Fireside Tales
“Hear the loud alarum bells —
Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now — now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.”
-The Bells, Edgar Allan Poe
Song time at Howard Outdoor School filled the night air around the fire with sweet, newly-learned melodies. A circle of one hundred children, youth leaders, and adults sat on log benches around the central fire pit where a bonfire burned.
It was the last day that the sixth-grade students would be at the camp in the mountains near the Bull Run River, the source of water for most of the Portland-Metro area. It is home to some of the cleanest water in the world. Federal law prohibits any human from walking there. Howard Outdoor School is the closest most people will ever come to that river.
Over the course of the five days the students have spent there, they have learned about cycles of life and death, the balance of nature, and the ways that the earth, the water, the plants and animals interact and maintain the balance of nature. They learned about water cycles, soil layers, root systems and migratory patterns. They learned how humans help, interact with, and harm the environment. And they learned about themselves.
We are rising up
Like a Phoenix like a fire,
So Brothers and Sisters
Spread your wings and fly higher!
It had been a long week. Tomorrow, everyone was heading back home. The week in the wlderness would be brought to an end, and the students would head back to their urban school, bringing with them memories of the knowledge they learned, the stories they heard, and the songs they sang around the campfire. Sitting by cabins named after trees and birds, cats and fish, students from all backgrounds found in one another a company and a camaraderie rare in any circles. But in this circle, it was the norm.
Following the smoke and the embers into the brilliant starry night, the campers settled back in their seats, the counselor drew in breath for a final verse, and the song came to a close.
Yeah we’re rising up!
We’re ri-ising up!
Yeah we’re rising up!
We are ri-ising up!
The song ended with a series of snaps from the crowd around the fire, mirroring the snapping of the wood deep in the fire. The crowd settled down, and Crush, one of the leaders of the camp, stepped up, rubbed his hands together, and began a story.
With a voice that carried, soft and clear, through the waving hands of night, he stood silhouetted in front of the fire, hands folded behind his solid, substantial body and his curly-headed hair turning red in the backlit world of the fire, Crush began.
The story he told was one that had changed the landscape of the Oregon coastal mountains for generations. The Tillamook Burn began in the summer of 1933, when a drought swept the western mountains of Oregon. Loggers in the midst of the Great Depression were working through the old growth forests of the Tillamook National Forest. The forestry service ordered a ban on the logging, fearing the heavy machinery would start a fire, and the logging crews were pulled out of the forest except for one crew, whose foreman wanted to get just one last tree.
The heavy chains were wrapped around the old growth trunk and pulled. The old tree refused to give. More power, the foreman said, and, remaining cautious, the truckers pulled tighter on the chain. The tree began to move. Creaking, it started to fall, tugged by the strength of the men. But something happened. Something unforeseen — something devastating — happened.
In any other condition, the chains chaffing a wind-fallen snag (a tree that, while dead, remains standing) would not have been deadly. However, the sap of the trees populating the Willamette Forest was made of a material composite that made an excellent fuel source when sparked. The chains and friction provided that spark. One instant, there was a small sound.
Chink!
The next, there was only flame.
They say the fire burned so hot and so fast through that forest suffering from a year-long drought that birds flying 600 feet over the fire would simply fall to earth. They were not burned until they touched the ground — they suffocated mid-flight as the fires pulled the oxygen out of the air for miles around. Schools miles away were evacuated as fast as possible as the flame swept towards them, taking the forest into a fiery embrace. The smoke that rose over the fire was mistaken for clouds, and the debris from the fires reached the decks of ships 500 miles away.
The fire raged for three weeks until rain, not the hands of men, extinguished the flame. In the end, 350,000 acres of forest as old as human memory was burned. The ancients of the forest were destroyed, along with everything that they meant for the ecosystem. One of the last major old-growth forests, the Tillamook forest had been home to countless species, some endangered, and the habitat destruction and loss of life there was enormous.
That part of history, for sure, was lost, but almost immediately, conservation attempts began. Over those burned, charred acres, people scavenged for usable lumber, and they found it. Behind them came volunteers planting new trees — Douglas Firs, Grand, Noble and Ponderosa Pines, Western Red Cedar and Western Hemlock.
The land slowly crept into the hands of the counties, who secured it as the people spoke up. Good citizens of their counties came together with their representatives and provided for the future generations a forested land that would be rich in treasures, provided that the people remember, and that they protect the land that cannot protect itself.
Stewart Hallwart wrote in his book Northwest Corner: Oregon and Washington, “To this day the forest stands powerless against the threat of wildfires.” He is right. As grand and powerful as it may seem, the forest has no ability to defend itself from raging fires. Instead, as long as we are able, and as long as we care, it remains to the people to defend that which we put at risk.
Crush finished his story, hands still folded behind his back, and he looked into the crowd, meeting the eyes of a little girl with short, blond hair and an oversized jacket. “As long as we care, we can save it,” he said. “If we stop caring, then it stops living as well.”
I remember that experience. I remember sitting on that log as a tiny sixth-grader, staring into the silhouetted figure of one of the best teachers I had ever met, and in that instant, I knew that it was a call to action. It’s a call to action for everyone. No one is free from this responsibility given to us by the fact that we are able to help that which cannot help itself. I remember being a 10-year-old girl, watching the figure before the fire, separating me and it, and I knew then that that’s what I would do.
Will you?
