On the night of October 8, 1871, there was a wildfire in Wisconsin that killed 1400 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.
The little town of Peshtigo was completely destroyed, leaving a handful of survivors. One survivor was the Reverend Peter Pernin, who left one of the only eye-witness accounts of the fire.
Way back in the ’00s I was invited by Iowa Public Television to write some music for a documentary they were producing with the National Forestry Service on wildfire management, and in the process of doing my research, I stumbled across a book containing Rev. Pernin’s account, and ended up writing a song about it – that unfortunately didn’t get used in the documentary. But I like it, it’s a powerful story and a fierce warning about one of the worst things that can happen. Wildfires are not just happening out West, y’all. They’re everywhere.
According to another book I read, written by a wildfire fighter, the town had unintentionally laid itself into a perfect configuration to create a giant bonfire, with stacks of logs and lumber around town waiting to be processed into boards and turned into homes, just waiting for a spark to hit. Drought conditions had been the worst in recorded history for the time. And fur trappers and traders would camp in the forest and didn’t have the best fire management skills, and a lot of cooking fires were left unquenched when the trappers and traders moved on in the mornings. A literal perfect firestorm.
Not coincidentally, this was also the night of the Great Chicago Fire, but because Peshtigo was tiny and remote, very few people knew about it, even though it was much worse and many more lives and homes were lost.
Sometimes we have to write about the tragic in order to appreciate the joyful. Here’s Peshtigo.
Little fires burning bright
Gleaming through the wood that night
Looking west I see the cloud
Red reflection, roaring sound
Wind rising, fitful gusts
Tree trunks blazing with one touch
As if wind was breathing fire
Dark explosion rising higher
Air no longer fit to breathe
River offers cool reprieve
A moment safe in water’s embrace
then all around us air in flames
Towers of fire reach for the sky
Hours and hours, we live we die
Only a handful breathing still
Huddled together in this living hell
After an eternity, shifting wind
Fire retreating, holocaust end
I find a world I barely know
Nothing left of Peshtigo
Everyday actions, things we do
Taken for granted, not thought through
You never know what will ignite
Little fires, burning bright
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