When a Forest Screams

A horrifically beautiful mountain landscape decimated by fire emits inexplicably eerie, meaningful cries

Photos by the author

DIXIE NATIONAL FOREST, UTAH—Where once a grove of majestic aspens stood, their paper-thin leaves whispering at the slightest summer breeze and shouting the passage of any strong gust, now mostly denuded white and black corpses reach hopelessly skyward, pitifully thin arms outstretched, weakened trunks poised for an inevitable toppling.

All around this high-mountain meadow at midday, a handful of improbably untouched aspens remain, shivering and quaking amid their charred deciduous neighbors, alongside a few brown, scraggly conifer carcasses.

I visualize the long-ago flames, leaping from treetop to treetop, the 2,000-degree heat and smoke creating pyrocumulonimbus clouds that billow into the stratosphere, a “fire tornado” racing across the blackened meadow. I listen for the crackling of that great fire, the sizzle and snap of a forest incinerating.

As I try to imagine the unimaginable, a strong gust crests the ridge to the south and rolls down toward the meadow, and the dead trees begin to scream.

It’s an eerie screech, not unlike a thousand fingernails on chalk or, best I can describe it, a thousand dead souls crying out in a…