On fires, and aftermath

A few weeks ago, probably a month now, really, I drove up to Gorge and Bunker creeks to look at the aftermath of the Bunker Creek Fire.

It wasn’t pretty. The blaze, which burned about 12,000 acres in a single afternoon, roasted the valley. The first mile of the once idyllic Gorge Creek was roasted, black right down to the stream bank.

Having witnessed some big wildfires over the past 18 years, this fire may have been one of the hottest I’ve ever seen. Most fires have a patch of green or two somewhere in the interior, but this fire had none.

But a mile or so up Gorge Creek, the fire simply stopped. There’s green trees and then there’s black trees, as if God drew a line.

It will take years for things to grow back. Adding to the moonscape is the fact that the Forest Service sold the remnants of the Cedar Chipmunk sale last winter. I have no problems with the sale, but there will be some pretty big meadows in the sale areas for years to come.

But all is not lost, of course. The kid and I went up into another fire area over the weekend — West Flattop in Glacier National Park. The mountain burned in the late 1990s and then burned again in the Trapper Fire.

But a little less than two decades later, I was really encouraged by the quantity of huckleberry bushes in the burn.

They were big and bushy and rife with berries. We hiked up onto the ridge above camp and the bushes were growing all the way to the top. I really expected to see a bear of some sort or at the very least, piles of bear scat, but nothing. The robins, however, were numerous, gorging on the fruit.

West Flattop was also a very hot fire. There is little regrowth of trees in the hottest parts — just brush. In fact, I didn’t see any saplings until I got into the lower elevations around Mineral Creek.

Regeneration of forest is a fickle affair. Nature takes its time and by time I mean lifetimes in human terms. It would be truly fascinating to watch if one lived 500 years.

But for now, I’ll savor the moment, and a handful of huckleberries.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.