Out of the ashes

Photographer's book is poignant account of Glacier fires, son's autism

t's a story about rebirth, tangible and otherwise.

Chris Peterson didn't see the metaphor at first when he wrote "Boy Wonder & the Big Burns." The new book chronicles Glacier National Park fires over a six-year span and the subsequent regrowth of forest land. It's also a personal account of coming to terms with an autistic son and a father-son bond that formed on Glacier's trails.

The connection between the regrowth after fire and the regrowth of a young boy stricken by autism at 18 months is obvious to most. But Peterson's a pragmatist.

"I wish I could say I was that deep, but I'm not," he said. "The two went together by necessity. I didn't decide to put the two [the fires and his son] together until I sat down to write it. Then I thought, 'how could I leave him out?'"

In just a couple of pages, Peterson, editor and chief photographer for the Hungry Horse News weekly newspaper, gives readers heartfelt insight into his son's condition.

"When they tell you your son is autistic, your first reaction is to get into your car, tightly fasten your seat belt and drive off the nearest bridge," he wrote. "Instead I went under said bridge and cried for about an hour."

Hunter, now 8, was nicknamed Boy Wonder early on.

Peterson and his wife aren't sure what caused the autism. Their son seemed fine, completely normal until he fell ill with the croup at 18 months.

"He came back from the hospital in reverse," Peterson recalled. "It's pretty common with autism. They're fine and then they fall off the face of the earth."

Before the illness, his son could talk.

"Have a good day, Daddy," he'd say.

Words slipped away after the illness, silence left in the wake.

Intensive therapies seemed to help some, as did eliminating wheat and dairy products from his diet.

"Progress was achingly slow," Peterson says in his book. "For my part, I decided a rather simple program. I would take him to Glacier and we would hike. I was working on this book, and he'd have to come along, like it or not.

"It was horrible," Peterson confided. "Hikes generally were not fun. He wasn't potty-trained at first."

Sometimes, Hunter would walk only a few yards and sit down and play in the dirt. It was a test of patience for a father who routinely hiked 15 to 18 miles in a day.

Progress was painstaking, but there was progress, step by step, trail by trail. Boy Wonder introduced his father to life at a slower pace, closer to the ground. Peterson's photographs often reveal that flat-on-your-belly look at Glacier's wonders.

There was rebirth on many levels.

"As we went along, it got to the point where I didn't have as much fun if Hunter wasn't along," he said.

TODAY, HUNTER is 8 and a Columbia Falls first-grader who's learning to read. With help from a full-time aide at school, he keeps up with the rest of his class.

"He's a vibrant little kid, a likable kid," Peterson said. "He can talk now. He makes a lot of noise. And we hike all the time. He can do 8 or 9 miles.

"He's a hiker."

PETERSON KNEW he wanted to write a book about wildfire, and lucky for him, Glacier wildfires seemed to be an untapped subject.

"From a science standpoint, I wanted to tell the truth about fire, and the pictures tell the truth," he said. "This is not a wasteland [after fire]. It's amazing what comes back. A burned forest is full of birds."

In rambling conversation style, Peterson takes readers through the sights and sounds of recent fires - the Moose Fire, Robert, Trapper and others.

"I wanted the book to read like my [newspaper] columns," he said.

Among the fire stories, he details one especially explosive day as the Robert Fire roars to life.

"You can hear the fire in the woods below the house. You can see smoke billowing above us as well. We're surrounded by fire. We just don't know it, because we can't see," he wrote. "But we can hear it coming and it doesn't sound good. Robert is growling, just off the ledge, down in that river bottom…the trees are on fire and a helicopter swoops over us and drops a load of water just as the trees, not feet from the engine, burst into flames.

"Holycrapholycrapholycrap. It becomes a chant, running through your mind…"

LIFE SIMMERS down in the final portion of the book, and we see purple aster with a backdrop of burned trees in the aftermath of Robert. Glacier lilies bloom after the Wedge Canyon burn, morel mushrooms poke out of the blackened earth.

Peterson's photos of owls - northern hawk owls and great grays - are some of the book's best photographs. Boy Wonder rambles alongside him as they discover owl fledglings.

"Through the coming weeks, Boy Wonder and I would watch them grow up," he wrote. "They learned to fly quickly. The mature owls are masters of flight…

Speech was still a struggle for Peterson's son at that point, just one year ago.

As they discovered a great gray perched in a tree just ahead of them, they stop to watch the owl drop off its perch and fly not five feet from Boy Wonder's head.

"What was that?" I asked him.

"It was an owl," he said, plain as day.

PETERSON IS in his element in Glacier. He grew up between Rochester and Buffalo, N.Y., and spent summers and vacations on his grandparents' dairy farm. He was a wanderer back then, too, exploring the woods and hunting, fishing and trapping every waking moment.

"There was a creek running through my hometown. It was a cesspool, but it was full of fish. I fished every day of my senior year in high school"

Peterson aspired to be a writer before he developed his photography skills. He described his first photos as "horrible and out of focus."

Undaunted, he called up a professional photographer, got some advice, started shooting and eventually moved his family to Columbia Falls.

He's already planning a sequel on Glacier's fires.

"Obviously I've got to live it first, but I got such cool stuff after the book went to print," he said.

He's been a little surprised about the overwhelming public response he's gotten to "Boy Wonder & the Big Burns."

"I was surprised it made so many people cry," he said.

The book ends poignantly with a final reflection.

"…as you walk through this forest with your son you glance back and notice that he is following your footsteps exactly.

"And now you know what they were talking about, when they said you have to see the forest through the trees."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com