Canadian Geographic: The Year of the Fire
At 3 a.m. on the morning of July 23, 2024, it was 27 C and too hot to close the car windows. Frail-bodied moths with white paper wings crawled in and made their frantic way across our gray-carpeted car ceiling. There were thousands of moths there under the bludgeoning bright lights of the highway rest stop. Next to me, my then 19-year-old son’s breathing finally fell into the rhythm of sleep, his forehead slicked with sweat. He was recovering from COVID, and a late-night evacuation from our home in Jasper, Alta., wouldn’t ease his lingering symptoms. His 6’2” frame was tangled in a sleeping bag to keep our winged friends at bay, and at those angles he didn’t sleep long. But some sleep was better than none. We’d already been driving for six hours through the crackling night as lightning spidered across the sky and appeared to strike tall trees. Ridgetops glowed orange as powder-dry forests fuelled growing flames.
Canadian Wildlife Magazine: After Burn
We are huddled near the base of Old Fort Point, a geological formation of rocks that was once the bottom of an ancient, shallow sea. It is shaped like two giant, rounded steps. The south side slopes up out of the river, the sun now filtering through the forest’s blackened remains. The north falls away along a jagged cliff. Before the fire, it was common to see a gang of bighorn sheep rams bedded down on the steps, or perhaps a ewe tucked away in the rugged folds of the crags. “A lot of cougars around here, too,” says McCormick. At least, there were. Whether or not cougars will be seen here in the years to come is one of the reasons we’ve come together—to ponder the fate of local wildlife and their habitat following the burn.