CHARRED ABSTRACTIONS

Bark and wood burn very differently. Different species of trees burn differently. Even among the same species, the effects of burning and charring differ by tree age. All this resulted in a surprising variety and abstraction in the marks made by fire.

CANOPY

Conifer trees typically have vertical stems and horizontal branches. During the fire, intense heat rose from the forest floor, drying the needles, leaves, and limbs high in the canopy where fire did not reach. The property of wood differs between the tops and bottoms of limbs to support their load of needles and moisture, so loss of needles and drying of the wood caused conifer branches to curl inward and upward in atypical fashion. The wood properties of hardwood trees are different from that of conifer trees, hence their forms did not respond to the heat in the same way.

STUMP GHOSTS

Huge old-growth stumps are part of the human legacy in these forested landscapes. Some were so massive they did not completely burn, while others had decomposed to a point where they did completely burn, leaving caverns with deep channels describing the path of their root systems. They seemed ghost-like because of their inverse forms describing what once was. The widest of these stumps measured 15 feet across, and the deepest root channel measured nine feet.

SWOOPING TREES

Wildfires are often spread rapidly by winds. They also generate their own windstorm within the fire. These skinny, hardwood trees chose to grow tall as fast as possible to reach light through the canopy of conifers. The spindly stems and weak wood of the hardwoods left them vulnerable to tipping by the fire-driving winds. As they bent and swooped, they thoroughly dried from the heat, retaining their swooping form long after the fire was out.

FUEL ARCHITECTURE

During the initial, raging phase of fire, the understory quickly burned away completely, leaving large pieces of wood standing and on the ground. Wherever two or more pieces of wood touched, more intense, sustained heat caused smoldering to continue for days and even weeks. Eventually enough wood burned away creating space for the fire to cool down and eventually wink out. The result is sculptural evidence of the layered intensity of fire.

BRANCH HOLES

Shown here are 8 of the 17 branch holes that dot the flanks of this one cedar tree from ground to head height. The entire outer form of the tree is intact, while the inner dead wood core of the tree was hollowed out by decay over decades and then by the recent fire. Our theory is that branches close to the ground were lost long ago, facilitating decomposition of wood in the core of the tree. Scar tissue ringed the branch holes, which then provided access for fire to enter the hollow core of the tree, permitting it to function as a chimney. The fire revealed the intricate details of these branch holes.

ASEASONAL LEAFING

Many of the younger vine maples and chinquapin trees burned down to 6”-18” stubs. They posed a danger because they could easily impale a careless photographer. In addition to their lovely sculptural qualities, they produced bright, shiny leaves in mid-winter, rather than a normal springtime bloom. We wondered at the environmental and biological factors that caused this atypical behavior.

FLOWERS RETURN

The fire abruptly blackened a living forest that was once colored in a rich variety of greens and browns. But vibrant colors returned with the spring blooms of dozens of herb and shrub species sprouting from buried plant parts and from seeds arriving on the wind.

SPOROCARPS

In the first months after the fire, white exudates oozing down the blackened trees were the first signs of biological processes underway inside. Soon whitish sporocarps signaled that wood-decomposing fungi had entered the trees, matured, and then put out these structures to share their spores with the rest of the world.

SAPSUCKER HOLES

Woodpecker holes tell us of other biological processes happening inside and now outside the tree. One type of woodpecker, the sapsucker, drills holes though the bark to draw sap into sapwells, where it can access nourishment from the sap and incidental associated bugs. In another form of tree invasion, boring beetles enter the tree to feed and lay eggs from which larvae emerge. The woodpeckers drill through the bark to find and feed on the larvae. The beetle and woodpecker holes provide access for wood-decomposing fungi, and the tree responds by sending sap to fend off the intruders. Sap seeping from the woodpecker holes flows down the blackened trunk. In these particular stories we also see the larger story of a vast, biologically diverse forest in which new life is constantly emerging from dead and decomposing organic matter.

BARK EXFOLIATION

Standing dead trees crumble to the forest floor in many ways. In the second year following the fire, hardwood trees and some conifers began to vigorously shed their bark. Scales of bark flaked off some other species. The thin-barked big leaf maples commonly had long strands of bark detach at the base of trees where the fire burned hottest, leaving the dangling bark to rattle in the breeze.

LIVING STUMPS

The fire burned away underbrush, revealing these small trees that were most likely cut as part of a forest thinning operation long before the fire. The trees covered over their wounds with scar tissue and were sustained by nutrients shared through roots and fungal hyphae connected with nearby trees (the exudate dripping from some of them is evidence of this symbiosis). They continued living despite not being able to produce a single needle to photosynthesize and create their own nutrients.

FINN ROCK LOGGING CAMP

Legacies of human presence abound across the landscape. From the 1930’s through the 1960’s a small logging camp occupied part of the Finn Rock Reach on the floodplain of the McKenzie River. It was known as Finn Rock Logging Camp. The workers and their families lived in 24 cedar cabins. Additional structures included a maintenance shop, pump house, store and church. All these structures were removed decades ago.

When the fire burned away the dense underbrush, it revealed a metallic history of the camp’s inhabitants. Charred car parts, waffle irons, tea kettles, a roller skate, baby stroller parts and more littered the burned site. Volunteers with the McKenzie River Trust spent many days gathering the metal into piles along Huckleberry Lane. Much of the metal was loaded onto trucks and hauled to a recycling center.

LOGGING CABLES

Logging cables, flat-topped stumps, and highly decomposed logs with cut ends lying on the ground are legacies of past land use revealed when the fire removed underbrush. Some of these legacies date from more than a century ago. Land use practices today, be they conservation or further forestry, will leave legacies far into the future.