SYRINGA PARK 49°22’46.1”N 117°56’07.0”W
ASHLEY VOYKIN
“These are the woods where no words are needed; you need only to just be.”
oftentimes in the case of a wildfire , our first reaction is sadness. There’s the worry that an area we love will be forever changed, and we’ll lose that place. Fire is scary, uncontrollable, and massive, as nature often is. My journey into fire began on the road to Syringa Provincial Park, a familiar and beloved place to me, where I would photograph my first wildfire. In 2017, I found myself outside the park boundary, my car parked in the darkness. Wildfire smoke from a record year of fires burning across British Columbia covered the landscape. Aside from my car’s headlights, the only other light source in the darkness was the glow of the Syringa Creek Wildfire. Like a monster against the mountainside, the flames crackled and roared with every gust of wind. Many years before this fire was sparked from a strike of lightning, I was walking through this same forest as a child. As part of a school field trip, we went out to experience the ecosystems of our local landscape, to learn about the life cycle of a forest. We hiked along the Yellow Pine Trail, beneath towering Ponderosa pines. We were told that one day, this place would burn. The underbrush of the forest floor would be swept clean by flames, and the touch of fire would shape the forest. Fire is a natural and essential part of many forest ecosystems, and low-intensity fires are necessary to replenish nutrients, remove dead material on the forest floor, and make way for healthy new growth. There are many fire-adapted species that thrive after a wildfire, which provides richer nutrients for forest inhabitants. A low-intensity wildfire can also help to prevent more severe and hotter-burning wildfires that would devastate the soil and land. In the case of the Syringa Provincial Park, which is in a grassland environment, the grasses, shrubs, and herb layers on the ground would thrive after a low-intensity burn. In turn, the resident mule deer, bighorn sheep, and elk would have access to more nutrients. Along the lonely stretch of road, I set up my tripod and aligned my camera for a long-exposure capture of the night scene ahead of me. This would be the first of many fire seasons I photographed, and would not be the last record-breaking season for areas burnt within British Columbia. Before long, winter falls on the forests of the Syringa Creek Complex, and white snow sits starkly against the blackened trunks of trees. By the time spring comes around, life is already stirring in the ash and dirt. I spend the spring hunting for morel mushrooms, in the same forest that I captured burning just months before. These edible mushrooms are some of the first organisms to appear after wildfire, and they thrive on charred ground. I wander these burnt woods for days, sometimes with a camera in hand and some- times with a small knife for harvesting the bounty of a fire season. Searching the nooks and crannies for morels gives an intimate look at the mark that fire left here. The land is a patchwork of green and black. In some places, the fire burned hot and severe, leaving little behind. In others, the forest canopy remains intact and evidence of low-burning fire is interwoven within.
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MOTHER VOLUME THREE
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