How My Settler Ancestors Set Us Up for Uncontrollable Wildfires

A red sun rises, and green freeway signs are unreadable in the thick air as morning traffic crawls toward Silicon Valley. It鈥檚 just one day into the nightmare of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, 150 miles to the north, and toxic smoke has already blanketed the Bay Area, where it will deepen over two weeks. I ask myself what I鈥檓 doing out here in my car adding to the mess. Ever since last year鈥檚 fires ripped through my family鈥檚 place in the Napa hills, I鈥檝e felt especially vulnerable. My respiratory passages clench up at every hint of smoke. And now there鈥檚 a twinge of chest pain I鈥檝e learned to read as fear, not a second heart attack. It鈥檚 a sensation I can calm, but it comes back when I face the enormity of what we鈥檝e done to the Earth and each other.

These fires say it all. As I write, the one in Paradise, alone, has destroyed twice as many homes as last year鈥檚 fires and moved even faster across the land. It has killed 88 people, with hundreds still missing, many more homeless, and millions exposed to the sick air. But it鈥檚 not just the fires themselves鈥攖he 鈥渘ew abnormal鈥� as our governor calls. Most of us know that we鈥檝e crossed a line with climate and are entering a passage that humans have no idea how to navigate. All we know is that our way of life on this planet is not working and needs to change radically and quickly. I鈥檓 on the road now because I鈥檓 heading to a retreat where we鈥檒l think about how to meet these 鈥渂urning times.鈥�

Last year when the fires hit us so directly in Napa and Sonoma, I was studying the local ecosystem and my family鈥檚 history on the land, so I can tell you some things about fire and colonization that aren鈥檛 in the news. These dry-season fires bear close relationship to what the land evolved with鈥攎any native plants here can鈥檛 reproduce without a good burn. I鈥檓 glad to say some of them on our hill are thriving anew after last year鈥檚 fire. But modern fires burn differently, thanks to interlocking factors of our own making. The media is how climate change has deepened drought, raised temperatures and even created a desiccating force called 鈥渘egative rain.鈥� All this accelerates the winds we鈥檝e always had this time of year鈥攄ry Santa Ana and Diablo winds out of the northeast that make wildfire more fearsome. On our hill last year, some parts burned lightly, others with a new kind of ferocity that will affect recovery.

In the panic, no one talks about another human factor rooted in our history: how we White Californians, in our earliest legislation in 1850鈥攐ur first year of statehood鈥攃riminalized practices that Indigenous Californians had used for millennia to protect the land from catastrophic wildfire. The people who evolved with this land had learned to work with gentle, controlled burning at milder seasons of the year, supported by ceremony and traditional knowledge. Their burning killed pathogens, fertilized the soil, stimulated biodiversity and healthy creeks, and cleared tinder buildup鈥攍eaving a park-like ecosystem that our European ancestors found lovely and rushed to exploit.

To my settler-ancestors, Indigenous burning must have seemed threatening. In its wake, they began the kind of farming that would weaken biodiversity, divert and pollute the waters, and poison the land. The wave of new immigrants who came with the gold rush wanted what media of the time called 鈥渙nly a White population in California鈥� and began a course of , now as intentional. Our first governor even called for a policy of 鈥渆xtermination.鈥� Californians don鈥檛 learn this history in school and know almost nothing about the hundreds of Native cultures that knew, loved and tended the lands here before us.

Knowing whose ancestral homelands are affected鈥攖he Concow and Maidu peoples in Paradise, the Wappo and Pomo in the fires I followed so closely last year鈥攈elps me think about today鈥檚 terrible fires. I鈥檇 even tracked a fire map showing the worst blaze following the same route as vigilantes in 1850 out to destroy Pomo villages. Eventually our European ancestors outgrew their farms and began to pave and build on fertile land, adding fossil fuel-intensive industry, commerce, homes, and highways like the one I am following through the home-ground of the Bay Area鈥檚 Ohlone people. I can鈥檛 help thinking we need to acknowledge history and heal before we can change the course of this destruction.

I want us to go humbly to the very people our culture tried to exterminate and listen to what they can teach us.

Calming my mind as I drive, I reason that my route will take me up and over the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains, where there鈥檚 likely to be better air. Even so, I remember that catastrophic fires have hit these mountains, too, in recent years. Later I鈥檒l learn that just last night, two smaller ones were contained not far from where I鈥檓 heading.

My hunch proves more than right. As the highway climbs through forested land into the mountains, the dense air breaks into god rays among the trees, and a weak mid-morning sun emerges. By the time I turn in to the forest itself on a tiny one-lane road winding up a steep canyon, the air feels healthy again. Redwoods tower taller than anything along the freeway, their unique bark evolved to resist fire, the ground below covered in the ferns and shrubs of their own special ecosystem. This greenness all around is doing its thing, drawing toxins out of the air, like my HEPA filter at home but without the electricity. I am filled with gratitude for the trees. Except for my car, it鈥檚 like I鈥檓 back in an era before the defilements of fossil fuel. My breath deepens as my body adjusts to the peace.

At the retreat, there is joy in being together, finding equanimity in a burning world鈥攚hich includes the horrendous mass shootings, growing government militancy, and deep personal pain so many are experiencing as our region, our nation, navigates this violent and fearful passage. Our root teacher Thich Nhat Hanh鈥攏ow nearing the end of his life and returned to his native Vietnam鈥� about what humanity may face in the next hundred years as Earth鈥檚 ecosystems unravel. His earliest book, Lotus in a Sea of Fire, chronicled the painful destruction of his own country in the Vietnam War. His interpretation of Buddhism and the path out of suffering鈥攚ith the healing power of the trees鈥攊s the grounding I look to, but we need more, something all of us in the wider culture can embrace.

If these burning times are our passage, there must be some rites like older cultures must have had鈥攖o strengthen us as we move through it. Secular and divided as we are, we must find them as we enter this fearful unknown. I would like to see us and grieving our history鈥攊ncluding our treatment of the earth and the Indigenous people.

Can we give up our desire for the material things that mark our lifestyle? We can鈥檛 go back and rebuild with those same toxic substances鈥攁s some of my Napa neighbors are doing. We can live more simply. My Buddhist teacher says this will be much easier for people in our culture when they feel engaged in a loving and nurturing community, so building more heartfelt connections is key. As Einstein so famously said, we can鈥檛 solve a problem from the mindset that created it. We are faced with the huge task of giving up the fossil fuel mindset.

I want us to go humbly to the very people our culture tried to exterminate to listen to what they can teach us. Already scientists have begun to learn the value of intentional burning. Fire ecology courses borrow the wisdom of the Indigenous. But I want us to ask Indigenous people to take the reins themselves and help get us back on track with fire. I want them to take care of their own lands once again, as the up north on the Klamath River. They have the wisdom we need and鈥攇iven what they鈥檝e survived鈥攖he resilience. If there are prayers to go with their techniques, these need to be said. Thank goodness the people with the medicine are still here. After last year鈥檚 fires, I looked and found California Natives like Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono who have taken up work in the woods, sometimes fighting fires. Ron and others around the state still have their and know how鈥攚ithout fear鈥攖o be in relationship with a force that baffles the wider world. These are the teachings we all need now.