Burn Scars 

The window was cracked, allowing the early November morning air to seep into the room. The sharp dryness in the back of my throat told me it would be one of the last nights I’d be able to sleep with the window open. I could tell by the way the light looked seeping in through the closed blinds, and by the bite of the slight breeze, that I would be met by overcast skies once I got myself out of bed. Admittedly, this has never been my strong suit, especially when it’s cold out. The chill gripped me immediately as I peeled myself from the embrace of my partner who remained within the warmth of the amber colored velvet comforter.

 

Wool long johns, wool long sleeve, dad-style black hiking pants (zippers so that one could easily fashion them into shorts, as well as a pocket for everyday of the week), yellow turtleneck sweater, corduroy button down, and a Parks Project mushroom and flower beanie all layered together to shut out November. Bzzzz bzzzz. Text from meg: Makin breakfast now, I’ll be ready in 15-20. A minute later, text from jack: I’ve already breakfasted myself, but I might have to do something real quick. It’s always comforting to know other people are having a slow start to their morning too, as I had only gotten dressed and still had the taste of sleep on my teeth. This was at 9:50, all knowing the original intention was to leave for the site by 10.

 

After getting my shit all together, warming up the jeep, printing three sets of three different maps, picking up meg from her house, picking jack up from the car rental place, grabbing road coffees, and getting on the road to Deckers, CO in earnest, it was already 11. Not ideal but not surprising, was the consensus between the three of us.

 

The road to Deckers, or more specifically the 10-mile area around Deckers took us 60 miles southwest of Denver, into the mountains via two lane narrow dirt roads. And what’s so important in Deckers that we all dedicated our Saturday to going there you ask? The remnants of a fire that happened in the area 20 years previous.

 

On June 8th, 2002, US Forest Service fire prevention technician Terry Lynn Barton made a HUGE oopsie. During an ongoing fire ban, she made the decision to burn a letter from her estranged husband while on patrol at a campground near Lake George, which is essentially smack dab in the middle of Colorado. During this time, years of drought in the American West and fire suppression efforts had created a stockpile of dry fuels just waiting for a spark, and sparks there were. 7 million acres across the west burned that year, blazed by 458 individual fires. The Hayman fire alone burned 138,000 acres, 60,000 of that in just one day.

 

Now, I get being upset, especially when it comes to the men in your life believe me, BUT GIRL COME ON. The Forest Service’s literal slogan is, “only YOU can prevent forest fires.” That is some top tier embarrassing hypocritical shit right there. This was not lost on the public, don’t worry, as Terry was charged before the fire had even stopped burning and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. I could spend all day on the Terry lore (she initially lied during the investigation, her sentence got changed, how she’s paying back the millions of dollars worth of damages), but this isn’t really about that. We weren’t interested in the Hayman fire burn scar because of Terry, rather we wanted to know what the fire had to tell us 20 years later.

 

Our capstone project as biology and ecology majors was to identify a research question about a Colorado ecosystem and then conduct research to try and answer said question. Try. That’s something I’ve always appreciated about science. Even if you don’t answer your question, something was still discovered and that’s enough. It’s sorta how I feel about therapy; even if you don’t identify exactly why you feel a certain way, you’re always learning more about yourself which is helpful within itself.

 

Our question was one of severity. Wildfire burn areas can be categorized into four different burn severity categories: Unburned, low, moderate, and extreme. Our question, more specifically, aimed to observe how forest regeneration looked after 20 years at all four levels of severity. Taken into account would be the percentage of ground coverage at each site, what types of species are present, and how these two things compare to the unburned control site. In short, growth after the infliction of pain. A fitting topic as I began to close out my college career which indeed did consist of many instances of pain and subsequent growth.

 

During the 90-minute drive out to our first stop of the day—the low severity site—we discussed sampling methods, exact site locations, and dedicated roles. Jack took charge of plot definition (where he would lay out our 10x3 foot plots), meg noted ground coverage and overall site trends, and I collected the different species of plants present at each plot. This all sounds relatively simple, but as with most things, it was not.

 

The gravel road crunched under the tires of the jeep as we pulled up to the site, met with a hillside of dried blue grama and big bluestem grass with clumps of young ponderosa pines sprouting their way into the world. If you find yourself walking though the Colorado wilderness and want to know if the tree you’re looking at is a ponderosa pine (we call them pondies in the biz), all you gotta look for is three long needles clumped together, rusty-orange bark, and take a moment for a long sniff of that bark because you’ll met with the warm scent of vanilla. The blue grama grass will get stuck onto all your cotton and wool fabrics with its curly eyelash heads. Fun fact, blue grama is the state grass of Colorado This state really has a thing for blue things: blue grama, blue columbine, blue spruce. All three flora are state emblems represented by a something blue if you will.

 

Blue, in the context of weddings, is the manifestation of love’s purity and fidelity. But for me, blue is a representation of depth. The depth of grief, love, someone’s soul. Blue is something to get lost in, and I’ve never gotten lost in anything quite like pain. Pain is inflicted by trauma. In therapy, trauma has always been phrased in the terms of “big T” or “little t” trauma.

 

Upon parking the jeep on the side of the dirt road, the three of us were met with the crisp November air and peeks of blue sky amongst the dull grey clouds. As we gathered the materials needed to stake out the plots, of which there would be three 10ft x 3ft rectangles where the different species would be observed/sampled and ground coverage percentages recorded, the day took its second turn (the first being our late start).

 

Jack announced, “Y’all imma be real, I’m going to shit myself in about 3 minutes.” I exchanged wide-eyed glances with Jack and Meg. For those of us who are less acquainted with wilderness poops, it’s not a huge deal if it’s one of those normal, regular poops. But the urgency in his eyes told me that this was in no way shape or form going to be a regular poop-in-the-woods experience. “Okay okay, no problem let’s see what I got in the car for you,” I said, opening up the glove box to discover only Starbucks paper napkins I’ve accumulated from a bad habit of buying mediocre coffee on the way back from my partners house every time. I handed Jack the napkins, and he scampered off to somewhere close but secluded to endure what I can imagine was a small t trauma.

 

About 10 minutes passed before he came back feeling slightly better, but still not ideal (one of those poop days ya know). During this time Meg continued to get our supplies in order, and I leaned against the car smoking a cigarette. And don’t worry, I made sure to ash it safely and put the butt in an empty water bottle because while I may not be mindful of my own health, I would never subject the environment to the same.

 

The low severity site can also be thought of in terms of little t trauma. 20 years ago, the fire did blaze here, and it indeed caused damage. Big trees on the perimeter of the site still exhibit charred bark at their base. The presence of invasive species indicates that the openings in the ecosystem left by the burn allowed for them to creep in, out competing with the native plants that are crucial for biodiversity. Cheatgrass, the most present invasive species at the site, is characterized by its short root systems and fine leaves and stems. The problem this causes is twofold. Short roots suck up all the water before it can get to the deeper root systems of native plants, meaning the native plants don’t get their needs met and die off. The non-native grass species also dries out earlier in the season compared to its native counterparts, and because it has dominated huge areas of grassland since its introduction to the West in the late 1800s by Europeans, it’s a substantial contributor to wildfire fuel, and has increased the length of wildfire season in the West.

 

Just like how cheatgrass leaches native life from Colorado ecosystems, when we experience trauma in our personal lives, and I’m talking little t emotional or spiritual trauma here, new things start to take root that weren’t originally part of our environment. Whether that be self-doubt, guilt, shame, or fear, if left un-managed it can start to take over. Especially when we don’t take the time to recognize that these feelings are seeping into all facets of ourselves. And while cheatgrass isn’t ideal, it is still a sign that life can grow here.

 

Moreover, this low severity trauma can act as catalyst for growth, both for wild ecosystems and ourselves. Wildfires, especially those that burn cool enough to be considered low severity, are an essential part of the West’s environmental lifecycle. They remove the dry understory fuels (like cheatgrass and blue grama) so that in the future hotter, more destructive fires can’t happen as often because there is less to burn. The low severity fires also provide nutrient-rich ash that revitalizes the soil – one of the most important determining factors of an ecosystem’s health. I think that little t trauma holds a similar power. I think of the fights I have had with the people who are still in my life, and while the initial fight brought up feelings of shame, resentment, and self-doubt about the relationship or myself, I’ve always come out of it with a stronger relationship with that person. The relationship is revitalized.

 

And this is what we saw at the low severity site. Ground coverage of about 50% with almost 20 different types of species present. This may not have been what it looked like before the Hayman fire, but this site was classified as a healthy, robust ecosystem. The same could not be said for our next site.

 

Jack, Meg, and I drove back towards Deckers on the road that winded through the rusty red canyons that characterized the landscape. On our left, fly fishers waded in the South Platte River hoping to catch a carp or trout. We pulled off the road about five miles from town, at the bottom of a gravel hill we would be climbing shortly. I pulled out our map to double check we landed in the right spot. I could see we were in the area that was surrounded by deep red – high severity. After gathering the stakes and three different colors of embroidery thread to distinguish which species of plants were gatherer from each of the three plots, we began the scramble to the top of the steep gravel hillside. I think we all must’ve slipped and fell at least once.

 

Over the crest of the hill, we were met with a landscape that had no resemblance of the low severity site we were at just a few miles away. Chunky red and brown gravel stretched out before us, broken up by small patches of vegetation and black charred trees downed as far as we could see. The whole scene felt rather apocalyptic against the now darkening grey clouds.

 

The barren landscape is the product of the high-severity fire, meaning that the fire burned so hot that everything dies. The grasses and trees, the root systems of all the grasses and trees, even the microorganisms in the soil. All that is left is the space where so much life once existed. As you can imagine, data collection at this site went much quicker. Only 15% of the ground was covered with some type of vegetation.

 

This is what I would equate big T Trauma to. Scorched earth, unrecognizable, maybe needs twenty years for even the smallest amount of growth to occur. When we as humans experience this type of trauma, the fabric of our internal ecosystems is permanently changed. I’m cautious to say damaged because of how resilient nature is, but god damn does it hurt to not recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. It’s the type of trauma that strips you down to the bare bones of your essence and tries to keep you there.

 

I have to imagine that Terry herself was experiencing high severity trauma. There are few things I have experienced that hurt less than true, devastating heartbreak. The feeling of a broken heart burns, and it burns so deeply that smoke fills the space where your soul. The concept you have of yourself becomes so muddled and hard to make out that maybe you try to reinvent yourself. Or you do anything that soothes the pain, even if just for a moment. The scariest part is you have no idea how long you’ll feel that way, how long it will take your life to grow around the hole the trauma left in your heart. So, from that place, I understand why Terry burned the letter from her estranged husband. BUT she still shouldn’t have done it, let’s not get that twisted.

 

We finished the data collection for the day (we only did two of the four sites we were supposed to do but such is life) and headed back to the car. Right as we were about to leave, Meg says, “Uhhh y’all I can’t find my phone.” While this isn’t a big problem under your normal set of circumstances, we were 45 minutes from any inkling of cell service, it was 3pm, and I had my brother’s birthday dinner to attend at 6. With that in mind, I’ll admit I was dismissive and said, “I’m sure it’s in the car, let’s just get on the road and hope for the best.” The best it was not, as we drove the 45 minutes to service just to see that “find my iphone” showed Meg’s phone clear as day on the side of that damn hill. And you want to know the worst part about that, is when we drove back ANOTHER 45 minutes, it took us about two minutes to find the phone, which probably fell out of her pocket on our climb up the hill. But hey, at least we found it.

 

Our lives are filled with setbacks, different types of trauma, and so much growth. In these moments, it can be nearly impossible to see how things will work out, especially when we’re grieving amidst scorched earth. But nature has always provided us with all the beauty and wisdom we’d ever need to make sense of things, all you have to do is observe with curiosity rather than judgement. And even if that doesn’t mend the pain and confusion in your own life, you can find peace knowing that the world around you is also in a continuous state of growth, change, and evolution. Even where there was once only fire, is now brimming with the promise of more life.