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PRAIRIE FIRE By: The GYPSY *
This story is dedicated to the Fire Fighters, Men and Women
who stare into the face of the beast and fight to tame it.
07/29/2009
I must have passed the sign a hundred times as I traveled North and South on US
Highway 75 going to some journey or event; Kansas Highway 58, it proclaimed,
Madison and Gridley. I had often wondered what lay in that direction and had
just as often made a mental note that someday I would take a bike ride down that
road.
I pulled into the rest area so that I could relieve myself. One too many cups of
coffee that morning as I had prepared to leave for the “Spring Fling Bike Show”
in Emporia, Kansas had finally caught up to me. I was scheduled to appear at the
show with my mobile studio the Skin Art Creations Tattoo Depot. I stopped in the
lobby and glanced at the Kansas map on the wall, a bright blue arrow pointed at
a spot on the map informing all who looked that, “You are here!” No, I thought
to myself, I am here, I looked down at the floor, if I was there I would be
standing on the map. I let out a low chuckle and then I saw it, five miles up
the road was Highway 58. I let my fingers trace a line along the map and soon
discovered that Highway 58 heading west ran into Kansas Highway 99 which in turn
went right through the center of Emporia. I left the building and returned to my
truck. Leaving the rest area I maneuvered my truck and the trailer it towed back
onto US 75 North knowing that I now had a new and different route I would be
taking into Emporia that day.
As I traveled along the narrow two lane shoulder less road I looked out at the
horizon, the air seemed thick and hazy. As Highway 58 twisted and turned it’s
way west I started noticing the smell of smoke. Maybe someone is burning off
some brush, I thought. This time of year in Kansas burning brush piles or what
are called “Controlled Burns” are not unusual. A controlled burn is when a
farmer burns off the old vegetation in their field to aid in new growth. Also
the carbons and nitrates produced by the burned grasses help add needed
nutrients back into the soil. As I topped the next hill I saw it, a plume of
smoke a mile high, I knew then that this was not a “Controlled Burn.”
For the next several miles I traveled through a waste land of
scorched earth. I braked for a herd of Deer that I saw running across a field
from the flames. They jumped the south fence next to the road crossing the
highway and jumping the north fence disappearing into the deep draws. Mouths
open, tongues out, white tails down, signs of a panicked herd. The smoke was
thick in the air and flames licked at the side of the highway. I prayed that I
would not have to stop for any reason until I arrived at my final destination.
I arrived at the fairgrounds, dropping and leveling the mobile studio in it’s
spot. My front girl Dee Poe had arrived 10 minutes after me and we worked to
quickly secure the trailer. I had a mission and I did not want to wait too long
to implement it. Shadows were growing long as we headed out and back towards the
south, we were returning from whence I came, I knew I had to capture, in photos,
this awesome and destructive force of nature.
As we traveled back towards the Prairie Fire Dee told me that it
had been the top story in area News. She said that the night before a local TV
station had said it was under control. I said, “If that is what they call
control I shudder to think what they call uncontrolled.” She told me that
several Firefighters had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation and that one had
died when he became surround by flames and could not escape before being over
come by the smoke. I allowed that I could understand that from what I had
already seen. On the horizon the billow of smoke I had seen earlier still
climbed high into the sky. We pulled off the road and into a driveway by an old
warehouse
.
For miles the earth was blackened, smoke rolled along the ground
like gray waves on a charcoal sea. Licks of flame would appear and disappear
like children playing hide and seek. Hawks and Buzzards circled in the sky like
hungry diners at the worlds largest buffet looking for tasty morsels that had
not escaped the devastation. We walked in this wasteland, the ground crunching
beneath our feet, soot covering our shoes taking photos and silently surveying
the land. We returned to the truck and headed off down the highway to see if we
could get a different angle on the fire.
The truck rattled down the old dirt road, flames leapt in the ditches that lined
the road and burned away the shoulders. We passed a group of Fire Fighters who
raised their smoke blackened gloves to us in a greeting as we drove past. We
stopped and took some photos looking down into a valley where a lake reflected,
like a blue mirror the smoke and black, brittle grass that surrounded it. A
little further up the road a lone Cottonwood tree, it’s bark blackened and
scarred by the flames, served as a resting place for search weary birds of prey.
We turned back west on a muddy narrow lane and as we topped the hill in front of
us I braked hard the sound of the soft soil below our tires protesting as the
truck stopped. There less than a hundred yards ahead of us was the leading front
of the fire. I had worked fire lines when I had gone to school on a Forest
Service scholarship up in South Dakota back in the 1970’s and I knew that this
was the most dangerous area of the fire. A shift of wind and we could find
ourselves surrounded and in a bad situation. I left the truck idling and the
doors open as we got out to take more photos.
On a ridge a quarter mile up the road a lone Fire Fighter ran a 4 wheeler with a
water tank on the back stopping every so often to spray out spot fires. His
attempts to keep the fire from jumping the road were in vain as the wind picked
up and the smoke thickened. He turned his 4 wheeler away from the smoke and
accelerated back off the ridge and towards a safe retreat. As I took the photos
I noticed that flames had crawled into the ditch near where I stood, the wind
had shifted and the smell of the burning land was thick in my nostrils, it was
time to leave. As we drove back towards Highway 58 we passed the same group of
Fire Fighters we had passed earlier. “Look”, Dee said, “The one with the 4
wheeler is with them.” We waved as we passed by.
We returned to the mobile unit and finished setting up. I did a tattoo for Dee
and the next day created Body Art Magic for several attendees of the show.
Around 5:00pm we started our tear down and by 8:00pm we were back on the road,
Dee heading for her town of Topeka to the northeast and me heading for my town
of Independence to the southeast. As I headed home that night, staying on the
major highways, I found myself surrounded by a strange alien landscape of red,
orange and yellow light glowing with in rolling clouds that reflected their
color. I dared not stop as flames in far off fields raced towards the roads. At
one wide spot I dared to pull over to catch a quick photo of 20 foot high flames
as they threatened to engulf an old elm tree. I was struck by the strangeness of
“Controlled Burns” taking place along side “Uncontrolled Burns” and I wondered
if there was really such a thing as a controlled fire. I arrived home safely and
after parking disconnecting the mobile unit I entered my home to take a well
deserved rest with my wife.
Long before man tried to tame the Prairie Grass Lands to feed his cattle and
plant his crops nature would, every so often, clean her house and wipe the land
clean so that new growth would not be choked out by old growth. A thunderstorm,
a tree hit by lightning, one small spark and the Prairie of what one day would
be known as the Flint Hills of Kansas would erupt into a cleansing wall of fire
sweeping the land clean until it found itself spent for lack of fuel or drowned
by the Spring rains. Man in his vanity attempts to control what cannot be
controlled, fearful that the flames will take all he has built. What we build
upon this Earth is temporary and what we save today will be laid to waste
tomorrow. The Earth will always cleanse herself of that which fouls her surface
be it through wind, flood or fire. I have witnessed the power of a Tornado first
hand and found myself the victim of a raging flood but beyond any shadow of a
doubt a Prairie Fire is the strangest and most beautiful of all of Mother
Natures destructive forces. Like a Phoenix from the ashes a new world shall
emerge and a year from now as Spring time again comes to the land what is now
gray and black shall be covered in a symphony of color. The hills shall be
blanketed in new grass and glorious wildflowers and life once again shall return
to the land.
-The GYPSY-
*Copyright 2009 Tatman Productions LLC: All parts copyrighted.
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