A FOREST FIRE ESSAY 



709 



orable, if not wholly pleasant episodes in his own busy 

 career. If, on the other hand he has fought large fires 

 with crews of the transient "Wobbly" labor of the West, 

 he may be tempted to transpose Stevenson's euphonious 

 phrase and say with some vehemence, "like the devil they 

 will work." 



The meteorologist may find theme for a volume in the 

 statement, "not only the pleasant groves are destroyed ; 

 the climate and the soil are equally at stake, and these 

 fires prevent the rains of next winter, and dry up peren- 

 nial fountains." The value of the forest for watershed 

 protection and for its ameliorating effect on climate was 

 noted by this canny and observant Scot at least as long 

 as thirty years since, and a fitting warning sounded. For- 

 esters today, however, are unwilling to take quite so 

 decided a stand on the question of the forest's climatic 

 influence. 



"California has been a land of promise in its time, like 

 Palestine ; but if the woods continue so swiftly to perish, 

 it may become, like Palestine, a land of desolation." Cali- 

 fornia has been ! Consider such a warning ! Well, Cali- 

 fornia elected a president in 1916. It may never do so 

 again, and the scene of desolation may well be more 

 definitely forcasted in the arid wording of the Eighteenth 

 Amendment. Who other than California's native sons 

 will gainsay the author's prophetic vision. 



To quote further, Stevenson says : 



"To visit the woods while they are languidly burning 

 is a strange piece of experience. The fire passes through 

 the underbrush at a run. Every here and there a tree 

 flares up instantaneously from root to summit, scattering 

 tufts of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. 

 But this last is only in semblance. For after this squib- 

 like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there re- 

 mains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the 

 very entrails of the tree. The resin of the pitch pine is 

 principally condensed at the base of the bole and in the 

 spreading roots. Thus, after the light, showy, skirmishing 

 flames, which are only as the match to the explosion, 

 have already scampered down the wind into the dis- 

 tance, the true harm is but beginning for this giant of 

 the woods. You may approach the tree from one side, 

 and see it, scorched indeed from top to bottom, but appar- 

 ently survivor of the peril. Make a circuit, and there, 

 on the other side of the column, is a clear mass of living 

 coal, spreading like an ulcer, while underground, to their 

 most extended fibre, the roots are being eaten out by 

 fire, and the smoke is rising through the fissures to the 

 surface. A little while, and without a word of warning, 

 the huge pine tree snaps ofif short across the ground, and 

 falls prostrate with a crash. Meanwhile, the fire con- 

 tinues its silent business ; the roots are reduced to a fine 

 ash; and long afterwards, if you pass by, you will find 

 the earth pierced with radiating galleries, and preserving 

 the design of all these subterranean spurs, as though it 

 were the mould for a new tree instead of the print of 

 an old one." 



Accurate and vivid description this, to have been 

 written by one of but scant experience with fire. The 



light burning "Piute" forester will do well to note the 

 casual observer's record of "a deep-rooted and consuming 

 fire in the very entrails of the tree." Perhaps this con- 

 suming fire gained ingress through the scar of a previous 

 "Piute" fire. Doubtless, too, the tree whose roots "are 

 reduced to a fine ash," are those afflicted with a butt rot 

 or some form of root decay, for it is a rare thing for 

 green sound wood in large trees to burn in the most 

 severe forest fire, or even in the deep-rooted consuming 

 fire that follows a crown or surface blaze. 



Stevenson continues with a warning, timely thirty years 

 since, anent the danger that an interesting species con- 

 fined to a narrow range may become extinct unless pro- 

 tected against the arch enemy of the forest. 



"These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the single 

 exception of the Monterey cypress, the most fantastic of 

 forest trees. No words can give an idea of the contortion 

 of their growth ; they might figure without change in a 

 circle of the nether hell as Dante pictured it ; and at the 

 rate at which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring 

 up and gallop through the hills of California, we may 

 look forward to a time when there will not be one of 

 them left standing in that land of their nativity. At 

 least they have not so much to fear from the ax, but 

 perish by what may be called a natural although violent 

 death ; while it is man in his short-sighted greed that 

 robs the country of the nobler redwood. Yet a little 

 while and perhaps all the hills of seaboard California may 

 be as bald as Tamalpais." 



A sober warning this : "Yet a little while and per- 

 haps all the hills of seaboard California may be as bald as 

 Tamalpais." Whoever has seen Tamalpais with its bald 

 dome can appreciate the strength of the simile. 



There follows then a lively account of the author's own 

 intimate experience with fire in the forest ; an experience 

 so unusual, yet so exactly in accordance with human 

 nature, especially tenderfoot human nature, that it ap- 

 peals to one at once as being a true account of one of 

 those exasperatingly foolish acts in which every one is 

 from time to time overtaken, ^the kind of inspiration 

 which usually ends in humilitation and which occasionally 

 is rewarded by a tragedy. 



"I have an interest of my own in these forest fires, for 

 I came so near lynching on one occasion that a braver 

 man might have retained a thrill from the experience. I 

 wished to be certain whether it was moss, that quaint 

 funeral ornament of Californian forests, which blazed 

 up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. I 

 suppose I must have been under the influence of Satan, 

 for instead of plucking off a piece for my experiment, 

 what should I do but walk up to a great pine tree in a 

 portion of the wood which had escaped so much as 

 scorching, strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly 

 to one of the tassels. The tree went off simply like a 

 rocket ; in three seconds it was a roaring pillar of fire. 

 Close by I could hear the shouts of those who were at 

 work combating the original conflagration. I could see 

 the wagon that had brought them tied to a live-oak in a 

 piece of open ; I could even catch the flash of an ax as 

 it swung up through the underwood into the sunlight. 



