I think I’ve figured out how the “myth” of dragons originated in the minds of ancient people.
Those terrifying wild creatures who could fly were actually wildfires, like the ones consuming so much around Los Angeles right now, and the many I’ve covered and witnessed over the years elsewhere.
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These fires are ravenous, ruthless creatures. They literally roar, sucking in air from behind and spewing it ahead to preheat everything in its path. They race through dried brush, forest fuels, fallen trees and needles, dried grasses, and brush, consuming everything, including wildlife.
They birth tornadoes of intense fire, whirling towers of red flames and smoke more than 100 feet tall, so vicious they tear off flaming limbs and fling them long distances to ignite new fires.
They make their own weather systems to sustain the flames. And if the winds shift, these angry monsters can turn suddenly in a new direction and envelop anything in the way, like firefighters and communities. Separate arms of a fire can even surround victims.
Wildfires have worsened and intensified in modern times for two reasons. So-called environmentalists have blocked much logging, even of vast swaths of forest killed by invasive beetles. This leaves tons of fire fuel on every acre, sitting, waiting for ignition. The more fuel, the hotter the fires and worse the damage.
And humans, seeking peace and rural beauty, have built houses even in likely fire zones and woodlands.
Because wildfires are so terrifying and devastating, few recognize that such infernos are actually inevitable, like the lightning that often starts them and the winds that whip them along.
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Native Americans used to ignite wildfires because they knew the flames that could burn for months were Nature’s clean-up crews. Fires open forests to more wildlife, sunlight, rains, spurring grasses for grazing, extinguishing insect infestations and poisonous weeds, stimulating new healthy growths. And the ashes provide precious nourishment for everything left.
For generations, Yellowstone National Park tried to smother most every wildfire. Now, officials leave select ones alone to clean up remote areas.
On some nights, hundreds of lightning bolts will strike the western United States. According to natural cycles that can last beyond a century, if an area is ready to burn, a fire starts. If not, it doesn’t.
You’d almost think the wild events in these ageless cycles of death and rebirth are somehow coordinated. Lodgepole pines, for instance, are a forest’s pioneer species. They require much sun. Their tightly sealed cones can loiter dormant on a shady forest floor for decades while other species dominate with shade.
When a wildfire destroys dominant trees in place, the same heat melts that resin seal on waiting lodgepole cones. Literally within minutes of the flames’ passage, the cone pops open to deposit new seeds into warm, freshly sterilized soil.
Destruction of the surrounding trees also opens the area to sunlight and rain, which lodgepoles need. The black ash absorbs more sun and heat. By the next spring, a one-inch twig with seven or eight minute needles emerges through the ash to begin its 70-foot, decades-long life journey among a bonanza of newly-awakened wildflowers and returning wildlife.
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The enduring duty of the lodgepoles is to create the shade that Douglas firs need for their turn at forest dominance.
Each year, a single giant Douglas fir, one of the later species in Nature’s cycle of trees, sheds and renews only 20 percent of its needles (hence, it is ever-green). Those needles fall and accumulate as volatile fire fuels. Just that lone tree will provide 17,000 pounds of wood fuel for any arriving blaze.
Somehow, as if orchestrated, trees mortally wounded by flames realize their looming doom. They will, in their remaining year or two, over-produce pine cones to seed the next generation with little ones suited for the area.
It doesn’t take much wind to help re-seed a space. There are 70,000 seeds in a pound of Douglas fir cones. Somehow, each seed is designed with a little wing to enable simple breezes to ferry them far and wide.
Even standing dead tree trunks provide homes for wildlife families and, eventually, lightning rods to start the next cleansing fire.
Like dragons, wildfires are canny creatures. They wander erratically, following the fuels to burn only areas that are ready to burn. From the air, a wildfire track looks like a Rorschach test, immense splotches of blackened areas spread out in unorganized but connected patterns.
Even that seems planned. Unburned areas between the blotches provide safe sanctuary for local wildlife, and trees there remain ready to shed seeds genetically suited for that location to rejuvenate adjacent burned areas.
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A Douglas fir at 3,000 feet on a south-facing slope, for instance, could not survive on a shady north slope at the same elevation. Lowland Douglas firs would not thrive high on the same mountain.
I know some of this because I interrupted a long journalism career to work for the governor of Montana. I thought I should participate for a while rather than merely witness. One of my duties was liaison with the state’s Emergency Services and National Guard.
Every spring, we held a public briefing on the year’s fire outlook. A wet spring sounded good but was actually ominous because it encouraged more brush, which became fuel when it dried out later.
You know how airline pilots suggest checking seat belts because they’re expecting “a little turbulence.” And then things start flying around inside the plane and the wings are bending way too much. That’s six miles up.
The bombers and helicopters you see over wildfires are flying at only a few hundred feet through vicious thermal vortexes that feel much worse. I can attest to that. The retardant they drop is orange-colored, so teammates know what area has been treated at more than 220 miles an hour.
Montana is the fourth largest state in size but 44th in population. I’d call that predominantly “rural.”
Come fire season, my family packed a few boxes of the most precious possessions by the door.
As in Los Angeles, state and local officials issue evacuation warnings and orders when fires approach. Thank goodness for AM radio. Any resident refusing to evacuate is asked to fill out a next-of-kin notice. That’s often convincing.
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Because not everyone realizes the scale and intensity of these blazes. Wildfires have that name for a reason.
Walking behind a wildfire seems safe. It isn’t. Fires burrow deep into the ground, following the roots laden with tar and sap. The insides of some trees glow and roar like a forest furnace. Surrounding ground can suddenly give way to invite unwary feet and legs into underground infernos.
I explored the remains of one house a day after a wildfire blew through. The cast-iron stove lay in a large lump of inert metal on the ground.
Cast-iron does not melt until temperatures exceed 2,200 degrees.
In cases of some larger fires, the Defense Department shared thermal images from satellites or U-2 flights showing isolated hot spots that revealed a blaze’s hottest and weakest points and likely intentions, given wind and humidity.
At night or early morning, a fire looked like wild creatures scrambling up a mountainside. They began as clusters of flames at the bottom. Their rising heat preheated trees above.
The one fire then became many scattered fires. It didn’t spread up the mountainside. It erupted spontaneously up the mountainside, giant tree after giant tree. Individual pines didn’t catch fire. They literally exploded into flames and sparks one after another, with an audible Whoosh.
Soon, the mountainside was spotted with dozens of individual trees erupting in flames, not branch by branch but entire trees all at once. The rising heat carried their sparks up into the darkness.
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Then, as if some things were invisibly breathing fire up the mountain slope, the remaining trees all turned into a rapidly enlarging array of torches. Until there were hundreds of them covering the entire mountainside, sending their glowing sparks high into the dark sky and their eerie whooshes cascading down into the valley.
The power and the scale of all those fiery creatures was awful and beautiful at the same time.
That’s when the idea of unleashed dragons came into my mind.
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This is the 25th in an ongoing series of personal Memories. Please share yours in the Comments. Links to the others are below:
More Memories: Neat People I’ve Met Along the Way
Unexpected Thanksgiving Memory, a Live Volcano, and a Moving Torch
The Horrors I Saw at the Three 9/11 Crash Sites Back Then
The Glorious Nights When I Had Paris All to Myself
Inside Political Conventions – at Least the Ones I Attended
Political Assassination Attempts I Have Known
The Story a Black Rock Told Me on a Montana Mountain
That Time I Sent a Message in a Bottle Across the Ocean…and Got a Reply!
As the RMS Titanic Sank, a Father Told His Little Boy, ‘See You Later.’ But Then…
Things My Father Said: ‘Here, It’s Not Loaded’
The Terrifyingly Wonderful Day I Drove an Indy Car
When I Went on Henry Kissinger’s Honeymoon
When Grandma Arrived for That Holiday Visit
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Practicing Journalism the Old-Fashioned Way
When Hal Holbrook Took a Day to Tutor a Teen on Art
The Night I Met Saturn That Changed My Life
High School Was Hard for Me, Until That One Evening
When Dad Died, He left a Haunting Message That Reemerged Just Now
My Father’s Sly Trick About Smoking That Saved My Life
His Name Was Edgar. Not Ed. Not Eddie. But Edgar.
My Encounters With Famous People and Someone Else
The July 4th I Saw More Fireworks Than Anyone Ever
How One Dad Taught His Little Boy the Alphabet Before TV – and What Happened Then
