2009 Fire Ecology Institute for Educators

I was very excited to visit Durango for a week and learn about fire and the forests, but I wasn’t very clear on how or what exactly we were going to experience. I enjoy the outdoors and thought this would be a great excuse to get credit for being outside and learning about nature. As a computer teacher, I am fairly stuck in a classroom and unable to get out and take-in the beautiful Colorado spring weather. This was going to be the perfect class for me.

Let’s start with the information overload. As we arrived and started getting settled in, we needed to collect all of the information that we could use in class or we could take home to use back in out teachings. This turned out to be more than some of us had bargained for. I looked around the room with a sense of awe. There were more stacks of papers and books and posters than I could process. I felt overwhelmed by the mass of materials that I knew I couldn’t read through by the time the class ended, but being a teacher, I couldn’t leave it sitting there. After all, it was free, and we teachers like free things. So I collected my prizes and trudged back to the room to sort through my “booty” and see what I needed and what I could stow away for later.

The next day I took my tote sack with the selected information to the classroom. I knew the first day wouldn’t be the most exciting because we needed to get to know everyone and be introduced to the basic concepts of our week together. It was interesting to hear where everyone came from and why there were drawn to this class. Some were very interested in the environmental biology parts, and others, like myself, were more interested in some time away where we could unwind but still learn some very important facts about our wild lands.

The group immediately started using official sounding words like: defensible space, fuels, and fire regime to name only a few. Most of these I had never heard of and most of the others I hadn’t ever tried to apply to forest fires. We were introduced to several professionals who talked to us about how the fires act, the types of trees, and how the fire fighters respond and try to contain a wild fire. By the end of the first day, I felt two things. First was a sense of pride after learning so much about fire ecology. The second thing I felt, was the urge to get out and move around…. I’m not a big fan of sitting around, I like movement. We ended that evening by watching the film “Fire Wars.” I’m very happy that we watched this movie the first night so we gained more pertinent background to use the next four days. I’m also glad we watched it as a group because I don’t believe I would have taken the time to watch it on my own when I returned home.

Tuesday was the day I was looking forward to, because I knew we were getting out of the classroom and experiencing our subject first-hand. We began by seeing a couple wild fire response vehicles and talking directly to some firefighters who manage that kind of equipment. We then went to a burn area of the Missionary Ridge fire to see the devastation as well as the recovery process since the fire. We also had the opportunity to perform a little manual labor while we learned how to cut a fire line. This was just up my alley. We were outside, moving around, and using tools; what could be better? We then heard another professional speak about the reclamation processes in a lightly burned area and the steps they are taking to prevent a disaster. After lunch, we were privileged with a grizzled man I like to call “ZZ Top.” He spoke to us about the reclamation process in a severely burned area and all of the work that it entailed.

Wednesday was not a good day for me. Again, I like being outside and “playing” but the rain had been coming down most of the night and it hadn’t stopped after breakfast, so we were back in the classroom. On a side note, I also found out that I didn’t get my elk hunting license for this fall, thus making me even more frustrated. I had a bad attitude, but the day wasn’t nearly as awful as I pictured in my mind. We had some activities designed to learn about dendrochronology, tree dating. When I’m unable to be up and moving, I like to have something with which to apply myself and this was perfect. I loved the challenge and found the process very intriguing. We were also exposed to the issue and problem of noxious weeds, which I would have never attributed to wild fires. I had worked with my uncle many years ago digging thistle on his farm and had worked for a lawn maintenance company spraying other weeds around Grand Junction, so some of this information was very familiar.

After familiarizing myself with the mattress and finally getting a good night’s sleep, Thursday brought the nice weather and, with it, a trip to Mesa Verde National Monument. The trip again reinforced the severity of some of the wild fires that southern Colorado has experienced in the past 15 years. Here we learned about layover or hangover fires. I can’t remember what the exact word was, but it is a phenomenon in which lightning strikes but the fire stays inside a tree for several days up to a couple weeks before manifesting into a visible and real fire. We also had exposure to some of the tracking process to which the fire agencies are subject and privy. For example, there is a database that tracks all lightning strikes. This is particularly useful at Mesa Verde where approximately 95% of the fires are caused by lightning.

After hiking and studying very hard all week, our last night together was a time to unwind and relax, a little. We were treated to a very delicious BBQ. Of course this couldn’t be all play, we needed to learn at least a little bit more, so we were introduced to handheld GPS locators and the concept of geocaching. I had taken a class that included this before, so I felt very confident in helping some of the other participants, but unfortunately for our group, we grabbed the wrong sheet and “veered” off-course a little. It wasn’t an issue of reading the GPS wrong, it was the wrong goal paper, I swear…..

As our class came to an end on Friday, we traveled to one last burn area to see how a neighborhood had followed the suggestions of defensible space and saved a great deal of property and natural resources by their actions: proof positive that the preparations work. We then gathered back in the classroom to discuss what we had learned and how we planned to apply it back in our lessons. This helped immensely, because I had not seen a couple sections of a book that helped me realize which activities would be easily applied to my curriculum.