MOTHER NATURE DOES HER (SOMETIMES SCARY) THING
Wildfires seen from the train window near Kamloops (Author photo)
First there is the breathtaking beauty. Seeing the Canadian Rockies for the first time was recently my extraordinary good fortune.
But knowing a place we walked one day was almost gone the next? It’s too much to wrap the brain around. That historic lodge? Singed but saved. The majestic pines and firs and cypress trees? Thousands of acres now reduced to ashes. Those lakeside docks and benches where we propped our feet in wonder? Gone.
Beauvert Lake at Jasper Park Lodge before the fire reached this spot (Sandy Strong photo)
And the elk, the deer, the mountain goats, the bears and chipmunks and ground squirrels? Safely, we hope, somewhere else; we don’t know. Parks Canada people, who may have one of the most extensive and multi-faceted training programs known to humankind, have ways of guiding wildlife toward safer areas as fires approach; Mother Nature has also embedded her own safety and advance-warning systems in animal populations that are often smarter than their human counterparts anyway.
Peaceful grazing in an area now burned away (Author photo)
Mountain scenery, as we traveled by train across British Columbia and Alberta, had been clouded by what we knew to be nearby forest fires (above.) 2023 was Canada’s worst wildfire season in history, with upwards of 70,000 square miles lost. In Alberta, where this essay was written, the wildfire season started later in 2024 than the year before, “but there are more blazes currently that are considered out of control. As of Aug 1, 2023, only two wildfires were out of control, but Alberta currently has 57.”
It’s that “out of control” business that feels the scariest.
I spent two peaceful days and nights at the Jasper Park Lodge, leaving with a group of fellow Rocky Mountaineer tourists on a bright Monday morning. At breakfast on Wednesday we learned that the lodge had been evacuated late Monday night. By Thursday we were hearing that JPL had been lost (thankfully erroneous news;) then, that it had been mostly saved, although swaths of the nearby town of Jasper were burned to the ground.
Our cabin at Jasper Park Lodge, reportedly still standing (Author photo)
The force of Mother Nature is astonishing to behold. Watching the ferocity of rapids and waterfalls is awe-inspiring; wildfires are in a category unto themselves.
Wildfires are started by lighting strikes — making rainstorms a mixed blessing when fires are already raging — by human misadventures, and (sorry, climate deniers) by the warming planet. One of the most interesting factoids uncovered while fact-checking this essay is that embers can smolder beneath the ground throughout a not-so-cold winter and then pop up again (“Zombie fires”)to ignite a new blaze a season or two later.
It is mind-boggling to find oneself just ahead of blazing forests, to see skies aglow from nearby fires and particles of ash everywhere — while on an innocently planned vacation. It brings a new understanding to the effects of last year’s Canadian wildfires that were felt across the U.S. as far south as Washington DC and experienced even on my San Francisco balcony. And a new emphasis to the old adage:
Nature bats last.
