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Natural Things

kansas.com
A prairie fire is a most natural thing, a close cousin to a forest fire; another natural thing.

Without fire, many of the plants cannot even reproduce properly.  Once the fire has come and gone, the new grasses come up, the animals that depend on the sweet taste of new grass return and, in time, lightning, an Indian clan, a rancher, or someone with a catalytic converter on his exhaust, or a 21st century, urban sniper with one of those lovely exploding targets, sets another fire.  

When there were no wooden houses, fire seemed, while still scary and deadly, more a natural part of things.  Storms often meant lightning and fire in the grass; maybe in the trees, too.  

For years, we lived in a part of the Upper Midwest where bur oak trees thrived; wonderful, rough, gnarly, nearly forever oak trees.  Bur oaks were a little more resistant to the damage of grass fires than many other trees so, as if they were a crooked picket line, the bur oaks marked the transition from grasslands to forested areas.  Farther into the grasslands, they burned, too.  Farther away, other trees were quicker to claim the land.  

Here, where we live now, fires are naturally to be expected, too.  Rain is seldom, the air and the ground are dry, so when lightning or a fool with no sense comes, fire finds what it naturally needs: fuel.  Then the desert starts again.

The introduction of human beings into the grass and trees does not change the appetite of fire, but it does change the consequences of fire.  Atop Mt. Lemmon, for instance, there are telescopes, communications equipment, a ski run, houses, restaurants, people and pets.  The fires still want to run to the summit, but humans and human artifacts are at stake so, as is happening right now, the fire is being fought.  Once, long since, it just burned where it had burned before.

Climate is a little bit like that, too.  Only an ignoramus thinks that humans do not change things, although, it must be admitted, it is very difficult to change an ignoramus.  

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