Prescribed Fire Awareness

Headed home from a burn in the northern reaches of our state I found myself in a sea of red and white and all of the other colors that can come with highway driving beneath the stars. Some headed north, others south like me, I wondered how many knew or even cared to know what Prescribed Fire actually is. Like a line of fire sizzling up a broomesedge slope, my thoughts rapidly expanded to cover the entirety of our great country and even the rest of the world – how many know what good fires do? How many exhibit prescribed fire awareness?

My Path to Awareness

As a kid my nanny would rake leaves in her yard every Fall. The piles would be just big enough for a 5 or 6 year old to hide in but not quite big enough to buffer the pain of your knees hitting hard, rocky georgeville gravelly loam. Soon the smell of Fall literally burning into existence would fill the air around us. These represent my first memories of any sort of “prescribed fire” and, if I close my eyes and look back hard enough into the 1980s I can still see my nanny standing there with a rake in one hand and a Virginia Slim in the other, the smoke of two varieties filling the air around her.

Today Prescribed Fire has taken on a whole new meaning for me. Each year we try to burn as many acres as we possibly can to improve the flora and fauna of the North Carolina forests we’re fortunate to steward.  A byproduct of our efforts, especially after multiple burns over a period of years, is a land protected from the ravaging rage of wildfire.  By speeding up the decomposition of downed woody debris, and keeping finer fuels in check, the lands we steward are safer, and teeming with wild things!   

At age 28, at a land management convention in Nashville, TN, I was privileged to hear Dr. Craig Harper and others rave on the benefits of controlled woods burning to improve wildlife habitat. A few months later, in 2013, I’d find myself at Montgomery Community College in Troy, NC participating in the Certified Burner Course. I was doing what I could to improve my own “Prescribed Fire Awareness”.  I went into that course with almost zero knowledge of what it takes to conduct a prescribed burn. And, while I surely learned some things and passed the quiz at the end, I’d be lying if I told you that I was anywhere near ready to go out and put fire on the ground in any capacity. Over the next 3 years I bought and read books like “Conducting Prescribed Fires: A Comprehensive Manual” by John Weir. I scoured the internet and watched videos online. But, none of that compares to actual experience in the field and having a great mentor! Reading and watching is one thing, applying is another.

Prescribed Fire Awareness isn’t necessarily becoming a certified burner, burn boss, or even an extra hand on burn day. It doesn’t mean that you have to take the same class I did, read the same books, or help your nanny burn leaves as a kid. It might be taking the time to study the benefits of good fire; asking questions, voicing ideas, or being supportive in some capacity. At the end of the day, your own awareness, knowledge, and perception of prescribed fire may very well light the path to the awareness, knowledge, or perception of another. Whether good or bad, other people absorb what you spew out, just as readily as dry pine needles absorb the flaming diesel and gas mixture dripping from the end of a torch. So, best make it positive and focus on ideas every chance you get.

Two different paths, same destination! 

While your own path to awareness will likely be different than mine, it may very well be because we love and appreciate some of the same things – Whitetail Deer, Wild Turkey, Bobwhite Quail, Songbirds, Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers, Wildflowers, Pollinators, Native Grasses & Forbs, Longleaf Pine Ecosystems, Hardwood Savannas and so much more. Or, it might be because you just want to protect yourself and others from some of the deadly conflagrations you’ve read about or watched unfold on the news – disastrous wildfires that might very well be avoided with more of the prescribed variety.   Good Fire is a rejuvenating force; it is a wall upon which wildfire crashes and burns out of fuel. Like burning leaves and cigarettes, wildfires and prescribed fires emit smoke of two varieties – one much more harmful than the other. Where wildfires can be hell bent on absolute destruction, gluttonously devouring homes, towns, wildlife, and even people, prescribed fires have been and always will be our best tool to combat them. What we burn on our terms today, can’t burn on nature’s terms tomorrow.

10 years into soaking up all I can about RxFire and 7 years into actually putting fire on the ground, I don’t plan on stopping. For me, it’s a soul stirring moment – Every time I carry a torch, watch embers from a snag dance in the night, or smell the heartwood of an old pine burning back into the earth from whence it came, I am both here and there at the same time. Here in the present and there with all of those before me who prescriptively set the woods ablaze for the many of the same reasons that I do today.  To see the explosion of life in a woodland where sunlight and fire work in tandem to create it, is a defining moment of stewardship.  Much has changed in the decades since my childhood in the small town of Robbins, NC. My Nanny has now been burning the leaves of heaven since October 2018 – no doubt with the same grit and fiery nature that she helped instill in me to fight for and protect the things you love and believe in. Kim and I have four beautiful kids that we’re doing our best to raise among the wilder things in life – among Sycamore roots exposed by a cascade of water; among briars, brambles, and birds of fire; among brownstone outcrops and thundering gobbles; immersed in a wild life manipulated by good fire – fully aware of its purpose in safeguarding all that we love.