Leather Hinges
Incendiary Imbeciles #5
Blow-up conditions, fire-freed rocks blasting downhill, and stealthy snags falling without warning remain dangerous on all fires and keep ethical wildland firefighters vigilant for safety. But the privilege of being there often allows intimate observation of rudimentary ecosystem change.
Grizzly Bear territory in the past, no doubt. Will it become Grizzly territory again? Right now in this area, young subalpine fir and a lot of lodgepole pine seem to be crowding out the white bark pine that Grizzlies favor as food sources.
The wildfire we came to suppress slithered into moss and debris that had oozed into the cracks and ravines in this high elevation rocky terrain. We contained the fire using “light hand on the land” techniques rather than thrashing about heaps of trees and branches or mucking up the landscape with big piles of dirt. We often use “light hand.” And some firefighters say we’re lazy. But it’s better to abide and amend than pillage and ravage.
Effectively and efficiently we contained the fire and commenced mop-up. After a while, most of our crew went to our vagabond camp at the edge of the fire for a food-bag lunch. I stayed behind in accordance with our informal protocol to have someone on the fire at all times. When they returned, I went alone to fix instant coffee and eat canned spam. Standing in our trashed-out camp, watching my bum-styled cook-can for a good boil, my hardhat suddenly jumped off my head. I stepped forward, retrieved it, stood up and tried to put it back on my head. But now a bundle of pine needles roosted on my head, clamped down by my helmet. I looked behind me and saw that a good sized lodgepole pine had silently fallen right where I stood before I stepped forward to recover my hardhat.
Strangely, this falling tree did not have that terrifying crack and howling creak that all wildland firefighters know means a treacherous tree plunged down. Usually, the inner woody xylem violently snaps from the force and leverage of the tree's falling mass, then it creaks in a prolonged menacing screech as the tree plummets down. Here, no noise. Spooky! Still, the tree had the courtesy to brush off my helmet before it tried to brain me. Scary to realize that it made
barely any noise as it fell. It had made sort of a swooshing noise, like an owl flying by. But as it settled onto the ground, it seemed to murmur murderous muffled muttering as if speaking. Swoosh-whoosh-murmur-muffle. I swear it spoke French!
“Sacrebleu! Je voulais t'écraser chien cochon anglais, ta mère porte des bottes de l'armée espagnole, ma sœur t’aura la prochaine fois!”
Soon others in our group noticed that trees fell without a noise. Swoosh-whoosh, and then the murmur as the foliage settled onto the ground. They too swore these trees muttered in French! “Ta mère était un hamster et ton père sentait le ventre. Approche-toi et je te casserai le nez en tombant.”
Doren, who knew some French, claimed that a silent but deadly falling tree nearly KO’ed her and she swears she heard it murmur:
“Peut-être que j'espérais t'écraser quand je suis tombé! Vous etes une jeune femme idiote en chemise jaune peu flatteuse!”
Haunted! Insults they taunted! Still, we remained dedicated to our mopping-up. So we withstood these French swearing, tumbled trees and all their gaslighting French insults and curses. But we kept heads-up for those deadly, silent falling lodgepole pines.
Perhaps this old grove of trees had learned French from the ancient voyager French trappers who roamed these parts in search of furs. Now we wildland firefighters roam these parts and often only find firs. Fire suppression usually favors firs, eventually shading out the productive pines, and ruining the habitat for grizzlies and other wildlife.
Gradually, we determined what caused this silent falling phenomenon. It seems that the middle xylem of the tree became quite rotten. The fire burned easily in there, creating hollow cylinders in the lower tree trunk. The heat from the fire made the phloem, on the outside of the xylem beneath the bark, supple and flexible. That heated, now malleable, limber phloem moved like a leather hinge, connecting the stiff parts, but easy to open and shut, and silent as it flexed. Trees now fell without a noise. The leather hinges stifled the terrorizing, heart-stopping crack of healthy xylem’s breaking that announces “a big tree coming down.”
Perhaps we were interfering with a millennial continuity of low intensity natural fire entering the interior of trees where fungal rot had eaten away xylem. Fire makes sure that the taller Lodgepole pine falls over, and reduces competition for space, light, water, and soil nutrients. Perhaps that fungus has no effect on the shorter stockier white bark pines, which, after periodicnatural fires, would thrive and flourish in this area. Then grizzlies could come back, use this habitat, grow fat and thrive. Perhaps grizzlies still stealthily speak French.
