My Hometown Went Up in Flames. It Won’t Be the Last.

Mr. Egan is the author of 10 books, including “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.”

As a boy, I found myself in Huck Finn heaven after our family moved to a new tract house amid a ponderosa pine forest in Spokane, Wash. During the summer, we free-ranged out from our street, Indian Trail Road, swimming in an idle river and building tree forts from plywood leftovers at the suburban frontier.

Further out, on camping trips in nearby national forests, we came upon charred tree husks from an inferno of legend........

© The New York Times