For those who might like a single volume entry into Prof. Stephen J. Pyne’s research into the behavior of wild land fires and, perhaps more immediately important, his ideas regarding how to think about and understand the history and dynamics of fire, University of California Press recently published his book “The Pyrocene; How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next.”
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.