Dan Sealy, Guest Contributor
Obi Kaufmann’s love affair with the natural and cultural landscapes of California continues with his latest book, The State of Fire: Why California Burns, launched in September with great interest at a time when fire has become a constant in the lives of California. For Obi, those lives include not just people, but the bears, bees, shrubs and trees of his home state.
Obi spent the spring of 2023 in the artist residency program of the National Park Service (NPS) at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in Shasta County. His time camping and hiking there was five years after the Carr Fire which, in spite of the park’s progressive use of fire as a management tool, burned 97 percent of the park’s 246,087 acres.
Of his time spent in the park experiencing the charred land and early biological recovery, he describes standing on the shore of the reservoir writing, “That day, both the land and the people seemed to have let the trauma subside and embraced the simple joy of cool, spring sunshine. A dense grove of green, broadleaved trees bent from the shore, offering shade to the beachgoers, and a snow-melt creek babbled nearby…”
Kaufmann reconsiders some of the popular concepts of fire and fire management, seeing the evolution of human reaction to fire including the traditional ecological knowledge of the indigenous tribes of California who have used fire to manage their world, through the industrial age to the current Anthropocene. His list of most of the largest fires in 21st century California is almost too painful to recall. Kaufmann uses this orientation to rethink the cultural and natural role of fire in the living world.
“Fire is not a thing, Fire is not an object. Fire is not inanimate. Once it ignites, fire exists on scales of time and space…”
Kaufmann’s first book in his popular series published by HeyDay Books, The California Field Atlas, won the regional Book of the Year Award by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA). With The Atlas, Kaufmann created a style of book-crafting with his watercolor paintings, his calligraphy, cartography, use of symbols and even the heft of the finished chronicle. They are a thing of beauty. State of Fire is a companion to that series with the specific purpose of walking us through the state and its long history with fire.
Obi’s takes the reader on a saunter with over a dozen watercolor Tolkien-inspired maps to discover differences in California’s landscapes, bioregions and fire regimes.
As his previous book The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource held up a view of water systems and management from the viewpoint of the states living landscapes, Kaufmann’s new book leads the reader to a new understanding of the history of fire in California in the 21st century, and the relationship among the landscapes, the ecological biomes, people and the “non-thing: fire. His illustrations, alone, of bears, condors and Torrey Pines entice the reader to consider fire relationships, not from the simplistic point of view of Smokey the Bear, but as living entities caught up in the energy chaos of fire.
The traditional, popular and academic discussions and understanding of fire in the landscape evolve every time people collectively and individually experience and study a new fire. That knowledge continues to evolve and change, now fueled by our climate cycles both natural and the supercharged, human induced climate crisis of the Anthropocene.
It is good to think, and rethink, fire as we witness its effect on our planet, our state and our lives. Obi’s book challenges readers to do that work; to be open to questions and observation. If this non-thing, fire, can impact suburban Santa Rosa in the Tubbs Fire, and Yosemite National Park in the Rim Fire, it can touch every inhabitant of California human and non-human. Obi invites us to open his book and open our minds to learn about the force that shapes our world. People may agree or disagree with all or part of Obi’s take on fire, but evolutionary thinking is important.
“If we put effort into understanding how, where, and why California burns, might that be a prescription of healing for both the land and for ourselves?”
State of Fire can be found at Northtown Books and other local stores or can be ordered online here: The State of Fire: Why California Burns by Obi Kaufmann (heydaybooks.com)
Read more about the fire and recovery on the National Park Service website: The Carr Fire of 2018 and Ongoing Recovery – Whiskeytown National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Watch an inspiring short video Obi created about redwoods and fire here: McAfee+ Protect Your Everything :15 (youtube.com)
Obi Kaufmann will be in person at author events on these dates and local places: Northtown Books on Friday, November 1 and Eureka Books on Saturday, November 2.