Alan Gofinski

She guessed that this one little family, these five or six awkward beings, had saved about seven and a half acres of land from burning.

Yeah, that effect is called making fire refugia.

It's a patch that doesn't burn that other things can use.

Refugia is a fancy word sort of like for refuge.

It's just like place that is safe.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Exactly.

Refugia.

I love this word.

I have not stopped thinking about it since Emily taught it to me.

How might we all create a little refuge around us for the other beings of this world?

Even if we are clumsy and awkward and waddling and tired.

I think about the people in the Bronx, those first two or three people who started picking up trash and eventually created a ripple effect that cleaned up the river.

These things can happen.

They do happen in the human world and in the animal world.

That day at the beaver dam, Emily saw frogs and birds and even a bear.

Creatures she suspects might not have survived the fire without that beaver family.

And that's why she has come to see beavers as firefighters.

Yeah, they're spreading water out across the whole landscape that's keeping everything nice and green and healthy and stopping it from being easy to burn.