Heat lightning, glimmering soundless behind the western peaks. Then the first low rumble. At first the flashing had been from cloud to cloud, but now, as the storm nears, the first ground-spears appear, lighting up the night. Here is a big storm, many-celled, engulfing more and more territory beneath its angry bulk. Lightning dances into the dry August forest. In their towers the lookouts stay awake. Close strike and a flare-up! The ridge snag burns like a Roman candle, sending bright embers down. Valley, ridge, and peak blink on and off with blue light as the storm roars like night-firing artillery. Passing overhead, the low cloud belly brings a sudden lash of rain. But it is not enough: tomorrow will mean long hours of fire watch. The next day dawns clear, a morning of heavy dew. The ridge strikes did not ignite the forest. Inspecting the storm path, aircraft and lookouts find no evidence of fire. But two days later, in a morning of high wind, thin smoke plumes rise upward. Smoldering in the thick duff of the forest floor, a lingering hot spot explodes with the fanning wind. It quickly spreads from a hectare to ten while the quadrants are called in and the hot-shot crews dispatched; then to a hundred, bringing in the smoke jumpers and mobilizing the vast fire-control network. A thousand hectares, perhaps ten thousand might burn this week of big fires. In the resulting skeleton forest, the scene of devastation is almost overpowering: life seems forevermore excluded from this blackened ruin. But fire is nothing new to forest communities. We may think fire demonic because it takes from our life span this block of mature forest, a sight we will never again see in this place. But nature does not operate in terms of human time scales. This forest is simply pushed back closer to its starting point, to begin again its long progression toward a climax vegetation cover. Forest Succession Through a series of complex vegetation stages, each characterized by different herbs, trees, and shrubs, the forest slowly returns to the type of vegetation best suited to the physical and climatic conditions of the site; this is called a climax community. The fact that most of Glacier’s forests are in some stage of recovery from fire accounts in part for the mosaic of forest cover found here. The forest of Huckleberry Mountain on the Camas Creek road was consumed in the 1967 fire. By 1969, among the charred, lifeless trunks of the former forest, lush grass and sunloving fireweed, thistle, and paintbrush were growing. And by 1974 lodgepole pine seedlings along the road were a meter or two high. Lodgepole is a fast-growing tree that requires full sun to germinate. Forest fire is necessary for the regeneration of these trees: the intense heat causes the tightly closed cones to open, releasing the seeds that will establish the forest. So young pines developed among fireweed, spiraea, willow, and mountain maple shrubs.