Paid for by Dave Strohmaier for City Council,
Deborah Richie Oberbillig, Treasurer,
503 Linden, Missoula, MT 59802

 

Publications

 

Books

 

Drift Smoke: Loss and Renewal in a Land of Fire (Reno: The University of Nevada Press, 2005).

 

The Seasons of Fire: Reflections on Fire in the West (Reno: The University of Nevada Press, 2001).

 

Magazines, journals, and other publications

 

“Threescore and Ten: Fire, Place, and Loss in the West,” Ethics & the Environment (Winter 2003).

 

Photocredit in Don Miller and Stan Cohen, The Big Burn: The Northwest’s Great Forest Fire of 1910 Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., Inc., 2001).

 

“The Ethics of Prescribed Fire,” Ecological Restoration, 18, no. 1 (Spring 2000):  5-9.

 

“Elements,” Camas:  People and Issues of the Northern Rockies 2 (Spring 1999): 4.

 

“Through a Glass Darkly:  Fire and Loss in the West,” Camas:  People and Issues of the Northern

            Rockies 2 (Fall/Winter 1998):  7-8.

“The Salt Creek Fire and its Ecological Context,” a comprehensive analysis prepared for the Hells

           

A July Remembrance,” Wildfire Magazine (September 1997).

 

The Seasons of Fire: Reflections of Fire in the West
	Firefighters can hardly avoid philosophical moments, but here is a philosopher of fire par excellence, a quite penetrating and literary stream of consciousness in ongoing analysis and encounter. Strohmaier discovers fire to be 'an entry point into understanding who we are, what sort of world we live in, and how we come to know what is inherently valuable about each.

More information about this book

Fire is a fearsome constant in the America West. Everyone who lives in the West confronts fire intimately or frighteningly at some time. As the author David J. Strohmaier notes, "Whether we have tended a campfire along Oregon's Deschutes River in March, engaged the advancing front of a Great Basin wildfire in the torrid heat of August, or watched fire settle into the subdued, smoldering leaf piles of October, all of our lives, to one degree or another, are bracketed by fire." In The Seasons of Fire, Strohmaier effectively blends nature writing, personal essay, and philosophical analysis as he deliberately crosses disciplinary boundaries. He discusses the "moral" dimensions of fire—not only whether fires are good, bad or indifferent phenomena, but also how fire, more generally understood, shapes meaning for human life. The consequences of discussing the moral side of fire speak directly to the contours of the human soul, and to our sense of our place on the land. Strohmaier, a long-term firefighter himself, includes accurate and sometimes gut-wrenching descriptions of the firefighter's experience, including the philosophical wanderings and the downright boredom that may dominate between direct confrontations with the searing, terrifying flames.

Praise

"Fire promotes life as it destroys it, becomes a perennial sacrament of life persisting in the midst of its perpetual perishing. This is provocative reading for all who wonder about the wonders of fire."
—Holmes Rolston, III, University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University

"A fascinating philosophical examination of fire and its allure and terror."
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"The Seasons of Fire is a book you will read with intense pleasure as you come to know man's experience with fire. With a firefighter's lens and the gift for vivid descriptive prose, Strohmaier whisks us from Yule log to Mann Gulch, from pensive reflection to purgatorial cleansing, from smokejumping season to fishing season, and from Red Skies of Montana to Apocalypse Now. This book is a reader's delight and worth your time and money."
—Gordon Morris Bakken, Montana: The Magazine of Western History

"A meditation by a seasoned firefighter on the firefighting experience, from fire's natural effects to the continuum between boredom and terror that is a firefighter's lot."
—Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times

"Strohmaier's central demand in The Seasons of Fire is that we recognize the extent to which wildfires are a necessary process of nature, and not phenomenon against which we ought to be waging war. In promoting this viewpoint, he also examines the many ways in which fire has contributed to our very development as human beings, not merely in its use as a source of light or means by which to cook food, but also as a meditative inducement, aiding our reflections on what, after all, it means to be human in the first place."
—Paula Friedman, San Diego Union-Tribune

"This book may give you new ways to look at one of our great tools and great foes: fire."
—Virgil Rupp, "Northwest Books" East Oregonian

"[The Seasons of Fire] is a very personal work, based on years of chasing fire in the wilds of central Oregon's Deschutes and John Day River drainages. In the tradition of Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and Rick Bass' Winter, Strohmaier meditates on the seasonal rhythms of a landscape—in this case, one shaped by the unbending force of fire."
—Matt Jenkins, High Country News

"As an experienced wildland firefighter, Strohmaier recounts tales of fighting fires in the West and philosophically examines the broad meaning of fire in our lives."
—Tim Markus, Library Journal

 

Drift Smoke Loss and Renewal in a Land of Fire David Strohmaier’s long career as a firefighter has given him intimate knowledge of wildfire and its complex role in the natural world of the American West. It has also given him rare understanding of the painful losses that are a consequence of fire. Strohmaier addresses our ambivalence about fire and the realities of loss to it—life, human and animal, of livelihoods, of beloved places. He also examines the process of renewal that is yet another consequence of fire, from the infusion of essential nutrients into the soil, to the sprouting of seeds that depend on fire for germination, to the renewal of species as the land restores itself. Ultimately, according to Strohmaier, living with fire is a matter of choices, of “seeing the connection between loss on a personal scale and loss on a landscape scale: in relationship with persons, and in relationship to and with the land.” We must cultivate a longer perspective, he says, accepting that loss is a part of life and that “humility and empathy and care are not only core virtues between humans but are also essential virtues in our attitudes and actions toward the earth.” Drift Smoke is a powerful and moving meditation on wildfire by someone who has seen it in all its terror and beauty, who has lost colleagues and beloved terrain to its ferocity, and who has also seen the miracle of new life sprouting in the ashes. The debate over the role and control of fire in the West will not soon end, but Strohmaier’s contribution to the debate will help all of us better appreciate both the complexity of the issues and the possibilities of hitherto unconsidered solutions that will allow us to inhabit a place where fire is a natural, and needed, part of life.   Reviews "This is a unique book. I know of no other quite like it. It makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature about wildfire. It covers a subject only rarely touched on in any comprehensive way; that is, there are many other books about some of the losses associated with wildfire (e.g., loss of life), but none that attempt to consider all the main kinds of loss in any detail or, aside from the author's first book on fire, that argue so well that fire is an ambivalent phenomenon and cannot be understood as either solely an unmitigated evil or solely an ecological good." —Peter List, Professor Emertius of Philosophy, University of Oregon; editor of Environmental Ethics and Forestry: A Reader "Those whose lives are affected when plumes of smoke rise into the August sky will find here a thoughtful contribution to the story of their hopes and fears.” —Sheldon Lawrence, Western American Literature, Winter 2007 "Daring in its analysis, creative and fluid in its style, and provocative in its impact." —Kevin Marsh, H-Environment