As the year turns over, I’m drawn back to a memory from last spring. For several weeks in April and May, northern New Mexico smelled like smoke. The immense plume of the Hermits Peak Fire, filled with the ashes of the burned village of Mora, hung over the mountains, and refugees from the fire flooded into Santa Fe and other nearby communities.
The fire, which started as a prescribed burn and grew to be the largest in state history, brought to the surface long-standing tensions over how to care for the region’s forests. For a century, local Spanish settler communities had resisted, at times violently, restrictions on wood harvesting and other practices. That historic resentment fed modern distrust and bitterness, and after the Hermits Peak Fire, some rejected the Forest Service and its use of intentional fire-setting.
The months since have shown — again — the grievous flaws in the systems we use to respond to disasters like Hermits Peak and the resulting conflicts. Almost a year later, local communities remain immersed in the work of caring for those who suffered during the burn. Federal support has been limited, and many have been denied aid. Some remain displaced. Historic homesteads may never be rebuilt. That has left residents frustrated and deepened their distrust.
The question of whether we can use fire for good lingers, too. In Mora and elsewhere in northern New Mexico, some would like to see an end to prescribed burning. But research from both scientists and Indigenous communities overwhelmingly suggests that it’s essential to forest health in many ecosystems. Indigenous communities are just beginning to reintroduce burning methods refined over generations and banned for the better part of the 20th century. Even the Forest Service has shifted away from its historically oppressive approach to fires.
In this issue, we explore tensions like those around the Hermits Peak Fire — the frictions endemic to environmentally stressed regions. There’s no easy way to resolve these differences, and a disaster like a fire can make conflict seem inevitable and intractable. Too often it’s made worse by historical wrongs and the failure to offer the support people need. But in the quiet of winter, when the fear of flames has faded, I wonder how different those frictions might seem if we’d reached them by a more just path — one that wasn’t marked by stolen land and cultural scars.
We welcome reader letters. Kate Schimel is the news and investigations editor for High Country News. Email her at kateschimel@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline After the fire.
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