The Spell of the Rockies

by Enos A. Mills

For days I wandered over the mountains, going from fire to smoke and studying burns new and old. One comparatively level tract had been fireswept in 1791. On this the soil was good. Lodge-pole pine had promptly restocked the burn, but these trees were now being smothered out by a promising growth of Engelmann spruce.

A YELLOW PINE, FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER IT HAD BEEN KILLED BY FIRE

Fifty-seven years before my visit a fire had burned over about four thousand acres and was brought to a stand by a lake, a rocky ridge, and a wide fire-line that a snowslide had cleared through the woods. The surface of the burn was coarse, disintegrated granite and sloped toward the west, where it was exposed to prevailing high westerly winds. A few kinnikinnick rugs apparently were the only green things upon the surface, and only a close examination revealed a few stunted trees starting. It was almost barren. Erosion was still active; there were no roots to bind the finer particles together or to anchor them in place. One of the most striking features of the entire burn was that the trees killed by the fire fifty-seven years ago were standing where they died. They had excellent root-anchorage in the shattered surface, and many of them probably would remain erect for years. The fire that killed them had been a hot one, and it had burned away most of the limbs, and had so thoroughly boiled the pitch through the exterior of the trunk that the wood was in an excellent state of preservation.

Another old burn visited was a small one in an Engelmann spruce forest on a moderate northern slope. It had been stopped while burning in very inflammable timber. It is probable that on this occasion either a rain or snow had saved the surrounding forest. The regrowth had slowly extended from the margin of the forest to the centre of the burn until it was restocked.

One morning I noticed two small fires a few miles down the mountain and went to examine them. Both were two days old, and both had started from unextinguished camp-fires. One had burned over about an acre and the other about four times that area. If the smaller had not been built against an old snag it probably would have gone out within a few hours after the congressman who built it moved camp. It was wind-sheltered and the blaze had traveled slowly in all directions and burned a ragged circle that was about sixty feet across.

The outline of the other blaze was that of a flattened ellipse, like the orbit of many a wandering comet in the sky. This had gone before the wind, and the windward end of its orbit closely encircled the place of origin. The camp-fire nucleus of this blaze had also been built in the wrong place,—against a fallen log which lay in a deep bed of decaying needles.

Of course each departing camper should put out his camp-fire. However, a camp-fire built on a humus-covered forest floor, or by a log, or against a dead tree, is one that is very difficult to extinguish. With the best of intentions one may deluge such a fire with water without destroying its potency. A fire thus secreted appears, like a lie, to have a spark of immortality in it.

A fire should not be built in contact with substances that will burn, for such fuel will prolong the fire's life and may lead it far into the forest. There is but little danger to the forest from a fire that is built upon rock, earth, sand, or gravel. A fire so built is isolated and it usually dies an early natural death. Such a fire—one built in a safe and sane place—is easily extinguished.