LIFE IS RENEWED IN FIRE'S CHARRED WAKE

YELLOWSTONE, Wyo. -- From the streambeds, from the geyser basins, from the surface of the shiny lakes, the hills look like a ghost town of lodgepole pines. Barren trees are tossed randomly, char marks the trunks, ugly scars mar the beguiling face of Yellowstone National Park.

But look closely. The scorched hills are a jumble of the living and the dead. A miracle of nature -- a rebirth among the ruins -- is quietly occurring where, 11 years ago, the greatest fire of recorded time raged across 793,880 acres of treetops and mountaintops.

A new era of growth, unprecedented in the modern history of Yellowstone, is blooming. Now new seedlings and saplings are hanging on the hills. Now the dead trees, monuments to the fire, are falling, contributing fungi, bacteria and nutrients to the soil. Now the elk, bison, moose and fox have a new habitat.

The Yellowstone fire of 1988 is a tale of ruin and renaissance, a millennial story of conclusions and commencements, an inspirational allegory, a story for our time.

It reminds us that the destruction wrought by man -- the fire has been traced to a woodcutter who carelessly tossed away a cigarette in the Targhee National Forest -- can sometimes be cured by nature. It reminds us that the timeless ways of the Earth prevail over the customs of humans. It reminds us of the possibility of new beginnings.

Yellowstone was built, as the Earth was, by fire and ice. And just as the movement of glaciers is irresistible, it turns out that so is the movement of forest blazes.

Ice is slow but fire is fast, and just this summer wildfires scorched thousands of acres in California, Colorado and Nevada. On one July weekend alone, Utah firefighters battled 80 blazes, some of the fires merging to cover 10,000 acres and forcing the evacuation of whole towns.

Exactly a half-century ago this summer one of the greatest fires of all time consumed Mann Gulch in Montana. Norman Maclean is known for his lyrical "A River Runs Through It," but true connoisseurs of the forest are drawn even more strongly to his other book, "Young Men and Fire," which tells how 15 elite smokejumpers from the U.S. Forest Service dove into the Montana wilderness on Aug. 5, 1949, to fight, and lose, a Verdun of the forest. All but three of the smoke jumpers died in the first half-hour of the battle, a staggering tragedy that forever gives a tremble to the words "Mann Gulch" in this part of the continent.

At its height, the 1988 fire was really 249 different fires, many started by lightning and spreading to other burning areas. More than 25,000 firefighters, including Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and National Guard personnel, were involved in the battle. But this was a battle with a difference: to control, but not stop, the blaze.

For a century, the Forest Service struggled to suppress fires. Then the government recognized it couldn't control everything and maybe it shouldn't. The caprice of wind and weather made suppression of the 1988 fire impossible. More than 665 miles of fire line were dug, more than 10 million gallons of water were dropped, but the fire wasn't extinguished until the snows of autumn. Indeed, the last fire in the area was officially pronounced dead on Nov. 18, 1988.

Out East, the polite are told to steer conversations away from politics and religion. Out West, the incendiary topic of federal fire policy touches a peculiar politics and religion of its own.

The fire cost $120 million to fight, singed more than a third of the park and killed at least 260 elk, nine bison and six black bear.

But now grasses and wildflowers are growing in the ashes, the aspen are more firmly established than ever, and the elk, bear and bison populations are secure. The lodgepole pines stand as both success story and symbol. Their serotinous cones throw out seeds only after being heated to high temperatures. The Yellowstone Association reports that the fire scattered as many as a million of those seeds per acre in some burned areas of the park.

The fire forced seeds to germinate, restoring nitrogen to the soil, in turn fostering the growth of other plants. It stimulated the aspen's growth hormones. When wood-boring insects swarmed over dead trees, they attracted woodpeckers who cut away chunks of the trees that were later used as nests for mountain bluebirds. From the holocaust of the forest came new life from the forest.

"The world was getting faster, smaller and louder," Maclean wrote of the smoke jumpers. Our world -- faster, smaller and louder every year -- is also marked by fire and its lessons.

Endings and beginnings are indistinguishable. The will of nature always prevails over the whim of man. Change is the greatest constant in the world. And this last reminder: It is never too late to start again.