The Fire of Life

by Jonathan Shipley

Smoky sunrise. Photo by Jonathan Shipley.

Wildfires are burning. They’re burning in Los Angeles. They’re burning in Colorado. They’re burning in Canada. In fact, in Canada, this wildfire season is already the second worst on record. As of this writing in August 2025, more than 470 fires in Canada are currently classified as “out of control.”

The smoke does make for pretty sunrises and sunsets. Little solace as the winds blow down from the north to choke Wisconsin with smoke and, here, at Cherokee Marsh.

Everything is cast in a pall. Gray. Dirty. Newsrooms and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, as well as others, suggest we limit our time outside due to the smoke. People with heart and lung conditions are particularly susceptible. There’s a grim pallor to the day.

But I walk the marsh, regardless. The flowers are still blooming. The deer continue to spring through the grass. The Eastern wood pee-wee still sings its song.

This is to say, there’s a fire here, too. One of life. One that continues regardless of temperature or the level of particulate matter wafting through the air.

The Ho-chunk, living here thousands of years, first lit their flame in Mogasuc (Red Banks) near Green Bay. Believed to be the first inhabitants of the Great Lakes Region, the Ho-chunk took their torches here to Teejop (Four Lakes), to live.

Live they do. As do the cattail, the cut-leaf toothwort, the white trout lily.

Cherokee Marsh itself burned not long ago. The City of Madison conservation parks crew conducted prescribed burns here to establish, promote, and maintain native vegetation and to suppress invasive species.

In 2024, 253 acres burned here. 215 of those acres were part of a larger burn in the Cherokee Marsh State Natural Area. Swaths of ground were torched, incinerated, blackened through and through.

Prescribed burn at Cherokee Marsh North Unit. Photo by Sheila Leary.

I wouldn’t know it now, walking the path. Everything is growing, abundant and full. Despite air conditions, life here is bountiful. Dragonflies darting. Wind rustling sturdy oaks. Rabbits scampering in underbrush.

There’s a fire here, too. One of life.

It’s been a difficult fire season. The beloved lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was destroyed by flames. In January, a series of wildfires killed 29 people in Los Angeles and destroyed more than 16,000 buildings. There was approximately $50 billion in losses. Canada’s fires, as of this writing, have released 180 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

It’s awful. Terrifying. Cataclysmic. It’s horrible, climate change’s seemingly inevitable destruction of this place we call home: Earth.

And yet there is the darting dragonfly, the skittish rabbit, the Michigan lilies, and me, walking out toward the cool calm river. There’s a fire here.