Notes from my Knapsack 1-23-25

Notes from my Knapsack 1-23-25
Jeff Gill

You, and only you, can manage your local brush
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You may have noticed that Smokey Bear has changed his tagline.

In fact, it's been different for years now, but with current news stories it catches the ear differently.

Many of us grew up with Smokey saying "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires." In recent years it has been said in Sam Elliott's rumbling tones, and in 2024 Brian Tyree Henry became the voice of the U.S. Forest Service mascot. But what they have been saying is "Remember, only you can prevent wildfires." Fires burning wild are the problem, not all fires in the forest.

After the Yellowstone fires of 1988, the entire approach of wilderness management began to change. It had been from "The Big Burn" of 1910 when the U.S.F.S. model was "put those fires out," and Pulaski tools and smokejumpers all became part of the standard assumption of what a fire in the woods meant: a problem, to be extinguished.

Then the problem became one of our having done things too well. We put fires out all across the West, quickly and completely, which ended up allowing brush to build up in the understory of mature forests. Brush, aka kindling. Fuel. Fire accelerant.

Add in the simple biological fact that there are a number of trees and plants which actually benefit from the aftermath of fires, and we've come to the realization that controlled burns in some places, and yes, allowing forest fires to burn in others, means less total fire damage and ecosystem harm in general. Putting out every forest fire isn't the ideal outcome, hence "Remember, only you can prevent wildfires" from our pal Smokey.

Now we see in Southern California some of the challenges in this same thinking in urban wildernesses and undeveloped lands. Brush cleared aggressively can look "unnatural" and jagged ended to a certain perspective, but it's either clearing brush now, or feeding fires later in the dry season.

Before you think this is a western problem alone, I'll note that we have the advantage of not seeing an annual "Dry Season" in Ohio, but brush and undergrowth and fuel loads can create challenges here, too, especially when there's a drought running. Granville Township Fire Department has a Tanker 201 and a Grass 201 vehicle, and they're not just for show. Brush fires may be more common in grasslands during our summers, but if it's dry enough and the wind is blowing, they can spread. We have our own Fire Weather Watches or Red Flag Warnings.

It's worth noting that directly across from Ross IGA, on the other side of Main St., was Beaver Field, the local baseball diamond. Yes, the woodlot south of the old Denison power plant. Frederick P. Beaver, a trustee of the college, would later donate a dorm built in his wife's honor in 1925, but first he built a ball field. Now? You'd never guess. But that was an open field seventy years ago. That's how fast second growth and scrub can shoot up.

We don't have California's problems in Our Fayre Village, but it's worth learning from them before we have our own.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been on a few fire lines swinging a Pulaski. Tell him how you keep your brush clear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 1-17-25

Faith Works 1-17-25
Jeff Gill

Limits of understanding and extensions of faith
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One of the most rewarding things about caring for elderly parents is to have opportunities to learn about the past, even when the present is rather complicated.

The time it takes to do caregiving, and the pace of a life with limitations, means you might get into conversations which wouldn't come up in the usual round of coming and going and doing.

There are stories you will hear many, many times (oh so many times, never brushed aside by "yes, you've told me that"), and you generally won't get to hear the ones you go fishing for. If there's a gap in the family narrative you'd like to fill in, I can almost guarantee you in advance you'll not get what you're looking for.

But if you have the patience, and are willing to go unexpected places, you can find yourself in unexplored territory, and realize you always wanted to hear more about something you'd never even wondered about.

My father-in-law had his cycle of Army stories in Germany during the Korean War years, but when an opening appeared about his youth in Indianapolis during World War II, I did my best to paddle with the current, and found out a great deal about operating a Kroger grocery, albeit one with three employees plus a teenager, operating out of a city corner building. A superstore it wasn't.

My mother recently told a story about events in 1960, not long before my birth, which I'd never heard before. My paternal grandfather died, and my father immediately drove home across Iowa in their one car while Mom was teaching third grade; my mother told her father, who unexpectedly (to her) drove across Illinois, as a school superintendent schmoozed her boss, the elementary school principal, into covering her classes so he could drive her on to the funeral, which he stayed for, then drove home across most of Iowa and Illinois leaving Mom to return home with Dad.

It's a lovely story, one in keeping of what little I remember of him (he died when I was nine, over fifty years ago), and it fits what facts I knew around those events. All of which is key, because in general, Mom's stories these days can't be trusted. She tells us her father is coming to visit (which sounds portentous, but she's been saying that for many months now, so it doesn't have the same ominous impact it originally did); she tells hairdressers she's still teaching and driving, neither of which have been the case for years. Events in one place like her hometown get mashed up with events in where she raised her family in another state, and are tangled with the here and now.

We just moved Mom to a memory care unit, where her greatest concern is that her car is going to be towed. Where she thinks she is right now is not clear. All of which makes taking literally any new story she tells a risky proposition. I've dealt with situations as a parish minister where an elderly parent with increasing dementia starts to tell stories which leave their adult children more than a little worried that the tale might actually be true, but how would they know?

I have been thinking about all of this as I watch the news and social media boil over with competing theories about California wildfire origins and obstacles, which echo some of the battling narratives around vaccines and public health we've been dealing with since COVID. I'm not saying our society has dementia . . . not exactly. But the challenges for sorting out truth from fiction from falsehood: they're not dissimilar at all.

Faith, authority, understanding, and choices . . . choices we have to make about what to believe, and who.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's often confused, but always curious. Tell him how you discern the truth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.