Steve Pyne: fifteen years with the North Rim Longshots (a Grand Canyon fire-fighting team); Arizona State University professor burning candles in both history and ecology; today's torchbearer in the blazing lineage of American environmental historians (George Marsh, John Wesley Powell, Carl Sauer); and our long-distance fuel, accelerant, oxidizer, spark, flame, and embers for this issue. I consider him the issue's co-editor.
How does he know so much? You exhaust your intake reading him on the ecobuage or essartage fire/fallow cycle of France, and then on you go to Russia, or the need-fire of Ireland, or fire-stick firming in Australia, or slash-and-burn in Brazil. His fire spread is staggering, especially on the cultural centrality of fire, forestry, and agricultural practices--and also on the transitions from natural to aboriginal to agricultural to industrial to intermixed combustion. Smoking scholarship, burning prose, glowing metaphors.
Especially appealing are Steve's sympathies for those whose daily lives are intimate with open fire: the Smokejumpers, fire/fallow peasants, pastoralists. In them, he finds an antidote for our unbalanced pyrophobia. He looks to the ethical teachings of those who watch fire, think about it, implying that responsibility for such a flamboyant phenomenon (balancing fuel, flame, light and heat, and desire) is a balance between honoring open adventurous "free" flames and tending/caring for more focused utilitarian fire and heat. I couldn't agree more: fire (and water), the great gurus of Gaia.
A Body of Work
Where to start? America's Fires (1997; see page 64) is Steve's easiest, short (fifty-four-page) entree into wildland and forest fires and our changing cultural paradigms. World Fire (1995) is the gem of cross-cultural fire comparisons and is the most contemporary in its pursuits. Vestal Fire (1997), Steve's most recent, carries a denser wisdom, a melding of the previous eight books. It lays out the Roman origin and spread of the "imperial" European fire ideologies to the neo-Europes (the colonies) of the planet. Vestal Fire is a War and Peace-scale tome, good for many all-nighters.
Fire in America (1982) was the first in his fire cycle. Though Steve explains its limitations in his new intro (1997), his passionate desire to describe the importance of fire in human history and his closeness to his firefighter experience infuse this volume with a specific pyrophylic, pyromantic intimacy. It sets the tone, his respect for those close to fire's daily workings, for their experiential wisdom versus the academy's mind-bound, isolated ruminations. Burning Bush (1991) is about Australia, but even more about Steve's understanding that fire can be a form of cultivation, a fire-stick agriculture. For Fire on the Rim (1995), see page 67.
I think you get the idea. This is an unprecedented body of work in the history of American letters and, despite my anticipating that each book will repeat too much of the last, it doesn't! Fire has never had a better friend, benefactor, or keeper of the flame.
VESTAL FIRE
VESTAL FIRE An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World
1997; 659 pp. $34.95. University of Washington Press.
"... if fire is a point of discord, it is also a means of integration. It remains a focus, literally--its Latin roots meaning "hearth," and also altar, home, and family--for any human engagement with our surroundings.--WORLD FIRE
"Apart from outright war, almost any form of social unrest, from political protest to economic sabotage to insurrection, has quickly translated into fire. Citizens vote with the torch. --WORLD FIRE
"On the Rim we discussed fife endlessly: there was almost nothing else that mattered. We described our fires' quirks while hunched over ration coffee on late-night firelines, we compared our fires' ease and misery when we returned to the fire cache, we sang and cursed our fires at the saloon. They all, each one, had a personality. There were charmed fires and ugly fires, glorious fires and fires that were existentially wretched, fires rich with loose dirt and mean fires that burned amid nothing but roots and rocks. There were fires that hurt, fires that hummed, fires that inspired, fires that infuriated. The character of the fire determined our experience.
And that was how I would write about historic fires, about fire in toto. --FIRE IN AMERICA
"But industrialization has gone further. Much as early hominids sought to replace the flame with the torch, and as early agriculturists sought to substitute domesticated burning for wildfire, so modernized societies have striven to replace wildland combustion with industrial combustion. The furnace supercedes the hearth; the power of fire engines, the power of torches. The critical environments are mechanical, literally within machines, and those portions of the atmosphere and biosphere that directly exchange gases with them. Combustion is no longer necessarily even associated with flame. This has rendered the status of anthropogenic burning unclear.... --WORLD FIRE
"The agronomic [fire/fallow] circle would close, only when humans could import energy and materials from outside the prevailing ecosphere. That process began with overseas colonies, which became an outfield to Europe's infield; but it achieved its apogee when fossil fallows replaced living, and fire was sublimated into machines. Coal and petroleum --extracted from sources far removed from existing ecosystems--poured into the agricultural economy like an infusion of plundered treasure. Applied to fields they brought fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; inside internal combustion engines, they rendered obsolete the fodder-demanding horse, donkey, and ox; embedded within a global economy of capital and trade, they shrank the agrarian circle to a vanishing point.... this new agriculture, flush with imported biotic bullion, began literally redesigning the rural landscape with the fanaticism of a modernist architect. Banning fallow abolished a good bit of biodiversity and imposed its own ecological costs--an inflationary spiral of excess chemicals that piled up on land, seeped into water, and clouded the air. --VESTAL FIRE
"It is not just that fire may be changing world climate, but that the climate of world opinion is compelling a change in our ancient relationship to fire.... --VESTAL FIRE
"All the indigenes had fire....
Fire was there, and it remained for Europeans to define new relationships. In Madagascar they redirected it, in Hispanola they suppressed it, in New Zealand they co-opted it, in Indonesia they intensified it, and in Tasmania they exterminated and replaced it. At Easter Island they reclaimed an isle already colonized, degraded, and abandoned. At Jamaica they deconstructed a settled landscape and then repopulated it with new plants, animals, and peoples. Everywhere, smoke by day and flame by night was, in the words of Captain James Cook, "a Certain sign that the Country is inhabited." Natives set fires that confirmed their presence. Castaways lit signal fires to aid their escape. Fire and people--to find one was to find the other. --VESTAL FIRE
FIRE IN AMERICA
FIRE IN AMERICA A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire
"... if fire is a point of discord, it is also a means of integration. It remains a focus, literally--its Latin roots meaning "hearth," and also altar, home, and family--for any human engagement with our surroundings.--WORLD FIRE
"Apart from outright war, almost any form of social unrest, from political protest to economic sabotage to insurrection, has quickly translated into fire. Citizens vote with the torch. --WORLD FIRE
"On the Rim we discussed fife endlessly: there was almost nothing else that mattered. We described our fires' quirks while hunched over ration coffee on late-night firelines, we compared our fires' ease and misery when we returned to the fire cache, we sang and cursed our fires at the saloon. They all, each one, had a personality. There were charmed fires and ugly fires, glorious fires and fires that were existentially wretched, fires rich with loose dirt and mean fires that burned amid nothing but roots and rocks. There were fires that hurt, fires that hummed, fires that inspired, fires that infuriated. The character of the fire determined our experience.
And that was how I would write about historic fires, about fire in toto. --FIRE IN AMERICA
"But industrialization has gone further. Much as early hominids sought to replace the flame with the torch, and as early agriculturists sought to substitute domesticated burning for wildfire, so modernized societies have striven to replace wildland combustion with industrial combustion. The furnace supercedes the hearth; the power of fire engines, the power of torches. The critical environments are mechanical, literally within machines, and those portions of the atmosphere and biosphere that directly exchange gases with them. Combustion is no longer necessarily even associated with flame. This has rendered the status of anthropogenic burning unclear.... --WORLD FIRE
"The agronomic [fire/fallow] circle would close, only when humans could import energy and materials from outside the prevailing ecosphere. That process began with overseas colonies, which became an outfield to Europe's infield; but it achieved its apogee when fossil fallows replaced living, and fire was sublimated into machines. Coal and petroleum --extracted from sources far removed from existing ecosystems--poured into the agricultural economy like an infusion of plundered treasure. Applied to fields they brought fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; inside internal combustion engines, they rendered obsolete the fodder-demanding horse, donkey, and ox; embedded within a global economy of capital and trade, they shrank the agrarian circle to a vanishing point.... this new agriculture, flush with imported biotic bullion, began literally redesigning the rural landscape with the fanaticism of a modernist architect. Banning fallow abolished a good bit of biodiversity and imposed its own ecological costs--an inflationary spiral of excess chemicals that piled up on land, seeped into water, and clouded the air. --VESTAL FIRE
"It is not just that fire may be changing world climate, but that the climate of world opinion is compelling a change in our ancient relationship to fire.... --VESTAL FIRE
"All the indigenes had fire....
Fire was there, and it remained for Europeans to define new relationships. In Madagascar they redirected it, in Hispanola they suppressed it, in New Zealand they co-opted it, in Indonesia they intensified it, and in Tasmania they exterminated and replaced it. At Easter Island they reclaimed an isle already colonized, degraded, and abandoned. At Jamaica they deconstructed a settled landscape and then repopulated it with new plants, animals, and peoples. Everywhere, smoke by day and flame by night was, in the words of Captain James Cook, "a Certain sign that the Country is inhabited." Natives set fires that confirmed their presence. Castaways lit signal fires to aid their escape. Fire and people--to find one was to find the other. --VESTAL FIRE
BURNING BUSH
BURNING BUSH A Fire History of Australia
1991; 520 pp. $24.95. University of Washington Press.
"... if fire is a point of discord, it is also a means of integration. It remains a focus, literally--its Latin roots meaning "hearth," and also altar, home, and family--for any human engagement with our surroundings.--WORLD FIRE
"Apart from outright war, almost any form of social unrest, from political protest to economic sabotage to insurrection, has quickly translated into fire. Citizens vote with the torch. --WORLD FIRE
"On the Rim we discussed fife endlessly: there was almost nothing else that mattered. We described our fires' quirks while hunched over ration coffee on late-night firelines, we compared our fires' ease and misery when we returned to the fire cache, we sang and cursed our fires at the saloon. They all, each one, had a personality. There were charmed fires and ugly fires, glorious fires and fires that were existentially wretched, fires rich with loose dirt and mean fires that burned amid nothing but roots and rocks. There were fires that hurt, fires that hummed, fires that inspired, fires that infuriated. The character of the fire determined our experience.
And that was how I would write about historic fires, about fire in toto. --FIRE IN AMERICA
"But industrialization has gone further. Much as early hominids sought to replace the flame with the torch, and as early agriculturists sought to substitute domesticated burning for wildfire, so modernized societies have striven to replace wildland combustion with industrial combustion. The furnace supercedes the hearth; the power of fire engines, the power of torches. The critical environments are mechanical, literally within machines, and those portions of the atmosphere and biosphere that directly exchange gases with them. Combustion is no longer necessarily even associated with flame. This has rendered the status of anthropogenic burning unclear.... --WORLD FIRE
"The agronomic [fire/fallow] circle would close, only when humans could import energy and materials from outside the prevailing ecosphere. That process began with overseas colonies, which became an outfield to Europe's infield; but it achieved its apogee when fossil fallows replaced living, and fire was sublimated into machines. Coal and petroleum --extracted from sources far removed from existing ecosystems--poured into the agricultural economy like an infusion of plundered treasure. Applied to fields they brought fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; inside internal combustion engines, they rendered obsolete the fodder-demanding horse, donkey, and ox; embedded within a global economy of capital and trade, they shrank the agrarian circle to a vanishing point.... this new agriculture, flush with imported biotic bullion, began literally redesigning the rural landscape with the fanaticism of a modernist architect. Banning fallow abolished a good bit of biodiversity and imposed its own ecological costs--an inflationary spiral of excess chemicals that piled up on land, seeped into water, and clouded the air. --VESTAL FIRE
"It is not just that fire may be changing world climate, but that the climate of world opinion is compelling a change in our ancient relationship to fire.... --VESTAL FIRE
"All the indigenes had fire....
Fire was there, and it remained for Europeans to define new relationships. In Madagascar they redirected it, in Hispanola they suppressed it, in New Zealand they co-opted it, in Indonesia they intensified it, and in Tasmania they exterminated and replaced it. At Easter Island they reclaimed an isle already colonized, degraded, and abandoned. At Jamaica they deconstructed a settled landscape and then repopulated it with new plants, animals, and peoples. Everywhere, smoke by day and flame by night was, in the words of Captain James Cook, "a Certain sign that the Country is inhabited." Natives set fires that confirmed their presence. Castaways lit signal fires to aid their escape. Fire and people--to find one was to find the other. --VESTAL FIRE
WORLD FIRE
WORLD FIRE The Culture of Fire on Earth
1995; 379 pp. $30. Henry Holt and Company.
"... if fire is a point of discord, it is also a means of integration. It remains a focus, literally--its Latin roots meaning "hearth," and also altar, home, and family--for any human engagement with our surroundings.--WORLD FIRE
"Apart from outright war, almost any form of social unrest, from political protest to economic sabotage to insurrection, has quickly translated into fire. Citizens vote with the torch. --WORLD FIRE
"On the Rim we discussed fife endlessly: there was almost nothing else that mattered. We described our fires' quirks while hunched over ration coffee on late-night firelines, we compared our fires' ease and misery when we returned to the fire cache, we sang and cursed our fires at the saloon. They all, each one, had a personality. There were charmed fires and ugly fires, glorious fires and fires that were existentially wretched, fires rich with loose dirt and mean fires that burned amid nothing but roots and rocks. There were fires that hurt, fires that hummed, fires that inspired, fires that infuriated. The character of the fire determined our experience.
And that was how I would write about historic fires, about fire in toto. --FIRE IN AMERICA
"But industrialization has gone further. Much as early hominids sought to replace the flame with the torch, and as early agriculturists sought to substitute domesticated burning for wildfire, so modernized societies have striven to replace wildland combustion with industrial combustion. The furnace supercedes the hearth; the power of fire engines, the power of torches. The critical environments are mechanical, literally within machines, and those portions of the atmosphere and biosphere that directly exchange gases with them. Combustion is no longer necessarily even associated with flame. This has rendered the status of anthropogenic burning unclear.... --WORLD FIRE
"The agronomic [fire/fallow] circle would close, only when humans could import energy and materials from outside the prevailing ecosphere. That process began with overseas colonies, which became an outfield to Europe's infield; but it achieved its apogee when fossil fallows replaced living, and fire was sublimated into machines. Coal and petroleum --extracted from sources far removed from existing ecosystems--poured into the agricultural economy like an infusion of plundered treasure. Applied to fields they brought fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; inside internal combustion engines, they rendered obsolete the fodder-demanding horse, donkey, and ox; embedded within a global economy of capital and trade, they shrank the agrarian circle to a vanishing point.... this new agriculture, flush with imported biotic bullion, began literally redesigning the rural landscape with the fanaticism of a modernist architect. Banning fallow abolished a good bit of biodiversity and imposed its own ecological costs--an inflationary spiral of excess chemicals that piled up on land, seeped into water, and clouded the air. --VESTAL FIRE
"It is not just that fire may be changing world climate, but that the climate of world opinion is compelling a change in our ancient relationship to fire.... --VESTAL FIRE
"All the indigenes had fire....
Fire was there, and it remained for Europeans to define new relationships. In Madagascar they redirected it, in Hispanola they suppressed it, in New Zealand they co-opted it, in Indonesia they intensified it, and in Tasmania they exterminated and replaced it. At Easter Island they reclaimed an isle already colonized, degraded, and abandoned. At Jamaica they deconstructed a settled landscape and then repopulated it with new plants, animals, and peoples. Everywhere, smoke by day and flame by night was, in the words of Captain James Cook, "a Certain sign that the Country is inhabited." Natives set fires that confirmed their presence. Castaways lit signal fires to aid their escape. Fire and people--to find one was to find the other. --VESTAL FIRE
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