Fireworking
Author: Todd Hoskins Issue: 2024-06-19
Fireworking
by Todd Hoskins
I still remember the smell of smoke, the crackling sounds of furniture burning, and the waves of intense heat as my father carried me down the stairs and through the living room when I was five years old. He covered my eyes and my mouth with his hand but my other senses were alive with fear. I had awakened my parents minutes before because I was scared. My dad started down the stairs, quickly turned around and picked me up in his arms, while telling my mom to grab my little brother. Lightning had struck the house and started a fire.
Strangely enough, I was again evacuated in the middle of the night for a house fire four years later. This time I briskly walked and saw the burning room but didn’t have to move through it. We sat in the car and watched the flames come out the front window, much like we had stood at the neighbors sliding glass door years before watching the fire truck arrive and wondering how much would be lost. These two fires destroyed rooms, but not the houses nor my relationship with fire.
This relationship has changed over the last 40 years. I crave a fireplace or a campfire when it's cold. I find it meditative to watch the flames. The smell of smoke has become comforting rather than fear-provoking. Our last home in Michigan had a giant fireplace in a small nook. We needed two pickup truckloads of wood to get us through each winter.
On a morning two months ago as I took a hike through the jungle, the smell of smoke brought no comfort. By that evening we needed to grab a bag and the dog, just as my father had grabbed me, and get out.
I was stopped by neighbors on Saturday morning in the nature sanctuary as I was warming up for my jog. “Fire is inside the Jungla. Meet at the garage.” The garage is a dilapidated community building on the edge of the sanctuary. We live in Pura Jungla–pure jungle–320 acres of tropical dry forest jungle that has been restored over the last 30 years. It was once pastureland. Ramon and others planted 100,000 native species in the 1990’s. Wildlife returned. The BBC filmed a Howler Monkey special here. We have seven troupes of monkeys (75-80 total furry beings) that call the Jungla home, along with many lizards, bats, snakes, exotic birds, deer, foxes, coatimundi, jaguarundi, insects, and spiders. Just as I write these words, a turquoise-browed motmot* *is outside the window, a brilliant combination of olive, black, gray, apricot, maize, and turquoise feathers with a dramatic paddle tail.
The government of Costa Rica now requests seed samples from Pura Jungla for tropical dry forest species they cannot find anywhere else. Nature loves Pura Jungla, and the people who live here are very protective of her. That’s why when the message was sent out there were a dozen people at the garage in fifteen minutes.
This ecosystem has a dry season and a wet season. Right now in the middle of April we are 85% through the dry season. We haven’t had more than 10mm of rain since November. But last year’s rainy season brought 120 inches. This is the most dangerous time of the year for fires. And this weekend the winds were blowing through the mountain pass toward the coast consistently at 30 MPH, gusting to 50 MPH.
I’m assigned to the “Fire and Security” circle for the community. Pura Jungla currently consists of 13 homes, 2 homes under construction (one of them ours), and 25 additional parcels where those property owners are either planning, dreaming, or waiting. There are people in the community that grew up here, are from the Central Valley in Costa Rica, and from the UK, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, Texas, California, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Quebec, and Ontario, Canada. We have our own infrastructure–buried electric lines, our own water tank and supply pipes, and 5 km of roads and fire breaks.
We thought we were prepared for fire. Our “circle” had been briefly trained, and had an inventory of equipment–leaf blowers, masks, rakes, shovels, chainsaws, and water propelling backpacks. Fire has approached the perimeter of the Jungla 21 of the past 22 years, so it’s familiar to people who live here. Each year residents and neighbors, family and friends have been able to see the fire coming and keep it contained by forming a line along a perimeter fire road. In 2022, the first approaching fire was 400 meters wide but it didn’t make it into the Jungla.
It became apparent the first morning that the fire had not come from outside, but had started in the center of the jungle. The homes and parcels surround 220 acres that is a protected nature reserve–the sanctuary. By Saturday afternoon we realized the fire was likely started in five or six different locations within the sanctuary.
We quickly ate some homemade potato salad from the fridge and drove to the garage where there were ten people, including the groundskeeper Ishmael, his son, and friends. They were the first to venture into the jungle with leaf blowers. The garage became the staging area with water, collected supplies, and encouragement.
Less than twenty-four hours prior to this fire saga I had been diagnosed with shingles, a viral infection that lies dormant in people who have had chickenpox but can manifest under stress. The previous ten days had been stressful, and now I was itching with sensitive, prickly skin. I had started a dose of antiviral treatment the day before. I was feeling okay, but worried.
I felt I couldn’t sit around and watch, so I ventured into the hilly jungle with my neighbor and fellow fire and security circle member Dave. The Jungla has two ridges that each rise 150 meters above sea level with hills, ravines, and rocky volcanic soil in between. There is not much flat land. The sanctuary has no fire breaks and only deer trails. It’s wild Nature for the flora and fauna more than the humans.
There were small fires everywhere. I started raking leaves away from fires that seemed not-too-scary, and raking ash onto smoldering logs. I was glad the mask covered my eyes because the smoke was thick. Dave shouted at me that Deyanira needs help in the central ravine. Neither of us knew what or where that was, but we figured we could descend and find it.
Suddenly we were in geography that was unfamiliar with fires around us in all directions. We felt a wave of heat and saw a wall of flames swept up by the wind eight feet in the air. Dave yelled “Out!” and we started running with a rake and a shovel in hand. I fell and skinned my elbow. Dave fell face first and I saw the machete that was sheathed on his waist. We were both okay.
“That was stupid,” I thought. We have no idea what we’re doing. Five minutes later we found a familiar building and navigated back to the garage.
We didn’t have radios, a sense of where the fires were, or the means to effectively dispatch. The only communication that seemed to be working was Whatsapp. The first house emergency happened Saturday morning at Lote 22. Fifteen people showed up as the fires approached from two sides. Since Lote 22 is right above our building site our construction crew began to preemptively spray down the edge of the road and any vegetation. Three times fire jumped the road and the crew was able to extinguish it, once after a scream from Annika because tangled dry vines had suddenly lit up headed towards the crew’s sleeping quarters.
The situation at Lote 22 would be scary multiple times over the weekend. It’s estimated that 10,000 gallons of water were used just to protect that house which is even surrounded on three sides by gravel. It was so hot there were concerns about the stability of the steel and concrete of the carport.
The next-door neighbors at Lote 24 were out of the country. Fires got close, just a few meters, but never touched the house. Jose brought in his backhoe to try to turn over the dry grass before it could burn. 90% of their 7.5 acres ended up being scorched and half their trees fallen, burned, or both. It was there that I learned what fire can do to the buried water pipes. Over the weekend, there were 10 places where water lines had been compromised just by the fire.
In our training, we had been informed that fire can travel long distances underground when there are air pockets. This was interesting to hear, but impossible to comprehend until you see fire suddenly appear going up a tree from nowhere. Old trees whose trunks have become hollowed enough would burn from the inside out. Sometimes you could see flames in a hole of the trunk thirty feet in the air. I was horrified every time I heard a big tree fall.
I love trees. I cried when contractors from the electric company took down limbs and trees to keep power lines safe in Michigan. I pleaded with them but they had the legal rights. I was simultaneously angry and grieving as I heard the chainsaws day after day go down the street killing or amputating whatever got in the way of progress.
Saturday night we drove with neighbors through the Jungla to evaluate whether it was safe to stay in our rental house on the south ridge. It wasn’t. In the darkness it looked like a scene from a war movie. As the winds calmed as the sun went down, it was quiet, devastated and devastating to see all the smoke and orange glows.
We slept at our neighbors house in the next village south. When we woke in the morning before sunrise we thought we would return to see the aftermath of the apocalypse. It wasn’t nearly as terrible as we thought. We didn’t hear birds or monkeys, but there were thousands of remaining trees.
It was only an hour before we had our first emergency call of a house in danger. The fires heated up again as the sun moved overhead. By midday our community water tower had been emptied, partly because of how much water had been used and partly because of the widespread leaks. Neighbors brought in tanques on a truck and a Whatsapp message would announce, “Agua aqui. Where is it needed?” We kept driving down to the public road to fill up buckets and haul them back into the jungle, the water splashing everywhere because of the rutted, dirt roads of the Jungla.
On the southwest corner we visited a fire that had jumped across the fire break. It was the first time we walked away from the fire knowing it was too big for us to do anything. With little water, Pia and I worked along the road putting out fires with earth. Rasta showed us how to slowly pour dirt on a burning log to suffocate the fire.
By Sunday evening there was only one significant fire remaining. The winds finally settled. We returned to our porch and drank a beer at sunset watching the pockets of orange pulsating as it grew darker. We knew the fireworking was mostly done. Fire had consumed what it could. There wasn’t much left to burn unless the fire was to jump another road.
In the morning there would be more hotspots that started to move. We were exhausted, shocked, and sad more than scared. The fire had scorched 220 acres–200 acres of the sanctuary and 20 acres of residential land. But no homes were lost. Only one structure–a pavilion–had been leveled.
Ramon needed some treatment for his eyes. Robin was bitten by a snake escaping the fire. Boomer was dehydrated and inhaled too much smoke. Don Martinez lost his eyebrows, half his beard, and singed his arm. We were sore but okay.
We are nearly certain the fires were started by an arsonist. There is no other explanation for multiple fires starting in the dry season in the middle of the sanctuary, and on the windiest day in weeks. Over the past two months there has been peculiar theft and vandalism. In February two signs were tagged overnight with, “I hate yuo.” That’s how it was spelled. Ramon thinks he knows who it is but doesn’t want to incite a mob by sharing the details. I can’t imagine how angry and sad he is at the same time.
On Wednesday I felt well enough to go for a jog in the sanctuary. The 20 acres that are untouched include the mango groves, along with the guanabana, lemon, cashew trees, and my jogging path. It seemed the same as it was a few days ago, only the smell of charred earth was everywhere. Ramon says it won’t be gone until the third rain, which thankfully arrived in the beginning of May.
Why do we fight fire? Why do we call people firefighters? Who can declare victory over fire?
My experience is that fire is a wily force that cannot be defeated. We can limit its damage, protect what we care most about, but if we see it as an adversary, we will only find frustration. Like so many other things within the anthropocentric worldview of dominance, we believe we can and should control it. But we cannot.
By the second day, most of us reached this conclusion. We must work with the fire–be fireworkers rather than firefighters. We could find ways to influence its path, protect a small area, or perhaps slow it down, but we needed to be in relationship with it. We protected homes and a handful of precious trees by gathering together and declaring, “No. Not this.” “Fire, you will go where you will go, but not through here.”
This discovery was freeing and devastating at the same time. There was freedom in not needing to put every fire out, and in prioritizing a grove, a home, or a hill. It was devastating to watch the animals flee and not be able to protect them. It hurt to say, “I’m choosing not to intervene.” I felt like I was betraying the trees and every being that depends on them.
It hurt. When I refrain from action, I am more open to feeling. So by not running around putting out small fires, the waves of emotion started coming over me. I was humbled. I am humbled. I am not in charge of Life, or this plot of land. I cry because trees fall and monkeys lose their home. I cry because death happens and that is a part of Life. The soil blackens even though it will come back perhaps even more lively than before. I desire that every tree–every being–lives and thrives forever. But that is not Life.
One of my teachers talks about practicing non-interference. They mean that it is usually (but not always) unwise to force or steer people off their own path, to take away their agency even when their decisions could lead to destruction. That hurts too.
It’s hard to admit that I cannot control outcomes.
It hurts to let the fires burn.
Monkeys slept in our trees a week after the fires burned through. I saw a doe and a fawn the same morning. A couple iguanas ran across the road. The animals are returning. Birdsongs seem even louder than before. My itching was subsiding.
Ramon has asked a local biologist, Ines, to survey the loss and suggest a plan for assisting the regeneration. We have our own seed bank, and friends and neighbors with seeds as well. We are committing to planting trees for the first three full months of the rainy season with our neighbors and local students. On Saturday we are going to have a conversation about security and buying more equipment.
Last night many of us fireworkers gathered at Restaurante Latino’s for patacones and beer. We were able to celebrate, not because the fires were defeated, but because we witnessed love-in-action. We were there for each other. It was beautiful to recount the stories of flash mobbing to homes, of feeling like we knew we had each others’ backs. There was laughter. Then we drove home to the ashen hills of Pura Jungla. We are forever bonded.
And I am more bonded, not just to the individual trees, but to Life itself. Fire can destroy a being or a relationship. But fire cannot destroy Life. I feel her cycles. I feel pride, joy, grief, and fear. I FEEL, and that too is Life. Fire is a force of Life that I am learning to accept in all of its forms.
[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]
Related:
- Todd Hoskins (author)
- 2024 (year)
- Topics: Community Building