On the Rocks
October 2007

Fire -- The Trial of Gold and Stone
by Leopold Hayden Powell

Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes uiros
Fire is the trial of gold: adversity, favors brave men.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays. On Providence, 63

The Kootenays are known more for silver, rather than gold. (Rossland and Greenwood seem more like lost parts of the Okanagan.) Just the same, gold paints the leaves, every autumn. The Quaking aspen are pure. Cottonwood is alloyed with copper, and tarnished. Western larch gilds mountainsides. Rocky Mountain maples are tipped with flame.

Adversity has added some black, to the Kootenay landscape, this year. The Pend D' Oreille Fire started, near the Boundary, burned into the U. S. Fire vaulted over the Pend D' Oreille River and raced toward Fruitvale. A total of 3,200 hectares burned. It is safe to visit, now. A landscape may be both bleak and full of possibilities. Do more than drive through. Hike the short section of the Dewdny Trail, or paddle on the Nine Mile Reservoir. Life is waiting for little more than Autumn rain. Take note, before snow covers the black. Return next year and in 2012, to see the changes.

We try to not take unseemly pleasure as fire lays the geology bare. The prominent cliff of massive, gray rock, near the west of the fire, is a Devonian limestone. Horn-shaped corals and perforated bryozoan fans dot some of that rock. The eastern part of the fire area has a sequence of carbonate rocks -- thin-bedded limestone and shale under bedded dolomite, topped with massive limestone. This is the Nelway Formation. Four hundred million years ago, cyanobacteria, protists, algae, and animals sequestered lime in the shallows of the sea. Tides surged seawater through, forming caves, replacing lime with dolomite. The weight of distant sedimentation forced brine up through the caves to deposit zinc and lead ores in the voids. The whole was scuffed into folds -- fifteen kilometers from peak to trough. The younger rock seems to dip under the Nelway, because it has been dropped, by kilometers, along the Russian Creek Fault.

Not all of the geology is ancient. Fire is a powerful geological force. Quartzite and granite cobbles have been cracked by the heat. That is an indicator of what is just less noticeable for smaller particles. Watch for the pebbles and bits of charcoal, standing on pedestals, a few millimeters high. The rain has splashed away the unprotected soil. September storms washed several tons of soil from each hectare. That sand is now in the creek pools and the silt gone to the Pend D' Oreille River. If the weather is damp, you may notice a slippery layer. Your feet slip in a few centimeters of mud, while the soil below is dry. This is an hydrophobic layer. The heat renders wax from the burning litter and organic layer of the soil. Some of the wax vapor condenses in the cooler sub-soil. Rainwater rushes off, if it cannot soak in. More soil is lost to the sheet wash, and gullies form with the excess. Spoon-shaped hollows of old landslides are exposed on the bare mountainsides. Tree roots are the only strength holding these slopes at such steep angles. The roots of the snags will rot, over the next two decades. The mountains will inexorably go to the sea.

Not all is loss. Silt and sand catch behind boulders, stumps and charred logs. Every footfall of a salvage logger may catch a bit of moved soil. The new deposits cover the fire-liberated seeds of pine trees as well as the wind borne fluff of willows and fireweed. The tiny seeds of Scouler's willow and Black Cottonwood have a tough time getting established if they are separated from mineral nutrients by a layer of leaf litter. Landing on bare soil, then being covered by needles and dust make their ideal seedbed. Seeds of Snowbush and Red-stemmed Ceanothus often lie dormant in the soil for fifty years, until they are scorched into sprouting. The stems of Chokecherry may have been burned to pencil stubs; however, the rain has enabled the root crowns to bring out a flush of leafy shoots.

Yes, it is difficult to see timber, on the verge of harvest, burned beyond use. It is especially tragic that twenty-year old plantations burn so hot, due to litter accumulation and closed canopies. That sets human aspirations far back. Wildland fire is part of the North American landscape. Each environment has adapted to its season and style of fire. Our hundred years experiment at conquest of wildfire is nearly over. We too will adapt.

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