Karl Furlong
Feb 7, 2022
In late July of 2020, during a record heat wave, a lightning storm passed through the Opal Creek Wilderness area of central Oregon. Reaching down into the canopy of the forest these bolts lick at the hot, dry old growth trees. A single strike heated to over 50 thousand degrees Fahrenheit hits one of these giants. The bolt boiling the tree from the inside. As the water and sap evaporates the pressure becomes too great, and the tree explodes. The ensuing conflagration sending burning remnants into the forest canopy.
A fire has started, and a cycle that has played out thousands of times has been once again set in motion.
The Opal Creek fire sat for weeks smoldering away, contained to no more than 20 acres. That would change in August when an historic windstorm would rush through the area and fan the flames. The fire quickly grew.
“It looks like a bomb went off,” said Ralph Bloemers, when asked about the area “up at Opal Pool, it’s like a wind tunnel and the trees are thrown everywhere.”
As quickly as Bloemers points out the bomb comparison, he takes it back. While the fallen trees give the place a look of destruction, upon closer inspection there are signs of life everywhere.
The last time Bloemers visited the area he invited with Dr. Boone Kauffman and OPB’s Oregon Field Guide along. Kauffman is an ecologist at Oregon State University and studies the response of plants and animals to wildfires.
Kauffman explained to Bloemers how quickly the forest starts to regenerate. How the bear grass starts shooting up right away and the wax coating of pinecones gets melted away to release future giants.
A recent study showed that morel mushrooms grow most prolifically in the first year after a fire. The authors say that changes in soil chemistry and reduced competition from other organisms may advantage the mushrooms.
Fauna are likewise drawn back to the forest. One of the first is the woodboring beetle. Smoke from a fire draws the beetle back to lay eggs in the forest’s dead and dying trees. They are quickly followed by the black-backed woodpecker. A bird whose sooty colored plumage provides ideal coverage in its preferred landscape, the burned forest. They will gorge on beetle larvae while plentiful. When they move on, they will leave nesting cavities that are used by many other forest dwellers gradually making their way back.
Not long after, the apex predators are drawn back. They, in turn, are followed by humans.
The lightning that strikes at the old tree creates the fire that makes room for the new tree. The cycle is continuous and our attempt to stop it is futile.
Opal Creek will continue to regenerate. At its own pace it will continue to evolve. Not exactly as it was before the fire. That’s the beauty of the forest: the symmetry and rhythm are dictated by the flora and fauna that call it home. Not by the human caretakers that wish to control and manage its existence.
“As people that love these places,” said Bloemers “it is in our own best interest to make peace with fire.”