If you grew up in a family that camped or liked to sit around a patio firepit, an open fire was perhaps one of the first memorable outdoor mysteries you encountered. What young mind wouldn’t be mesmerized by that flush of heat on the face, or those flaming, leaping tongues that disappear quickly into smoke and air. Ancient humans probably felt the same reactions. 

Paleontologists and archeologists disagree widely both as to when fire was first used by humans and when fire came to be used in a general, controlled fashion—the common property of society. Almost all of the proposed dates fall within the time frame of 1.8 million to 0.5 million years ago, which falls within the time of existence of a human ancestor (from the fossil record) called Home erectus. Some archeologists, based on recent findings, argue for a more recent time: that the common controlled use of fire for cooking, light, heat, and protection from predators and insects (mosquitoes!) occurred as recently as 200,000 to 230,000 years ago. Whatever the date, those nomads who came across the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge into the Americas some 15 to 20,000 years ago certainly brought the knowledge of fire use with them.       

With learning to control fire, the cave, or brush-, mud- or hide-walled hut had a heat source. And, gradually, humans learned to cook foods over a fire. Those first cooking attempts must surely have gotten lots of attention, and critical remarks from observers. Some things never change! But we clever humans have come a long way. Anyone with the slightest sense of the history of cooking knows that (worldwide) an endless variety exists concerning the foods chosen for table, their manner of preparation and of being mixed with other foods and seasonings, and the methods used for applying heat to foods during the cooking process. For all of our inventiveness, the hot spots on my electrical range remain as direct successors of those first ancient campfires, but fish or hotdogs cooked over a campfire “out there” still taste very good. 

We know intellectually that fire is dangerous, but knowing that fact emotionally is quite a different thing. We continue to play with fire, like building homes within reach of potential forest and grass fires. It is difficult, given the normal patterns of land use we’ve developed, to completely divorce homes, businesses, and societal infrastructure from wherever fires may roam through forests, fields and pastures. All the while, experts argue that events such as droughts, wind- and rainstorms, and wildfires are increasing in both strength and number, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. 

The following figures, from the National Interagency Fire Center, speak to the claim that wildfires are burning hotter and more intensely, lasting longer, and burning more acreage. During 2000, wildfires burned some 6.75 million acres in the United States, more than twice the annual average since 1980. The annual average of acres burned for the years 2001-2005 is 6.28 million acres, for the years 2006-2010 it is 6.67 million acres, for 2011-2015 is 7.22 million, and for 2016-2020 is 7.88 million acres.   

Damage from other powers of Nature may leave something for starting over, but fire is terribly unforgiving, not leaving much for second chances. Charred timbers do not lend themselves to reworking with nails, screws, or glues.  Burnt photos, mementoes, family records or legal documents, even after attempts at careful restoration, will often still contain signs of painful, irretrievable loss. 

But too little fire can cause problems in certain particular situations. Enter the eastern red cedar tree. Since the 1800s, eastern red cedar has been planted for windbreaks and shelter belts on farms and ranches throughout the Great Plains, including Kansas. Planting was greatly increased from the 1930s to the 1970s for conservation purposes in the wake of the Dust Bowl disaster. But monitoring and management of the windbreaks is necessary to prevent spread of the cedars onto the upland pasture lands. This is happening because, without periodic burning, red cedar becomes invasive onto our Tallgrass prairies. 

In the early 20th Century, views shifted from fire being a welcome natural occurrence—or a desired planned exercise—to something dangerous that needed suppression. This fire control notion removed one of the natural checks that had helped to confine the red cedar to low-lying rocky areas of our pastures. Thus, since 1965, the volume of red cedar biomass in Kansas has increased some 23,000 percent within its native range! In regions routinely managed with prescribed, controlled burns, such as much of the Tallgrass Flint Hills, eastern red cedar is much less of a nuisance species.

The fact that fire plays an essential role in prairie health was known by the first researchers at the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research Station established in 1971 near Manhattan. In fact, a long-term study (still ongoing) of the effects of cyclic, but controlled, prairie burnings was one of the first studies initiated at The Konza.

It is true that red cedar berries are eaten by a few species of birds and rodents, and that some species of birds (certain owls) prefer to overnight or overwinter in them, especially during bad weather.  There is not much Tallgrass left in the USA, and we should be good stewards for the precious remnants that remain.  After all, the Tallgrass is home to a surprising variety of grasses, wildflowers, insects, birds, and mammals. Also, it’s home to a great medicine for the soul: a large space with both a long quiet solitude and curvature-of-the-earth views. If you can’t get out to experience the prairie, I suggest you close your eyes and call your memory. 

We do have fire on the brain. We speak of the fire of life, he’s got a fire in his belly, she’s all fired up to start that project, that party’s rockin’ like-a-house-afire, and we do fire employees. 

The early Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, about 540-480 BCE, got it right:  “This world . . . ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled, and in measures going out.”  Think volcanoes, lightning, meteorites, and the fact that 85 percent of wildfires are caused by humans.