Carol McCoy Brown

Carol McCoy Brown

During the 2007 fire season, forest Ranger Carol McCoy Brown watched in horror as the forest she managed went up in flames. She discusses the heartbreak she and many other forest officials faced as fires ravaged the land placed under their care.

On the devastating 2007 fire season:
“The firefighting world is supposed to be a tough world. You’re supposed to not show that things are affecting you like they do. But when I would have these seasoned people come in, looking distressed and actually willing to talk about how it was affecting them to see the district that they had worked on for so many years, and some people their entire career, literally going up in smoke, it’s hard to know how to deal with that. I was feeling much of it myself.

One of the things that I think all rangers probably feel, whether they will ever talk about it or not, is they do feel like they’ve been handed a trust. It’s a very difficult thing to talk about, and you are supposed to redeem that trust. There is a certain level of care that you want to give the land and when the fires were going on last year I did feel like I was not living up to what I supposed to be living up with.”

On the forest’s regeneration:
“So it was with a lot of trepidation that I came out this spring and took a look at things, and what I saw made me feel even more hopeful. It made me appreciate the resilience of the land. I saw the mulch holding. I saw very little runoff and soil erosion coming off these steep slopes. I saw normal turbidity in the river. I did not see the river running black, which was the biggest concern. I think it looks really good.”

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