Burning questions answered

“There’s this thing called traditional knowledge,” veteran forester Rick Trembath said, leveling with me after his two-hour presentation on burning last month at Flathead Valley Community College.

He recalled doing work around Northwest Montana, sometimes alongside the firefighting Chief Mountain Hotshots, out of Browning, at the time under the leadership of Lyle St. Goddard. “We would talk for hours,” Trembath said, still savoring the conversation.

On my recent drives along U.S. 93, I had seen the plumes. Instead of cringing that it was wildfire, I’d smile because it meant someone was cleaning up a pile — a burn pile, that is, and a chore that many yearn to tick off the list. In the years I lived outside Montana, my shoulder-season calls home sometimes led with my mom saying, “We did a big burn!”