I’ve always loved that Joyce Kilmer poem first encountered in elementary school.
You know, the one with the killer line: “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”
That used to crack up my nine-year-old mind, mainly because I liked hearing an adult call himself a fool and would like to see it happen more often.
I also liked the idea of this old guy who looked like Santa Claus merrily making trees. Ho ho ho. Much better than the God of Sunday school who went around smiting things.
And I’ve always liked trees. As I write, here near the bank of the Capilano River where I live, I’m surrounded by a leafy canopy of oaks, maples and a couple dozen varieties of conifers. Joyce Kilmer would have loved it here — more trees than fools.
I’ve always thought that was a good thing, but in the wake of the Fort McMurray fire, I’m not so sure. As Crawford Kilian put it recently in the Tyee: “Hundreds of thousands of us live on the dangerous interface between forests and houses made of forests. If a blaze on Mount Seymour or Cypress started dropping firebombs on the million-dollar homes downhill, would we respond as calmly and decisively as the people of Fort McMurray?”
Good question, Crawford. One I ask myself every morning as I inch painfully slowly toward the Lions Gate Bridge in a ribbon of designer traffic. What if we North Shore forest dwellers had to get out of Dodge in a hurry to escape the aforementioned fireballs?
And in the reflection that happens in the wake of an event of such magnitude, as perennially hot and dry conditions make the North Shore forest increasingly vulnerable to a wildfire, people are wondering: Can it happen here?
Hard to imagine, but the volatile combinations of trails, fools and cigarettes just enhance the possibility. According to a recent Vancouver Sun story, last summer there were 28 fires in West Vancouver; 27 of them were caused by tossed cigarettes.
You gotta ask yourself: who would toss a cigarette into a hot dry forest? There are already enough natural hazards such as heat and lightning, but never underestimate the foolishness of a fool.
It’s good to know that the District of North Vancouver is clearing the so-called interface between the forest and the fools, trying to prevent the sort of thing that happened in Fort McMurray. Perhaps the best thing we can do is understand that for fire safety purposes, it’s not forest, it’s fuel. Funny how “fuel” rhymes with “fool.”
All you have to do is walk through any trail anywhere on the North Shore to check out all the fuel. Not so long ago, it was an exercise in poetic communion. Now it just makes my palms sweat. Unfortunately, that’s about the only moisture in the vicinity. There’s something eerie about dust in May.
I never thought I’d be eyeing my friendly forest with such fevered distrust. I also never thought I’d be praying to the tree god for rain. But all this sunshine in a rain forest is creepy. So far, I don’t have much to show for my efforts other than a few sprinkles.
I think the problem is simple: We’ve never had a forest fire, at least not in living memory. Just like we’ve never had an earthquake. And all the warnings in the world aren’t the same as a live demonstration. In fact, all the warnings in the world just add up to a cry of wolf. People deny global warming despite overwhelming evidence — you can pretty much book passage through the Northwest Passage these days and be sure of getting from one end to the other without getting trapped in the ice — and every day, they fail to think about what happens if there’s an earthquake. Or a fire.
So, we spare a few moments (honestly) for our unfortunate neighbours in Fort McMurray. Some of us even go so far to think that it’s a judgement from Joyce Kilmer’s tree-planting God, who has just let us fools know what he thinks of the oil sands.
But really, we should be thankful that they were able to evacuate the city cleanly and with no loss of life.
And we should be thankful that we got a lesson in what to do when life becomes a living hell.
I’ve got the feeling we’ll need it.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. he can be reached via email at [email protected].
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