The Fire Forest

Fire control aide Clinton Runyon got the word about 7 p.m.: a fire was burning on Dovel Mountain in the Central District. By 8 o'clock he had joined the crew in Steam Hollow, as darkness settled.

"First we tried to go up from Steam Hollow, but old-timers said it was easier to go around to Lucas Hollow and come up the fire trail. Nobody was in much of a hurry because down in the hollows it was raining hard, with big hailstones. But when we got on the ridge it was dry as tinder and we knew we had a fire." It was May 20 and the foliage was mostly out, making it hard to see. "First we got off on a wrong ridge and went two miles the wrong way. We finally got to the fire about 12:30 a.m.

Lightning had struck on the south side of Dovel Mountain and the fire was burning up and down the slope. It burned mostly on the ground, but when it hit laurel bushes "they popped and crackled like dry kindling." When it got into a stand of young pines, it flared up into the crowns.

The fire burned over the top of the mountain and down the north slope onto private land. Having already worked an 8-hour day, the maintenance men on the crew made "a pretty scratchy fire line."

In many places, bouldery scree slopes stopped it. When Chief Ranger Doug Warnock, who as fire boss had been tied to his command post, finally got to the scene about noon, he found the fire largely contained. Two days later, rain finished it off.

A night fire burns up slope in Bacon Hollow. (Photo by Frank Deckert)

In all, some 94 acres had been burned, most of it in the park. This fire could be classed as larger-than-average for Shenandoah today, though it was small compared to some in pre-park days. It had, typically, burned mostly upslope and then, probably helped by down-hollow night winds, backed down the other side of the ridge. Largely a ground fire, it had consumed virtually all litter, low-growing herbaceous plants, and shrubs; but most trees had been spared.

Three months later, in August 1970, I followed the firefighters' route up Dog Slaughter Ridge to the scene of the blaze. The ground and tree trunks were blackened, and lower foliage of trees had turned dead-brown from the heat, but everywhere were signs of new growth. Blueberries, greenbrier, bracken fern, and sassafras seedlings had begun to blot out the charred floor with spots of green. From the bases of laurel and scrub oak, whose old stems had been killed, new shoots 1 to 3 feet long were growing vigorously. Similar sprouts ringed the bases of chestnut oaks. Though small Table Mountain pines appeared dead, the more common pitch pines, of all sizes, had responded with defiant exuberance. From their bases new stems sprang, and their blackened trunks and lower branches bristled with green needles. In a few years, the average person would never guess that a fire had burned here.

Every year, lightning- or man-caused fires burn patches of the Blue Ridge, as they have, I suppose, since forests first grew on these slopes. Nowadays, fire protection greatly restricts their damage, but past fires have burned a thousand acres or more of the park area at once, and virtually all of Shenandoah has been burned at one time or another. But like the fire on Dovel Mountain, they occur most often on south or west slopes where the forest is liberally sprinkled with pines.

The relationship between fire and pine-oak forests is a vicious (or at least self-maintaining) circle. Pines, being more drought-resistant than most deciduous trees, tend to grow on blueberry, huckleberry, and azalea, have small leaves, thus reducing the surface through which transpiration of water can occur. Others, such as scrub oak and laurel, have tough, hard-surfaced leaves, which help protect the inner cells.

Pine-oak forests differ from moist hollow forests not only in their adaptations to drought but also in their general structure. These are tough woods to walk through. Beneath the rather open tree canopy, thickets of scrub oak, laurel, azalea, huckleberry, and blueberry present a tight-woven web of woody stems that scratch and catch the bushwhacker at every step. It is hard to understand how bears, which come to these places in summer for berries and later for acorns, can bolt so quickly through these thickets. Scrub oak, in fact, is also called bear oak, no doubt because bears frequent places where this plant and its associated berry bushes abound.

Herbaceous plants, which face stiff competition for sunlight and water from the thick layer of shrubs, are rather scarce. You will find them mostly in the more open spots, as along trails. Many are spring-bloomers. Among these are turkeybeard, a grasslike plant of the lily family; two orchids—pink lady-slipper and whorled pogonia; dwarf iris; and bird-foot violet. Trailing arbutus, a dwarf creeping shrub, also blooms in spring; its relative, teaberry, blooms in summer. False-indigo and coreopsis, too, brighten summer trails. Bracken fern, characteristic of dry places, is another common plant of the pine-oak woods.

Two months after the Dovel Mountain fire, chestnut oaks are sprouting vigourously. (Photos by Napier Shelton)

As the term we have used for these forests implies, oaks are an important constituent. Besides the shrubby scrub oak, there are many scarlet and chestnut oaks. Red oaks, less suited to dryness, and white oaks, most moisture-loving of all, are few or absent. You can, in fact, judge the dryness of a site by the species of oaks on it, with scrub oak at the dry end of the moisture spectrum and white oak at the wet end. Other deciduous trees often thinly scattered among the pines are black gum, red maple, sassafras, and serviceberry.

In this severe environment, the number of species of plants is lower than in moist areas. The same relationship holds true for animal species. Bird-watching, for instance, is not very productive in pine-oak forests. Besides mourning doves, which like open pine stands, and shrub-loving towhees and catbirds, few other birds are attracted to these dry forests. In Shenandoah, however, two warblers seem largely restricted to this environment. The pine warbler, which prefers fairly tall pines, could be called an indicator species for the pine-oak forest type; the prairie warbler, which likes smaller, scattered pines, is most easily found here.

The reptiles, too, are poorly represented in the pine-oak community. Fence lizards (the commonest of the park's few lizards) seem to fit this environment best. Timber rattlesnakes, though perhaps more common in wetter woods, are sometimes encountered in dry, rocky forests, where they prey on birds and such small mammals as white-footed mice, woodrats, and chipmunks. If you can suppress your fear of rattlesnakes, you will find them not at all ugly. Timber rattlesnakes come in two color phases: black and yellow. The black phase ranges from dark brown with darker banding to completely black, its sombreness matching its reputation. But the yellow phase, with dark bands against a yellowish background, is truly handsome.

Rattlesnakes and copperheads are not often encountered in the park, but when out walking you should always watch the ground in front of you, and avoid putting your feet or hands where you can't see. The proper attitude toward poisonous snakes is one of respect. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. Like all species of wild animals, they are protected by law in this national park.

Several years after a fire, Sawmill Ridge is covered by a dense growth of shrubs and young trees.

Most of Shenandoah's pine-oak forests are out on side spurs of the Blue Ridge backbone, somewhat removed from Skyline Drive. A couple of good examples of this forest type, both in the south section, are easily reached. One is a few hundred yards east of the Drive along the north side of the Moorman River fire road, near Blackrock Gap. Another straddles the Drive at Sawmill Run Overlook. By following the Appalachian Trail south from its crossing of the Drive, just north of the overlook, you can traverse this distinctive, pine-dominated forest without fighting its inhospitable thickets. On this area, burned in 1947, oaks, red maples, and other deciduous trees persist in their effort to oust the pines. But chances are they again will be thwarted by fire, which someday will come crackling and popping up the mountainside through the dry shrubs.