Sitting in Terralingua’s offices a couple of weeks ago, I looked out the window. All I saw was a thick, white haze enveloping and obliterating the landscape. Wildfire smoke. My office is in the woods; on a normal day, I would be greeted by the awe-inspiring sight of giant Douglas firs—the signature tree species of

by Hilary Vidalakis . There’s a tiny subculture of place-loving men and women who specialize in burning the land. “Prescribed fire,” they call it, though the term strikes me as arrogant; after three winters spent elbow-deep in the craft, lighting fires across the swamps and mountains and sandhill forests of Georgia, and despite the physical