In late May, on a crisp and partly cloudy morning, I joined my first prescribed burn, led by Fire Forward, to learn about controlled burns and how the practice brings communities together. Fire Forward is a program of All Hands Ecology, a nonprofit conservation and education organization that contributes to the management of over 5,000 acres across Marin and Sonoma Counties. It is one of many prescribed burn associations around the state.
Fire has been used by Indigenous peoples to manage lands in California for thousands of years. “Cultural burning,” as the practice is known, can achieve a variety of goals, from the growth of specific plants for food, fiber, and medicine, to clearing an area to support hunting or travel corridors. Today, prescribed burn groups like Fire Forward borrow cultural burning practices to maintain healthy forests, mitigate for catastrophic wildfires, and promote understanding of the benefits of burns.
About 45 people from across the Bay Area made their way high into the oak woodlands of Sonoma County to Green Valley Farm & Mill in Sebastopol for the prescribed burn. Volunteers, Fire Forward staff, trainees, media, and more came to participate in the experience. The owners of the farm, which functions as a working farm and event space, has partnered with Fire Forward since 2020 for help managing their land through burns.
After checking in at a basecamp at the foot of the mountains, which included a fuel station with robust sandwich-making, we met at the farm’s staging area for group introductions. The opening address from fire ecologist Brian Peterson explained the safety procedures of the burn. The introduction ended in a land acknowledgement of the traditional tribal lands of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (Coast Miwok, Kashaya Pomo, and Southern Pomo tribes). Next we formed groups that would take on the fire together.
Leading one of the burn groups was Karyn Smoot (she/they), project coordinator for AHE and Holding Lead for the burn. As Holding Lead, Karyn ensures the burn stays in the planned area. The Holding Lead’s job is to make sure the fire stays inside the planned area with the holding team, including people with fire engings and water resources, utilizing the fire management tools in the event the fire gets out of hand.
Born and raised in San Francisco, they were a worker-owner of Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in the city and a community organizer before joining Fire Forward. Smoot’s fire journey started with an introduction to intentional burning through community, including a former college professor and a documentary filmmaker friend who created the film, Catching Fire. Years later, they joined the Prescribed Fire Exchanges (TREX) program with Good Fire Alliance, a program co-founded by All Hands Ecology. The fire exchange events give participants live-fire experience in the field to build the capacity for fire management. Now a staff member, Smoot has helped develop chainsaw trainings for Queer and BIPOC stewards interested in getting involved.
Get Bay Nature’s Free Weekly Newsletter
As part of the media group, I was guided by AHE’s public information officer Erika Lutz. We trailed behind the fire groups and occasionally between them so I could get my shots. Starting up one side of the mountain from base camp, we traveled about a quarter mile to the near peak to reach the next group checkpoint. From here you could see the trails down the hill to where the burn would start.
Tona Anceno Koop, a burn regular, drove the half hour from his home in Cotati to make the event. His day job is with LandPaths, a local conservation group, so burns are very familiar to him. “It’s meaningful work,” he said, “… and it’s just a lot of fun to hang out and burn.”
A state-certified burn boss, Paul Sokoloski, and burn boss associate, Julia Berkey, both from All Hands Ecology, were on site to review the burn plan and set it in motion. Fire crews started with a test burn using torches to see how the fire would respond to the morning’s elemental conditions. All the variables considered during the test—wind speed, moisture in the grass, and moisture in the air—would determine the success of the day’s burn goals.
Reporting on the conditions is Ben Hatchet, a regular volunteer and acting as the “Fire Effects Monitor” for the morning. During the test, Hatchet conducts fuel testing on the remnants of the test burn by analyzing small parts of the burned material like wood and leaves produced by the test burn. The results of the test would help determine how well and how fast the fire is spreading. Also, it helps determine how the smoke is behaving by the way it reacts.
Hatchet was formerly a meteorologist at a college in Reno, NV. After begrudgingly joining a burn because he was tired of the constant news that wildfires were uncontrollable, he says he received a “calling from God” to continue to do this work.
Hatchet’s first burn was on the same Green Valley Farm & Mill property in 2022. “That was like going from someone who was lucky in life to have this great life experience … to doing this work and feel like I was serving God. It was a religious-like experience.” He knew from that moment he wanted to continue to participate in prescribed burns. “Now we get to work with all different kinds of fire professionals and practitioners from across the country and all over the world.”
As the fire makes its way through the dense brush of tan oak, Lutz continues to monitor the progress of the burn and the response from the surrounding communities. She uses Watch Duty, an app that lets her monitor responses to the fire in real time, including if neighbors are posting on social media about the smoke. Before the burn, the team posts signs around the neighborhood announcing the scheduled fire, but news can travel slow.
Once at the bottom of the hill, we start to see the fire make its way down toward us. The test fire from the beginning of the burn has now become a living and breathing, yet controlled fire moving down the hill. It connects to other nearby embers, according to plan, where they meet at the bottom where the planned area ends – welcomed by the fire team, including local firefighters on standby in case anything goes awry.
As the fire consumed vegetation, we watched it move across the woodland floor and talked amongst ourselves. Like friends around a campfire, some people were catching up since the last burn and others were asking about dates for the next one.
How to get involved
As a prescribed burn association (PBA), All Hands Ecology focuses on bringing good fire practices back into land stewardship. PBAs have become a movement and mutual aid network with various chapters in the Bay Area to help locals learn and grow skills in land stewardship using prescribed fire. Since there is no central leader of the movement, you can find more information about it in your area and how to get involved from websites like California PBA.
