I tend to silo different parts of my life and so it took me a solid minute to realize that 2 efforts in my life - working on a new play about cultural fire and signing up to do a prescribed burn training on a property I used to live on - needed to be smashed together. At the end of September I had the great pleasure of attending the 2024 Queer Burn Training coordinated by Cleo Hazard of UC Cooperative Extension at Fancyland -
intentional fire on intentional land - alongside my collaborator on Wusatoumuduk, Michelle Hernandez. Both of us were completely new to the act of intentionally putting fire on the ground for the health of the land, for wildfire mitigation, for so many reasons. The training was a blast, we had the opportunity to experience all aspects of a prescribed burn (firing, holding, FEMO), learn and do a bunch of new vocabulary (building handline, prescription, iship) and learn from people with years of experience about fire behavior, the benefits of fire and how it was use historically by tribes to manage the landscape and food sources and why we all need to work together to restore a healthy resilient landscape following more than 100 years of fire suppression. Michelle and I will be working on incorporating our newly tangible understanding into the play which is undergoing rewriting this winter in preparation for a full-scale production next summer.
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