World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth PDF
Preview World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth
Cycle of Fire J. Stephen Pyne "Cycle of Fire" is a suite of books that collectively narrate the story of how fire and humanity have interacted to shape the Earth. "Cycle" is an apt description of how fire functions in the natural world. Yet "cycle" also bears a mythic connotation: a set of sagas that tell the life of a culture hero. Here that role belongs to fire. Ranging across all continents and over thousands of years, the Cycle shows Earth to be a fire planet in which carbon-based ter restrial life and an oxygen-rich atmosphere have combined to make com bustion both elemental and inevitable. Equally, the Cycle reveals humans as fire creatures, alternately dependent upon and threatened by their monopoly over combustion. Fire's possession began humanity's great dia logue with Earth. "Cycle of Fire" tells, for the first time, that epic story. "Cycle of Fire" is part of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books, published by the University of Washington Press under the general editorship of William Cronon. A complete list of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books appears at the end of this book. World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth (paperback edition, 1997) Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World (1997) Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (paperback edition, 1997) Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (paperback edition, 1998) The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (paperback edition, 1998) w o R L D F I R E The Culture of Fire on E art h J. Stephen Pyne With a Foreword by William Cronon and a New Preface by the Author University of Washington Press Seattle and London World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Eorth has been published with the assistance of a grant from the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Endowment. established by the Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation, members of the Weyerhaeuser family, and Janet and Jack Creighton. Copyright © 1995 by Stephen J. Pyne First published in hardcover by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York Paperback edition published by the University of Washington Press in 1997 Foreword and Preface to the University of Washington Press paperback edition copyright © 1997 by the University of Washington Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pyne, Stephen 1., 1949- World Fire: the culture of fire on earth I Stephen 1. Pyne ; with a foreword by William Cronon ; and a new preface by the author. - Pbk. ed. p. cm. - (Cycle offire) Originally published: New York: Holt, 1995. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-295-97593--8 (alk. paper) 1. Wildfires. 2. Fires. 3. Fire ecology. 4. Wildfires-Prevention and control. 5. Fire prevention. I. Title. II. Series: Pyne, Stephen 1., 1949- Cycle of fire. [SC421.P95 1997] 96-52354 304.2----clc21 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American NatiJnal Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Lines from "The Bonfire" by Robert Frost from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. Lines from No Nature: New and Selected Poems by Gary Snyder. Copyright © 1992 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. To Sonja, Lydia, Molly who have made the hearth fire into a world fire, too Contents Foreword by William Cronon IX Preface to the 1997 Paperback Edition XUI Smoke Report The New World Order on Fire 3 Size-Up Firestick History; or, How to Set the World on Fire 11 H otspotting Fire Flume (Australia) 29 Veld Fire (South Africa) 45 Queimada Para Limpeza (Brazil) 60 Vll VIII Contents Svedjebruk (Sweden) 76 Greek Fire (Greece) 95 La Nueva Reconquista (Iberia) UO Red Skies of Irkutsk (Russia) 129 Nataraja (India) 149 White Darkness (Antarctica) 171 Control American Fire Initial Attack: The U.S. Forest Service Fights Fire 183 Coldtrailing 219 Wilderness Fire Vestal Fires and Virgin Lands 238 The Summer We Let Wild Fire Loose 256 Intermix Fire The Fire This Time 269 Nouvelle Southwest 282 Mop-Up Consumed by Either Fire or Fire 299 After the Last Smoke Flame and Fortune 331 Notes and Additional Reading 343 Index 361 Illustration Sources and Credits 381 Foreword William Cronon World Fire is the book in which Stephen J. Pyne first announced his intention of writing an epic series of volumes, collectively entitled "Cycle of Fire," tracing the history of human interactions with fire across all of planet Earth. It was and is an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking, one of the most dar ing and original ever conceived of by a historian, and it is fair to say that Pyne himself did not fully understand what he was getting himself into when he began the project. In fact, he had already completed three books in the "Cycle" before he quite realized what he was doing. First came Fire in America, which traced the history of rural and wildland fire in the United States from precolonial times to the present. Then came The Ice, a history and traveler's narrative of an extended visit to Antarctica, a continent which in its frigid firelessness stands in dialectical counterpoint to the rest of the terrestrial Earth. This was followed in turn by Burning Bush, which carried Pyne beyond his original North American focus by tracing the "firestick IX
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