FIRE!

Fire in Hyampom still crackling.

Could we flip back through history a hundred-thousand years before Columbus, or ten minutes before landfall, we would fine immense forests scattered across the earth and near the Pacific Ocean, some trees three-hundred feet tall and thirty-five feet around at their base. Most of the forests would appear like a manacured state/federal park, clear of underbrush, deadfalls, dry limbs, needles and leaves turning to duff just waiting for a spark.
The forests, like much life upon this continent, were no accident. That they looked like they were manicured is because they had been (forever) before the penetration of Europeans. Forests were full of life and were like a supermarket/mall for the natives. Animals, birds, eggs, nuts, excitement and adventure flourished everywhere. Therefore it was a duty for the natives to clean the forests and to encourage life to visit there, and it was an honor to "talk for" the forests in ceremony and prayer. Loving earth with a deep respect has always been the "way" of indigenous of this hemisphere.
During fall season entire tribes went into the forest and gathered dead limbs and debris, the brush, leaves, needles and cones. They made pilesof the dead and drying materials and covered the piles with bark slabs, abundant on an old windfall where much of the debris was piled. Then they waited for the proper time. At the proper time they took pitch torches into the forest setting the piles on fire.
Why, ten, didn't the fire "get away" and burn millions of acres, maybe for months, since there was no fire crew, helicopters or foam and other fire retardants? It was because the "right time" to burn the forest piles, was during first snow. First snow the wind is usually calm, forest is damp, humidity perfect.
Today the little town of Hyampom in northern California is surrounded by fire and evacuations are constant as fire rushes with the wind and calmly eats its way up or down the ridge, thriving under duff, and sparks of duff are wind-carried across fire lines that a crew of a hundred men have been laboring all week to establish. Spark touches tinder and grows quickly to a threat.
The old timers knew the "first snow" routine and followed it. U. S. Forest Service and modern civilization seem to be attracted to forests matted with undergrowth and deadfalls while spending much money to get control of a fire that should never have had the opportunity to start, by lightning or by match.

Sul'ma'ejote