The fire burned through here hot and fast creating it’s own wind storm.
Scorching everything in it’s path from top to bottom and moved on quickly.
If you want to see what a fire ecosystem looks like go the the Glacier National Park area.
One year it will be large swaths of deep green thick forest and it’s just about all you will see.
You may return the next year and it might be burned over but regrowth starts as soon it cools.
The ground being cleared and the sunlight being let in by the following
spring the cottonwoods, willows and other shelter plants fill in quickly.
Wildlife moves in to utilize the snags for shelter and green cover for food.
What you don’t see is the new baby forest under the green cover.
Come back in a decade to see a mix of firs, tamarack
and other trees starting to shade out everything around them
The trees return but some random lightning strike on a hot summer day
many years in the future will start the process again.
Go back again and again you will see it happening with every visit.
It’s amazing to see a large swaths of forest disappear only to be reborn.
A photo will never do the story justice.

Near North Fork Road and Camas Road along the North Fork of the Flathead River.

(8 years later---> https://pbase.com/image/174992966. )