This was taken during my trip to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone is a rather large area that has miles and miles of forest. It's very natural for fires to start and consume portions of a prairie, forest or other wilderness. If the fire starts during a time of drought when things are dry, it will spread quickly and wipe out huge areas of plant growth.

This has happened several times in Yellowstone during the last 20 years or so, and as you drive around the green areas of Yellowstone you come across large stands of trees that are grey and look like a toothpick forest.

I don't know if it is a uniquely American or just a modern human thing, but we seem to think that we must preserve everything exactly the way it is/was. Any change in our environment is seen as a problem, so we fight the change. The desert must remain a pristine desert, the forests must remain a green carpet of pine trees. Thus tremendous resources were spent fighting these fires, limiting their spread. Nevertheless, huge tracts of forest were burned out.

Many areas that are burned out are recovering already. A few years after the fires, the trees are sprouting new growth, grass and bushes are taking over on the ground, and new trees can be seen sprouting all over. In those areas, there is a strong contrast between the old grey toothpick forest and lush new growth. The trees had not started to come back to life here as they had in other areas, so it was a very dark, stark, gray place.

One of the things I loved about Yellowstone is how the trees grew so close together. Many tall, thin pine trees would grow in large stands so that when you looked in your vision was soon obscured. It made me feel as if here was the kind of wood where you could get lost. It was possible to wander in and never find your way out.

Where the trees were green, this sense of being lost in the forest was an exciting one, for within the forest were bears and deer and all sorts of things that you might run across that could be fascinating but dangerous. Where the trees were burned, as they were here, I had no sense of fear or excitement. Instead, I felt dread, as if inside the tangle, deep where no one could see them, resided ghosts; the dead and perhaps malevolent things that shunned light and living things.