in English. Not true, I rebutted, reminding them of the detailed and sometimes hilarious accounts that show up in the daily logs kept by our staff during the planting season. They slowly agreed, but although we liked the idea, we weren’t sure how to begin. 

So instead of planning a book, we started planning our annual Thanksgiving dinner. Some folks would bring turkeys or hams. Others would bring mashed potatoes or yams. There would be cranberry sauce, dressing, salad, pies. Those who were better off staying completely out of the kitchen would pick up cases of soda, or plates, cups and silverware.  

The event was a fine feast, but the meal also served as inspiration. Look what we’ve done, I exclaimed. This is just like writing a book! We will look at each of our projects like it was a meal. It starts with meat and potatoes, but some sides will spice it up.  

The meat for each write-up will describe the task—what we set out to do. For example, for low water crossings we will describe how culverts are removed and replaced with rock armored dips that are less likely to wash out when flash floods come raging through the canyon bottoms. When we write about fence building, we will explain how the boundary fence was destroyed by the fire and how we wanted to keep cattle off of the burn for three years to give the vegetation a chance to recover. 

The potatoes will be the part that explains what we ended up doing. For tree planting, we will describe how we rebuilt the greenhouses, collected seed by climbing trees, grew seedlings, and finally where we planted the trees. We can include lots of pictures of helicopters dropping straw, crew members sawing logs, excavators moving rocks, and school children planting seedlings. 

The side dishes will be the other stories that go along with each project. Some stories will be “healthy” (i.e. substantial), such as the section on log erosion barriers; one sidebar story may describe how to fall a tree along the contour with a chainsaw. Other stories might be more like dessert—for example, what happened when a group of workers ran into a bear and the guys took off running, leaving the girls to face the charging bruin. 

Winter is a traditional time for storytelling. With snow piling up in the woods, we are sharpening our pencils and flexing our fingers on the keyboards. Each day a new idea comes to us. We should write about how we used our operation plan when we needed to get a rescue helicopter to an employee that was stung by bees. We should let readers know that flash floods are still damaging people’s homes, even four years after the fire. We need to include a section on Planting Camp where tribal members were transformed into tribal entrepreneurs who contracted tree planting.  

We need to write a final report for the government. But if we really get into the heart of the story, perhaps there will be more readers than just the government bureaucrats interested in our tale. It will be hard to write a book—just like everything else we have done, it will be challenging. Each time we gather, our tribal Natural Resource Director Phil Stago, Jr. likes to remind us that sharing food is an important Apache tradition. So if we have some stories to share, thinking of them like meals may be the tastiest way to avoid writer’s block.

This article first appeared in The Forester’s Log, a syndicated monthly column published in newspapers and magazines primarily in the American West. Mary Stuever is the Burn Area Emergency Rehabilitation Coordinator for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.