Wildfire wisdom under cathedral trees
INTRO: I’m Lia Ferguson from the Univeristy of Alaska Fairbanks, and this is Alaska Voices, a place where community members, friends and scientists can share stories and place-based knowledge in order to build a better tomorrow for Alaskan’s and the world.
Originally I grew up in Gakona, Alaska…Tyonek, Egypt, Idaho, Rampart, St. Laurence Island, St. Paul…and I’m here with my student…my science buddy, my teacher, my homie…I’m his daughter. 


 MARY BURTNESS: My name is Mary Burtness, I’m 68 years old, and I’m here talking with my husband, Jeff. 
JEFF ADAMS: My name is Jeff Adams, I’m age 70, we’re at UAF and I’m speaking with my partner, Mary.
I was in the yard, I think it was 10 a.m. in the morning or so. First, I noticed a helicopter flying around, which is not that unusual. We’re kind of in the flight path of the airport. And then a runner came by and said, “Hey mister, there’s smoke down the trail.” 
She came back like about 30 seconds later, said “Hey mister, there’s flames down on the trail.”
I started packing up our fire box that we have the important documents in, some photos and some of those things, and put them in the truck all ready to go in case things really started getting hot. I felt somewhat comfortable, though, because the smoke wasn’t coming our way, so I figured wherever the fire was, it was probably moving more or less away from us. 
Then must have been half an hour, maybe, after that, an hour, then all of a sudden there were like three helicopters and then there were two big scooper planes that showed up. Then I figured this is much bigger than what I had assumed it was. 
I could see firefighters coming down the trail with all their equipment on. So I talked to them, they seemed very calm about it. So then I just walked down with them to where they started actually removing the duff and getting down at the mineral soil. 
I just watched them for a while, and then actually got soaked a couple times with the scooper planes. 
Anyway, I could see they had it under control, pretty much. It wasn’t that big a fire. But just to see those youngsters working like that is like, boy, they really work hard. I have all the respect in the world for those folks.
MARY BURTNESS: I was riding my bike back home and I saw a helicopter go over with a bucket. I thought, “Oh, there’s a fire somewhere,” and I could kind of see smoke and thought, “Oh, seems pretty close to town.” And then I come up on Yankovich and all of a sudden there’s people outside. I don’t know quite where the fire is but I kind of can see the smoke and there’s a trooper there. And then I watched a firetruck go into our driveway. 
So I called my husband twice, I think, and you didn’t pick up, which is not unusual for you. But the trooper was really wonderful, calming me down, and saying “No, you need to wait here, you need to wait here.” Finally, he let me through because I had no idea what I was riding my bike to. 
Then I got home and then Jeff filled me in on everything that was going on and we walked down the trail, too, and could see the smoke, and lots of firefighters wandering around. I think we sat on our porch and just sat there and watched the planes go over with buckets of water and watching them dump as much as we could see through our cathedral of white spruce. 
We also found out earlier that day that the Forest Service was actually working with the UAF firefighter department, doing some training. So that’s why they ended up on the fire so fast and all the bucket planes and the helicopter happened to be in town. Then it was kind of in the flight path, too, because a small airplane saw the smoke right away.
JEFF ADAMS: We were very fortunate, too, because it was calm, relatively calm. It was a lull in the fire season. There were lots of firefighters in town and all the aircraft were in town. So they were on it so quickly, it was really impressive to see the response.
MARY BURTNESS: I don’t know if they ever found out how the fire started. Because it’s really in a very wet area, I mean, you’d have to be wearing rubber boots at that time of the year to walk through that area, parts of it. 
JEFF ADAMS: Where we live now, yeah, it’s the deepest darkest part of the white spruce and some black spruce, too, on the UAF ski trails. 
So, we walk to Smith Lake several times a month or so, and you can just see the water level on that fluctuate. The sedges along the edge of the lake are now being replaced by grasses, drier species. The lake is not near as big as it used to be, just anecdotal, but at least from what I’ve noticed.
The sphagnum, the mosses and everything, those are always, seem like they’re crispy the whole summer, where in the past, they seemed like they were more spongy, if you will. 
MARY BURTNESS: We first rented the house that we’re in right now. Rented it and then we bought it in 1986, ‘87. So we just moved back to that property. And you can see all the aspen or the poplar starting to fall over because they’re getting pretty old. It’s mostly spruce now. 
JEFF ADAMS: The snow, I think, has been different, too, the last couple of years or so. It’s heavier, it’s more icy, it’s more glued, if you will, to the spruce. There’s a lot of trees that are bent over. Several years ago, when we had that rain on snow event. So it was so warm out, it was 34 degrees or so, Mary and I decided to take a walk in the evening at dark, with umbrellas, and as we were walking around we could hear the tops of all these trees snapping off. So it's just like the woods was full of this popping sound. That had never happened before in all the years that we’ve lived in the state. 
MARY BURTNESS: We call them our cathedral trees, I don’t think they grew up to have this much wind, so you hear them snapping during wind events, too. And it’s warmer. It’s much warmer. We don’t have those 40 below for a week at a time anymore.
JEFF ADAMS: The tops of spruce trees spread throughout all our property and all through the arboretum. We try to keep on top of that, at least close to the house. Cut that up for firewood and then haul away the branches and everything. 
Close to where the Yankovich fire was, it’s a black spruce area. There’s not only deadfall but then the snapped trees and such, there’s no way you could walk through there or moose could even get through there, it’s just so thick now. It’s incredible.  
And we’ve taken some steps to remove some trees, but we live in the discontinuous permafrost, so we’re somewhat reluctant to take away the shade and allow the sun to come in and heat up the soil, perhaps. 
But with spruce bark beetle obviously on its way to town, too, that will have another effect, too. Those trees that you cherish are probably going to look a little bit different in five or 10 years, anyway, so perhaps if you take them down now you can help with your fire potential. 
MARY BURTNESS: We’re also morel hunters. We checked it out, of course, but because they got on it so fast, we knew it wasn’t going to be a big morel season because it didn’t burn all the way down. There was still a lot of duff layer left, and a lot of the greenery still left, the root systems.
JEFF ADAMS: But it was a boon for the three-toed woodpeckers. Some grub, some beetle, maybe an engraver beetle, sets up their galleries in the lower part of the trees that had been burned. So you could always see how that lower part of that tree, the blackened bark had all been picked off, if you will.  And every time we would see any bird working that, it was always one of the three-toed woodpeckers. They’re not rare in our neighborhood, but I mean they’re a little bit uncommon, so that was pretty neat the next summer to be able to go there and almost every time see one or two three-toeds working the standing dead trees.
Anyone now that would move to town, depending on, well, regardless of what your water source is, try to have some sort of reservoir. Think about what it would take to actually get that water on to a fire someplace, at least be able to, in theory, wet down your roof so that you could delay any type of damage, so that the firefighters could get there, those kinds of things. 
MARY BURTNESS: Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection has a program called Firewise House, and they have pamphlets and all sorts of things.
I had spent time during COVID to clean out the front, all the small branches, all the bottom stuff. And I keep looking toward the east and thinking we should do it that way, because to the west is our parking lot but to the east it gets pretty close. So we wouldn’t want to cut down trees, but at least cut down lower branches and get rid of some of the deadfall. But every year, I think that, and I haven’t done it yet.
JEFF ADAMS: And then the mosquitoes come out, yeah. 
MARY BURTNESS: Yeah, true.
JEFF ADAMS: Makes it harder to get out into the woods then, for sure.


OUTRO: Alaska Voices is a place for communities to connect through conversation. This podcast was the brainchild of Jesie Young-Robertson and Bob Bolton with support from the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, who also funded today’s episode. The Alaska CASC is committed to providing regionally relevant science for Alaska’s changing climate. Alaska Voices would not be possible without the efforts of an amazing group of people. Our producer and audio engineer is Kelsey Skönberg of Mossy Stone Media. The Alaska Voices team includes Micah Hahn at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Lia Ferguson, Mike Delue, Annika Ord and Diego Noreña at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. If you are interested in more conversations or information, please visit our website at AlaskaVoices.org.