When news of the Los Angeles fires broke, I reached for Joan Didion, remembering how vividly she evoked fires. Not just the heat and burn of them, but the mood — that underneath L.A.'s heedlessness lurks the sleeping embers of its destruction.
She wrote, “The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself.”
In truth, California need not be so flammable. What’s important is this: to live with fire, we have to learn to live with water. Not just water in hoses and hydrants, but — rather — the moisture held in the land.
Ecologically speaking, why do we have fire? Nature faces an ongoing challenge: what to do with dying plants? All that vegetation needs breaking down. It can happen in a way that carbon and nutrients are incorporated into the soil. Such as when sheep chomp on grasses or when fungi decompose fallen trees. Fire is also very effective at breaking down plant matter, but — in doing so — sends carbon to the air and nutrients into ash.
Nature keeps fire in check by keeping land hydrated. Simply put, wet plants don’t burn. California was tinderbox-dry due to lack of rain and dried-out landscapes. L.A. once had wetlands, but water has been paved over, channelized and drained from surfaces.
Now there are critters happy to keep land moist. Beavers build dams. Those sheep cycle moisture through their waste and help build spongy soil. Earthworms create pathways for water to meander. And since all living things are themselves mostly water, it’s good to keep them around.
Only by understanding how to work with water will we be able to tame the flames. As we start to see droughts here in New England, we need to make sure our landscapes don’t dry out.
Here’s a guide: if it’s too dry for an earthworm, the land is beckoning fire. A happy worm means the soil is moist and what’s on the soil is unlikely to burn.
Judith D. Schwartz is the author of "Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World." She lives in southwestern Vermont.
