The reading this week reminded me of a trip we took to Yellowstone when I was a kid. They mentioned that even though the fire of ’88 devastated the tree population, they found that it actually helped in the long run. After doing a little research I learned that in 1950 the National parks service started experimenting with controlled burns. If you compare this to the reading you realize that the settlers of the west learned that the Indians had been doing this for years, maybe even hundreds of years. I find it very strange that it took us (white men) almost 100 years to realize the importance of burning land. The ironic thing is that almost everyone does this on a smaller scale.


I did a lot of gardening this summer. The first thing you do is edge the garden this makes an obvious line between what you want to look nice and what you don’t care about. Then you remove all of the grass, trees, ferns, and weeds. This is put on a compost pile to be used at a later date. Then compost is mixed into the garden to add nutrients. Now if this isn’t done on a regular basis the garden will be overgrown by trees and ferns.


This is just like controlled burning. By removing the smaller, undesirable vegetation you allow the rest of the vegetation to grow much stronger. It seems simple enough yet it took our scientists more than 100 years longer to discover this. Maybe if the white people weren’t so arrogant and condescending we could have learned from the Indians. I think this just proves that we are a doomed race. Even when the answer is sitting right in front of us we refuse to accept it.