Wild Times

In the summer of 2021, an extreme heatwave and drought struck British Columbia, triggering numerous wildfires. The village of Lytton was completely destroyed, while several other communities were placed on high alert. Wishing to continue the research begun with the Land of Ashes project, I am travelling to the Thompson River valley to photograph the wildfires that are spreading rapidly. The vegetation was completely parched, and even the slightest twig crumbled to dust beneath my feet. For miles around, plumes of smoke rose from the fires. The smoke had become so thick that the surrounding landscape was barely visible, and breathing the air was difficult. The nearby settlement of Walhachin would be evacuated the following day. Shrouded in fine particles, the sky had darkened, and day could scarcely be distinguished from night. The sun, rising behind these toxic emissions, looked like a blood moon. This hellish landscape was as mesmerising as it was disturbing. ‘How can such fires seem so beautiful to watch?’ a friend would later write to me. Several of us had stopped alongside the Trans-Canada Highway, almost hypnotised, to gaze at this magnificent yet terrifying spectacle. Here in western Canada, people have learnt to live alongside wildfires; they are part of the summer rhythm and are almost expected, like a season in their own right. Yet despite this relative familiarity, fear remains. Watching the flames devour the mountainsides, I felt a deep unease and a tension that was hard to name. My discomfort, like that of many others, revealed more about the cultural lens we have inherited than about the reality of the fire itself: an alarmist lens rooted in anthropocentrism, where anything beyond our control is perceived as a catastrophe.

Throughout the 20^th century, the dominant approach treated fire as an absolute danger to be extinguished at all costs. British colonial and provincial authorities regarded fire as a destructive threat to timber, which was essential to the emerging logging- and agriculture-based economy. In 1874, British Columbia passed the Bush Fire Act, which made deliberately lighting fires in forests and grasslands punishable by fines and imprisonment. Thus, wildfire became the symbol of hostile, uncontrollable nature that had to be suppressed to protect our civilised world. In this Enlightenment-inspired vision of the modern project of mastery, nature appeared as a wild domain to be tamed. However, this dichotomy between nature and culture prevents us from recognising fire as a necessary ecological process. By working against it, we have disrupted an equilibrium that had existed for millennia. Western dualistic thinking has broken ancient cycles of management, directly leading to the massive accumulation of fuel and encouraging contemporary megafires.

Wildfires are not uncommon in the West, but the situation has worsened in recent years, with numerous communities in California, Oregon and Canada already bearing the brunt of the impact. While we know that heatwaves and droughts create favourable conditions for fire, are climate variations solely responsible for these disasters? Nowadays, climate change is often used as a universal scapegoat, obscuring more immediate and local responsibilities. The media and governments readily invoke ‘global warming’ to explain the severity of the fires, thereby relegating direct human causes and chronic forest management failures to the background. Some argue that we must reconsider our wildfire management models entirely.

The First Peoples of North America and Australia recognised that fire was an integral part of the forest regeneration cycle. They practised cultural burning and shaped their lands to protect them from devastating fires. To them, fire was not an enemy, but a valuable ally that healed the forest by clearing dead trees, controlling harmful insects and promoting new growth. They regarded megafires as signs of imbalance in the relationship between human beings and the Earth.

Today, cultural burning is not only permitted, but also actively encouraged as part of reconciliation efforts and wildfire risk management. Combining these ancestral practices with modern techniques is seen as essential for coping with increasingly intense fires. Organisations such as the Okanagan Nation Alliance and the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society are leading these initiatives, often with the support of the BC Wildfire Service. This marks a significant return to traditional practices, vital for restoring ecosystems and safeguarding communities. Attempting to dominate nature without understanding or respecting it is bound to end in failure. Therefore, we must rethink our relationship with the land and learn to live in harmony with it rather than succumbing to the illusory quest for a more controlled and secure world.