This summer, English Professor Sandra Doe devised a service-learning project in conjunction with her "Nature Writing" class that exposed students first hand to the devastation wrought by wild fires, while asking them to put into words their thoughts and feelings about the experience.

Though all the students in the class studied fire as a natural phenomenon, those who participated in the Service Learning/Mountain Restoration Project, including senior Tabitha Dial whose Haiku is featured above, ended up writing "more intense" final projects.

Seven students, four English alumni, a handful of community members, adjunct professor Lee Christopher, Doe and her family members seeded two erosion-prone hills on her sister's property after it was scarred in 2003 by the Overland fire near Jamestown, Colo. The land required reclamation in order to prevent the hills from sloughing charred matter into the watershed.

Christopher, who helped Doe with the project, reviewed student papers without knowing who did or did not take part. Out of 15 papers, she identified 13 writers correctly, either as participants or non-participants. "She could pick out the ones who participated," Does said. "Their writing was just more intense."

To prepare for the experience, participating students wrote pre-reflection papers and consulted a "burning" bibliography compiled by Auraria librarian Ellen Metter. Following the event, students responded with poems, haiku, short stories, personal essays or research papers.

"Students were really glad to help," Doe explains. "They were glad to make the forest feel better and to give back."

Doe and Christopher have written a paper from this experience that they have submitted to the journal, Writing Instructor. Doe also hopes sometime to publish "The Burning Papers" that rose "out of the ashes of the Overland fire of Oct. 29, 2003."

"In spots where the fire was stronger the black warped branches seem to be still burning with the fog surrounding it. Disfigured ghosts of green haunt this mountaintop." -- Marisa Rybar