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HEARTPINE
By James Furman, U.S Forest Service Liaison at Air Force Wildland Fire Center, Eglin Air Force Base
Pontifications of a Paid Pyromaniac
I’ll admit it—it was exciting when the firetruck came. Barefoot in Wilcox County, Alabama, lighting leftover Fourth of July firecrackers in fire ant beds (they deserved it) on the parched hill above the pond behind the homeplace, life was good. And even more exciting once the grass caught fire, followed by a wind gust from a distant thunderstorm. My brother Stephen and I did our best to stomp it out with our leather-soled bare feet and almost had it, but after a bigger gust of wind, we realized it was time to sound the alarm and get some help. No plausible deniability here. A busted, 10year-old firebug, I could almost see the mugshot in the post office. Auburn Forestry School led to a fire job with the Florida Division of Forestry working on Blackwater River State Forest, with its 186,000 acres of longleaf pine forest, and fighting fire in Santa Rosa County (then the arson capital of Florida). I eventually found a home on 12 acres of cutover longleaf pine forest just off Blackwater’s southern edge. I was burning on the homeplace and Blackwater to restore the longleaf ecosys[ 48 ]
tem and fighting wildfires, all while learning from experienced burners at Blackwater and teaching others the joys of painting a landscape with a drip torch. Never satiated, gatherings with friends and family at the house always included bonfires, some that I’m sure were picked up by Landsat and had roosters crowing ½ mile away at midnight, thinking the sun was rising. I even got to drive a fire truck home—red lights, siren, the works. Life was good. While at Blackwater, I began hearing of something called GCPEP (Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership). It started as an idea, then crafted into a framework for sharing information and resources related to fire and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker between seven large landowners in Northwest Florida and South Alabama. A major career move took me to Eglin Air Force Base, the largest contiguous longleaf forest in the known universe, to manage the fire program, arriving there just in time for the kickoff of Florida’s epic 1998-2000 drought/fire season. I am still trying to convince some folks at Eglin that all the wildfires were not my fault; though given the timing and my sordid pyromaniacal past, I can’t blame them.
