The Fire That Makes All Things New

In the longleaf pine forests of the American Southeast, fire is not the enemy — it is the agent of renewal. The U. S. Forest Service regularly sets prescribed burns across places like the Apalachicola National Forest in northern Florida. The flames consume the choking undergrowth, the dead needles, the tangled vines that have slowly strangled the forest floor. For a day or two afterward, the landscape looks like devastation — black earth, smoking stumps, ash drifting like gray snow.…