Diary - what Dixie fire left behind
Some thought on fires. I guess it’s easy to dismiss the topic when it doesn’t affect you directly.
But my last couple of weeks have been a lot about walking the burn areas and around burning fires so there you have it, the grim part of the PCT.
I have walked through almost a 100 miles of forest, burnt down by the Dixie fire in 2021. A lot of hikers decided to skip this section, because really, it offers no beautiful views. But I think it offers perspective, and more people should do it.
Before I even walked it, riding a bus in Mammoth Lakes, I received a short lecture by a man sitting nearby, a lawyer who worked on wildfire cases for decades. He said that over his time working, tree crown fires have increased a lot, mainly due to logging. With thick forests, less light gets to the ground and less bushes grow there. Trunks of big trees are able to withstand the fire, if there isn’t enough fuel (aka bush) for it to reach the crown of the tree. Once the big trees are logged, more light gets to the ground, more bushes grow. Paired with debris from logging this is ideal fuel for monstrous fires that burn the entire length of the tree and spread faster. Add drought to it, and all you need is a lightning or a casually dropped cigarette and you can burn half a state.
And yes, yes, I know, it’s a big complicated topic, you can’t reduce it to a single sentence and say “cutting trees is bad”, it’s not that simple. But why don’t you try walking the burn areas? Or driving even, it would take long enough before you see green color.
Dixie fire burnt almost a million acres. Ever tried looking at a million acres of burnt forest?
When you stand on the top of the hill and everything, as far as you can see, is burnt, when you walk for days and days among coal-black tree skeletons, where ground has turned to blackish, glistening dust, where it’s so quiet because no animal lives there, but an occasional squirrel or a bird, and most of the sounds are only of the branches and trees breaking with the slightest breeze. When you talk to the locals who have lost houses and trucks to fire, or walk in smoke and realize that some years they live in smoke for months. It may be complicated business, but when you are there, taking all of that in, it seems very plain and simple.
And here are some inspiration pics for your next trip to ikea.
