As destructive as it can be for the human landscape, fire serves a purpose in the natural world. Natural-born wildfire can act like a vacuum cleaner, extinguishing ground-level vegetation and clearing out certain trees to allow tender grasses a place to grow. It can wipe out infestation like chemotherapy cleaning a body of cancer, brutal and all-encompassing and cleansing. In natural environments and without human intervention, fires can act like pushing a giant reset button, resetting everything to a spare wintry landscape, teaching the value of austerity.
But fires still come with a toll, and where human life touches forest life, the cost is often dear.