The Coming Great Misfortune

It is curious how men of science can survey a charred ruin where once stood a noble forest, stroke their beards solemnly, and declare, “Well, that was unexpected.”

For years, the custodians of the land hemmed and hawed over a proper course of action for the Beaver Creek Pinery, that noble stand of ancient ponderosa pines and black oaks in the Lassen National Forest’s Ishi Wilderness. It was a singularly fine example of how the woods should look—before men and their big ideas came along.

Never been logged, never tamed, never persuaded to submit to civilization, and thus, like all things in the path of progress and its remarkable inertia, it met its doom in due course. The Park Fire, being of an industrious disposition, made short work of it. What generations of men had debated, the fire decided in an afternoon.

And now, the same men of science who once debated its treatment stand beside its ashes and find it a “cautionary tale.” If that is not the most polite term for “we should have seen this coming,” I do not know what is.

But fret not, for this is no isolated instance of nature giving our best-laid plans the back of its hand. No, the grand scholars of fire modeling have cast their worried glances toward another stand of trees, for this one perched on a spit of land in Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay State Park.

The Emerald Point stand, a fine collection of ponderosa pines, Jeffrey pines, and California incense cedar, has been deemed “at high risk”—a term which, when translated from the dialect of scholars, means “will burn down at the first opportunity.”

A man named Hugh Safford, wise in the ways of trees, notes that the stand is an “extraordinary place” and that its inhabitants are of a truly massive persuasion. But extraordinary places have an unfortunate tendency to meet extraordinary fates.

Much like Beaver Creek before it, the stand has not seen a proper fire in over a century, becoming a rather insufferable mess of overgrown underbrush, dead limbs, and assorted woodland detritus. It is a place where a man may enter and never be seen again—not by design, but simply because there is no clear path out.

Now, the good folks of the Forest Service meant well. In 1935, they established the 10 a.m. policy, which dictated that all fires must be subdued by 10 a.m. the morning after being reported.

The policy remained in place for decades, during which time men congratulated themselves for conquering fire as the trees—unconsulted on the matter—grew denser and more combustible with each passing year. Thus, nature–doing some tidying up, added a gentle burn now and then to evade the grander spectacle of total immolation.

Meanwhile, scientists are now suggesting thinning and controlled burning–for fear that a stray cigarette might reduce the Emerald Point stand to an impressive heap of glowing embers. One cannot help but admire their optimism, thinking men will act before a disaster rather than after it.

The tale of Lake Tahoe’s forests is old, tied up with the silver mines of Nevada, where timber was felled not for fire but for fortune. The miners of the Comstock found that their silver was inclined to collapse upon them—a habit most unwelcome—so they turned their gaze to the vast, timber-laden slopes of the Tahoe Basin.

And thus, by saw and axe, two billion board feet of lumber were spirited away to prop up the ambitions of silver men. The Emerald Point stand, however, escaped the worst of it, spared by the whims of landowners whose luck or disinterest preserved its trees from the saw.

But luck only lasts so long. Rob Griffith of California State Parks acknowledges that the stand hasn’t gotten the treatment because it is out of the way and because men are generally inclined to apply effort only where inconvenience is minimal.

However, the scholars at UC Davis and the University of Nevada, Reno, have produced a study showing what any man with common sense could have told you—if action is untaken–the trees will surely burn.

And so, the great debate begins again.

Shall men of science and policy take action, or shall they stand amongst the embers of Emerald Point in some not-so-distant future, solemnly stroking their beards and declaring, “Well, that was unexpected”?

It remains unseen, but history, as it tends to do, suggests an answer.