In this bonus conversation, Adam catches up with Fern Yip (guest producer on FE2.3) about her recent close call with wildfire, with lots of practical advice for those living on forested lands.

For photos and a transcript of this conversation, see futureecologies.net/listen/earthkins-trial-by-fire

Learn more about Fern at earthkin.ca

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Find Earthkin's September workshops in Vancouver: earthkin.ca/rewilddays

and a 10-weekend course September 2023 through June 2024 at Anderson Lake: earthkin.ca/waysofthewild

See also: BC's Emergency evacuee guidance for the public

— — —

VANCOUVER: Spiders Song will return to Lobe Studio on Thursday, September 14th!

Join us for this exploration of the music of evolution, presented in 4DSOUND spatial audio.

2 showtimes: 6:30pm and 8:30pm, both including a Q&A with Mendel.

Tickets available on a sliding scale: eventbrite.ca/e/lobe-artist-residency-series-spiders-song-by-future-ecologies-tickets-695016291437

Get yours soon! Capacity is limited and both of the last shows sold out.

— — —

🌱 Ongoing support for this podcast comes from listeners just like you. To keep this show going, join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies 💖

Hi!

Hey, I'm gonna put my headphones on here and oh my

gosh, look, that's fun late night studio sessions, right?

Yeah, you have a nice white background, actually.

I do well, it's just a wall. And I just kind of

adjusted the light so that it actually is like, Oh, this is

actually not too bad for

Yeah you look like a passport photo.

Perfect. Perfect. That's what I'm going for.

Hey, everyone, Adam here. So as most of you are

Official.

probably aware, Canada has been on fire this summer. And those

fires have become an ever present fact of life for so many

people, including some friends of the show. I recently had time

to catch up with my friend Fern, who heads up a land based

learning center in the interior of British Columbia, called

Earthkin. But for longtime listeners, you might remember

her as our guest co host from Episode 2.3, which we called

Communia Omnia. Our conversation felt so timely that I just

thought I'd share part of it with you. It foreshadows things

to come, both on our podcast, and in the world around us. So

here it is.

Can we just... the last time I saw you, you were headed up into

the interior? And you're gonna start a wilderness education

school, essentially. Right?

So that is the last time I saw you. Yeah, I was just

embarking on that. And I'm a few years in, you know, so there's

been a lot of passion, effort and all that that's gone into it

Oh I bet. Has it been what you wanted it to be?

Yes. When I feel into the potential of that place in

building a really strong network of people connected to the land,

it's it's becoming a lived reality, it is a lived reality.

And so I still am in that vision, making it come to life.

Yeah. And where exactly is your school located?

In ponderosa pine, Douglas fir country. So it is

more of an interior ecosystem. Stl'atl'imx home territory in

between Pemberton and Lillooet on Anderson Lake. I've been

running adult courses there this past year, which has been

delightful just being in that work and being in this very wild

place and bringing people to that wild place to really

connect with each other and with nature. And actually, just a

couple weeks before the fire came through, I had brought this

big dream vision to life of this 100 person ancestral skills

gathering, which is called Earthkin Gathering. And it was a

week long gathering that happened on the land and just

seeing people camped out there and sharing and learning really

old skills of land based living,

And that was just earlier this summer.

Yeah, it was over the long weekend in July. So it

would have been, I forget the dates like June 30, to July 5,

That feels like yesterday. I know, like I know

what I was doing that weekend.

And the funny thing was, is during that week, the

fire ban was rescinded. Because there had been enough rains that

had fallen the week previous. So we actually got to enjoy outdoor

fires. And then the very last day of the gathering, the next

day, the fire ban was put on again, two days later, that's

when that tiny little Casper fire started 10 kilometers from

us. And we thought it wouldn't get to us, because my really

rudimentary understanding of fire behavior was that fires

just generally move upslope, and the direction of the wind. And

because we were downslope of where the fire was initiated, I

think we were under the false sense of safety that it just

wasn't gonna get to us. But in these times where we're having

climate trends in this particular region of the world

have long periods of hot weather, it was just the perfect

recipe for this fire to just get completely out of control. And

the night when we really realized it was going to hit us,

the winds were so powerful. And we were watching this fire. It

was a kilometer away from us. We're looking up at the ridge

above our place. We live on this large lake, 28 kilometers. And

at this point the fires burning from the lake to the Alpine,

like the entire mountain slope just roaring across. And so the

wind picks up we're looking up at the ridge at nighttime. And

I'm familiar with this ridge. I've walked this ridge many

times before and I know there's old growth ponderosa pine and

Douglas fir and I knew it was those trees that this fire was

just candling up and just watching the spectacular,

terrifying show of these old growth trees shooting up into

like, literally 200 foot flames in the night sky and just this

awful sound. And then it was a crown fire and it's just like

racing across the ridge. And in that moment, I was just, I was

terrified. I was like, we're gonna lose everything.

Were you guys evacuated at some point? Like,

was there an evacuation?

There was, yeah. So we were on evacuation alert for a

week and a half before we suddenly got put on evacuation

order. And the order was issued at midnight.

But you decided to stay?

We did. Yeah, so when the actuation order was issued,

we did have the police come down to our place with the fire

warden, giving us the official like, it's time for you to

leave. And we were giving our response of, we're gonna stay

and defend and protect our property the best we can. And

actually, the night of when the fire was like, really descending

towards us, we had the incident commander of the wildfire

actually boat in and walk up the steep hill towards us and plead

with us to leave. And he shared with us that he was from Lytton.

We all know the story of Lytton. And yeah, he was just like,

really just giving us a reality check. Like, hey, these fires

can kill people. You know, if the fire gets dangerous, like,

please, please just go forth with your evacuation route,

which we're lucky we're like, we're just gonna run down to the

lake, you know, and hop in boats. But I don't know, you

know, I don't know what it's like to be in a crowd fire or to

be asphyxiated by smoke. Like, these were all fears that were

like, this is a potential situation we could face in

choosing to stay.

What was the decision like? Was it a no

brainer? Or did you have to kind of struggle with it?

Once I had made the pivot to be like, Okay, this is

what we're going to do. It was easy for me to be like, This is

what I'm committed to. And we were as organized as we could

be. Yeah, it was an excellent team. So I think having that

solidarity was really helpful. And we really care about our

home. That's the other thing it was like this is, you know, this

is the dream of my lifetime to be able to have relationship to

have access to land in that way. So for me, everything was on the

line.

So give us a little lay of the land, where is

your place in the landscape? And how is the fire moving towards

you when it starts to come at you?

Oh, my gosh, this is fascinating. Well, that where

we're located is like, it's the elevation of the lake or

property stretches from the lake shore, and then it probably

about 200 meters in elevation gain. It's 120 hectares, 40

hectares of it has like infrastructure on it. And then

80 hectares is actually wildlands, like in a land trust

that we've created. So it's a pretty large forested land. And

we decided when we were assessing, like, what can we

actually protect, we kind of like whittle that down to

basically a small area around our infrastructure was probably

just like, maybe 15 hectares in in size. And the fire was coming

down above us higher in elevation. Basically, the embers

were getting sent downwards and racing towards us from the top.

That's what it looked like. But one thing that I learned about

fire is that it doesn't just burn upslope. And it doesn't

just burn in the direction of the wind. It burns wherever

there's fuel, and there's fuel in all directions. It just burns

at different rates, where there's, you know, it'll back

burn against the wind. It'll move downslope, but maybe a bit

slower than it moves upslope and with less intensity. So at

first, I thought the fire was approaching us from one front.

But after some of us did some scouting work, we realized the

fire was actually approaching us from all directions. And I

learned this fire behavior thing where it was like the fire was

moving in these tendrils. It would extend a tendril all the

way down to the lake. And if it wouldn't hit the lake, then it

would move upslope which is freaky because that's when it

becomes a crown fire.

How long did it take to get to you from like the

ridgeline when you were talking about at night watching the

fire?

Let's see it probably took actually like 12 hours,

even though I felt like it was going to be there right then. It

was a long wait. And so we had time to like, make our

firebreaks better, like thin the forests you know, it's like the

fires 200 meters away and I'm like using this electric

chainsaw and just like thinning and knocking down ladder fuels.

You know, we have been doing small prescribed burns, we've

been thinning and doing small prescribed burns on the land for

the last two years. And every single piece of land that we've

worked, I was so grateful for when that wildfire came through.

I mean, I think the lesson is like, in these times, if you are

choosing to live in a forested area, you also need to do the

work of tending the land, to mimic fire processes in the ways

that you can, so that it's safe for human habitation but also

bettering the ecological community too. So you know, at

the point, when we were like, in that super intense 24 hours

where we were really like, in battle mode against the fire, we

were creating fire breaks on all three sides. Because one is like

lakeside, but then all the rest of it, we were working really

hard with pickaxes and chainsaws to make our firebreaks, which

are essentially digging to mineral soil for about a meter

wide length, and knocking down ladder fuels and thinning trees.

And then the fire, you know, mostly came as a ground fire

towards us. And you just kind of stand your line, you just wait

until the fire gets to you and make sure it doesn't cross that

line. And the only moment or the fire became a crown fire was

when it actually did sneak down beneath us and sort of traveling

upslope. And then it just like caught ladder fuels and then got

into the crown. And then that moment, I don't know why. But it

is the moment we got help from BC wildfire, and a helicopter

came and dumped like 20 buckets of water on that spot.

That's miraculous.

We were like thank you. And I'll just say like,

what I will also share about what allowed us to succeed is

that we really had a very supportive network, and a lot of

people that have become connected to this land that

really value both the place and the people. And it was just this

incredible flood of support where people were arriving on

boats, like by the boatload as hands on the ground boots on the

ground and bringing us like hundreds of meters of hose and

more pumps, and food and pick axes and anything that we

needed, which is just real, really lucky, and also very

privileged that we receive that kind of support in a very quick

response time.

I mean, you're out there doing village building,

right. And it seems like you've created a strong community up

Yeah, I definitely got to really see that. And I think

there.

crisis moments bring that out the network of people becomes

visible, because people choose to show up because they really

care. Yeah, it's just amazing to basically be you know, like, so

exhausted, and have haven't received any sleep pretty much

for 48 hours. And then there's just like this friend that just

shows up out of nowhere with a chainsaw, and is like, Alright,

I'm ready to sign you off and, and dig some trenches, you know,

and -

Call those chainsaw angels around here.

They're everywhere

Chainsaw angels!

Come out of the woodwork

Definitely was grateful for those chainsaw

angels.

So at what point did you realize that you had

succeeded?

I think just there was just a knowing that like, we had

stopped the fire, wherever it approached first and be like,

Okay, we want that battlefront. Now, let's put our resources to

the second one. Okay, that one's been stopped there. And then

beyond that, there's the vigilance time of like having

people on 24 hour watch for root fires that might creep in, or

little embers that might be sent from who knows where. And then

for days, and days and days after, actually. And I was

really lucky, I have a friend who is both a wildfire

ecologist, and has worked wildfires for like, three

decades. And I got his advice. I said, Hey, this happened. What's

your protocol for monitoring our perimeter that we've protected?

Because I'm really worried about root fires, you know, they can

burn seven feet underneath the ground, they can burn for years

sometimes, what should we look for? And he just gave me this

bomb proof protocol of what they do. And we monitored it very

carefully for a week and a half after and then kind of with less

and less vigilance as time went on. And as the possibility of

root fires was like, eliminated, but we had to work for that,

like we had to. I remember the first day after basically

watering and digging out root fires for a full day on all of

the perimeters. So it continued to be effort. Yeah,

It's just incredible. I guess you won

these battles to protect this little piece of land. And, but a

lot of the rest of the land is burned and certainly all the

surrounding areas, what does it feel like being there?

Yeah, I've had a chance to walk through the land

and just sit in the burn. And in my body, undeniably, there's

just a heaviness. It's grief. The devastation is just so real,

like the loss of life that happened. I mean, all of the

shrub life, all of the plant life, the foliage is burnt to a

crisp, and there's dead trees all around, who knows what small

mammals didn't escape, insect life, birds, maybe there's like

little fledgling birds and nests that didn't... like I just feel

the loss. And usually, all the times that I've sat or walk

through the burn, I just cry. Even though at an intellectual

level, like, ecologically speaking, I like know that

that's what the land needs to be renewed. And that all of these

species are fire adapted, and will come back with more vigor.

But like, at this time, you just feel the presence of death

really heavily. And at first, you know, I was like, it's all

burned, it's all dead. But when I walked through the forest, and

I'm looking up at the canopy, some of the fire burned thrown

away where it stand replacing, and it's like clear, every

single trunk is crisped up, there's no foliage in the trees,

they're dead. But other places, you know, it's like a trees half

green, half black, and I'm like, Well, maybe that tree will

survive, maybe it won't. And then other places, it's more

like a just a ground fire. And the trees are actually the

canopies all green. And it's just the shrubs and the plants

that are completely gone. So it is a mosaic. It did seem to burn

through in a patch-like way, although on a very large scale.

It just brings so many questions of like, how this resets the

successional process? And yeah, I'm just full of more questions

really about it all.

So am I.

Yeah. I'd love for you to take a walk through. I know

you didn't see it before. But there's going to be so much

learning about ecology over the years in the decades to come

about how a forest renews itself. And then just questions

about like, well, you know, the intensity of fires now are

usually more so than they were historically. And what's the

difference between the fires of today versus the fires of 150

years ago?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't wait to get up

there and take a walk around and see what's up. I am just really

happy to hear that you guys are alright, that you're alright.

And that you were able to save something that you loved.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel really lucky actually. And

granted, you know, when people go and wander on the land, it's

going to be a different kind of wander than it was when it was

just fully super alive forest. But I think it's still going to

be a place where... yeah, it's still it's still nature, you

know? Yeah.

So that was my conversation with Fern, and I

really appreciate her being willing to share her experience

with us on Future Ecologies. I think it's important to note

here that this conversation isn't intended as an endorsement

of ignoring evacuation orders. Earthkin survived due to a

combination of factors, such as the preventative actions they

took on the land before the fire arrived, strong community

support and grit during the fire, a timely aerial

intervention from BC Wildfire that might have diverted

resources from another location, and also just sheer luck. When

people choose to deny evacuation orders, it can create serious

risks and challenges for response personnel and

potentially harm the overall fire response. So what I took

away from this, and what I hope that you take away is that

living in the forest means living with fire. And the

resilience that we generate in the landscape, and in each

other, when the fires aren't burning, is what might matter

most when they are.

In the coming weeks and months, we're going to be talking a lot

about fire again. I honestly can't believe it, but it's been

four years since we released the last installment in our ongoing

series "On Fire". And so much has happened since then that we

need to discuss. By the way, before I go, you should check

out our website for photos of Fern's fire breaks, and of the

Earthkin Learning Center at Anderson Lake after the fire. It

looks like a tiny island of green in a sea of black and red.

It's truly extraordinary. If you're in BC and you want to

learn some really useful Earth-based skills, check out

Earthkin's offerings. Fern's got several workshops coming up in

the first week of September in Vancouver, and then weekend

courses up at Anderson Lake all through the winter, starting on

September 8. You can go and see how the land is recovering for

yourself and meet some great people. We'll put some links on

our website, futureecologies.net, and you can

find Fern at Earthkin.ca

Alright, that's it for now. Take care out there.