As I began my early morning walk down the hill into town, just as I was putting on my sunglasses to face the rising sun that always greets me this time of year, I realized that they weren’t needed – the smoke from the many forest and rangeland fires burning across the Pacific Northwest had reached our little corner of Oregon, turning the Sun’s disk from its usual blazing yellow into a muted dark red.
All across America, fires are raging across the landscape – as well as across the media. Whether it be broadcast or social, each day brings fresh news and commentary about the fires, sometimes well-informed, other times pure (a my British friends are fond of saying) bollocks.
Thus I thought this would be an appropriate time to remind my readers about the To the Last Smoke series from The University of Arizona Press. Each of the nine presently published volumes – with more still to come – were written by Professor Stephen J. Pyne, Regents’ Professor in the Human Dimensions Faculty of the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University and quite possibly the world’s foremost authority on the subject of wildfires.
Presently published volumes cover the history, behavior, and ecological role of fires in
- The Interior West
- California
- Florida
- The Northern Rockies
- The Northeast
- The Southwest
- The Great Plains
- Slopovers; Fire Surveys of the Mid-American Oak Woodlands, Pacific Northwest, and Alaska
as well as a general overview of wild land fires and their management titled Here and There; A Fire Survey.
All who would like to achieve a more complete, complex, and comprehensive understanding of wild land fires that will cut through the daily broadcast and social media mix of melodrama and competitive sports style reporting about them are very heartily encouraged to pick one of these volumes covering an area of their particular interest and begin reading. Once you’ve read your first volume, I strongly suspect you’ll be eager to continue reading through all the rest.
