Reflections on a Burned Landscape

By Mary Stuever

February 2005

This article was first publsihed in 2004 in The Forester's Log, a monthly newspaper column by the author syndicated in the southwest.  Reprinted here with permission.

In early morning hours on the burn, as the day’s first rays of light caress the hills, and leave each subtle swale in shadow, I am enamored with this landscape.  Mother Nature is exposed, stripped of her usual cloak of forest cloth, to reveal each limestone outcrop, each dip, each rise, every curve, every scar…like an erotic lover posing for the artist.  I steal embarrassed glances and marvel at my opportunity to love this land. 

I am surrounded by magic, bugling elk, a setting moon, and fields of mullein that—when one scrunches down like a leprechaun—form forests of fuzzy-leafed stalks. The blackened skeletons of the ghost forest dance in the early morning light, casting long shadows when the golden orb peeks over the eastern ridge.  Each pebble and rock beneath my feet momentarily casts a quick shadow in the initial rays.  

Last fall when I first traversed this spur ridge, a colleague had brought me here to consider erosion control actions that might save the soil.  We were too late.  In the spring, there had been soil, at least six inches deep, he had explained.  After the late summer rains, we gingerly picked our way among a rock field, careful not to twist an ankle in the pavement of cobble that was now the exposed sub-flooring of burnt forest. On this particular slope, in a fragile geologic moment of exposure, an isolated burst from a thunderstorm had washed away soil that had been hundreds of thousands of years in the making. On nearby ridges and spurs the soil was spared, at least temporarily. If our meager efforts take hold, we might make a difference in stabilizing these slopes.  

My job is to coordinate multiple projects addressing stabilization and rehabilitation in recently burned areas of the White Mountain Apache Tribal Lands. I work in ecosystems that seem devastated, but I am continually surprised and awed by their resiliency.  In 2002 the Rodeo and Chediski fires burned just under 280,000 acres on the Fort Apache Reservation in east central Arizona. In 2003, the Kinishba fire burned an additional 25,000 acres.  In the aftermath of these fires, we plant trees, monitor vegetation recovery, clean culverts, stabilize banks to protect farm fields, archeological sites, and roads, protect springs, build fences, catch wild horses, and a multitude of other tasks that mitigate the impacts of high intensity burning on this landscape. 

The initial reaction most people have when entering this realm is one of sadness and regret.  The tribal members I work with have generations of memory of this landscape when the hills were carpeted in green forests.  It was not a forest that offered vistas.  Yet the vistas now from these burned-out ridges are stunning; as are the slopes of graceful grasses rippling in the breeze; or the bubbling joy of springs that prior to the burn gurgled only in the memories of tribal elders. 

Since the Rodeo-Chediski fire, access to this region has been limited to those working in the area.  It has been a danger zone of falling trees and flash floods. As the transition from emergency stabilization shifts to ecosystem restoration, the challenge the tribe faces is not only to reclaim the land, but the spirit of the land.  In an effort one colleague dubbed “The Return of the Native,” our goals include reconnecting people to the land, ensuring a natural role for fire in the newly developing landscape, and aggressively removing exotic vegetation accidentally introduced during suppression, salvage, and stabilization actions. 

However, if this post-fire phase is anything like the last two years, it is the land herself that will define this process.  In the early morning light, as I sit gazing out on ridges and valleys with cameras, pen, and paper in hand, full moon setting, elk bugling, and the distant chainsaws of my rehabilitation crews humming, I am full of hope and awe and humbled by the opportunity to witness this incredible recovery as it unfolds.