"The Beast is Still Up."
The catastrophic fires in Los Angeles gave me the kick in the butt I needed to purchase Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, which I'd intended to read since it was named to the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023 list.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough, though in saying this I'm also admitting my weakness as a writer to convey the depths of my zeal for this book.
I’ve had an intense native curiosity about fire since I was a little boy, with lots of “experimentation.” (Still sorry about that heirloom quilt, Grandma.) This interest sparks to life more frequently these days, what with climate change hastening and exacerbating fire events.
Written by John Vaillant, Fire Weather's pivot point is the Fort McMurray, Alberta, fire of 2016. I say “pivot,” because Vaillant’s telling of the calamitous inferno (which devoured much of a modern city with nearly 90,000 residents) ranges broadly from the conflagration itself to lessons in fur trapping; the Lucretius Problem; bitumen; the boreal forest; the combustion properties of legacy furniture vs. modern furniture; the WWII firebombing of Hamburg, Germany; a 1958 Frank Capra movie, The Unchained Goddess; human nature; pyrotornadogenesis; and perhaps most importantly, what happens when a wildfire transforms into a beastly urban blaze.
I say "beastly," as this fire became known as "The Beast," so-called after Wood Buffalo Fire Chief Darby Allen gave a morning update to the community on the crisis, saying, "The beast is still up."
As for fire, Vaillant helps you understand it not as a flame, but as a living, breathing entity with only one goal: to satiate its hunger for fuel.
If you are a reader who enjoys atmospheric writing of the top order, it’s worth the time investment if only for the beautiful way Vaillant deploys language. I learned new vocabulary words (infandous 😱) and marveled at metaphors that were abundant, apt, and artful.
Here’s one metaphoric example where Vaillant conveys the difference between a structural fire (municipal) and those birthed by a forest:
“Where structural firefighting is comparable to a rugby match – muscular, confrontational, and contained, with the goal visible at all times – wildland firefighting is more like lacrosse as it was originally conceived; not on a field, per se, but across a landscape where it is not so much played, as waged, like a running battle whose outcome is neither visible or certain.”
The story itself reads more like a thriller – the fire, as it is wont to do, takes you on a breathtaking ride – breathtaking, literally, as the narrative nearly sucks the oxygen from your reading room in service of a tale that is spellbinding and, ultimately, terrifying.
While I’m at it, another book that’s as engaging – and harrowing – is The Big Burn by Timothy Egan. It’s another master class in storytelling, portraying the calamitous event of the Great Fire of 1910, which burned more than 3 million acres in a matter of days and gave rise to the modern-day U.S. Forest Service.
It’s sobering that we need to understand these lessons and apply them to our daily consciousness, whether we live in rural areas or in cities connected to risk via the transition zones of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). Where once we thought cities were refuge from these ferocious fires, that invisible safety shield no longer exists. Perhaps the title of an interview the author Vaillant gave to Inside Climate News earlier this month says it best: “Virtually Any City on Earth Can Burn Now.”
Godspeed, friends.
Russ
💬 Think About It
"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire..." From Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost.
💥 Quick Hits
• Predictions for brand purpose – Members of the Purpose Collaborative, a network of more than 40 social impact-focused firms, share their predictions for social impact, brand purpose and sustainability in 2025.
• Who gives a crap? – I love The Wirecutter and its product reviews; hard to resist their recommendation for this eco-friendly, aesthetically pleasing toilet paper.
• Costco DEI update – We wrote about Costco bucking the anti-DEI forces a couple of weeks ago (What I Love about Costco); last Thursday, shareholders at its annual meeting soundly rejected an anti-DEI resolution that was brought to a vote.
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