vice, as well as many recreationists who also subscribe toAmerican Forests,
has ever been the principal publicist of forest arson, openly in league with
government forest bureaus and rural police. Back in , a U.S. Forest Ser-
vice officer named John P. Shea had published his scholarly study of the
southern phenomenon of forest arson. Reread today, Shea’s conclusions
on the motivation of arsonists seem a shocking trivialization: Fire-setters,
he averred, lived in environments of ‘‘low stimulation,’’ so they ‘‘craved ex-
citement.’’ Forest fires merely served this end, so the task of conservation-
ists was simply to locate alternative amusements for the bored rural igno-
rati. One must wonder if the brilliant composer and singer Hank Williams
(–) knew of Shea’s report when he wrote one of his rare joyous songs,
titled ‘‘Settin’ the Woods on Fire.’’ The piece celebrates, well, celebration:
You talk loud
’n I’ll talk louder
We’ll be settin’ the woods on fire!The title line probably should be construed metaphorically—having a rous-
ing good time; yet I think the line’s specificity is plain enough, too. It is
bloody great fun to torch the woods! Pyromania lies within many of us,
especially if we are drinking, dancing, and shouting. Shea, middle-class ig-
noramus that he surely was, had been onto something, even if only super-
ficially.^14
By and the New Orleans forest arson conference, emerging statisti-
cal trends and mounting insurance claims and police reports all compelled
a deeper look. The perspective of another half-century reveals, I think, why
the foresters needed better ethnography than Shea’s. First, by the s,
the cumulative effects of the closing of the range, the criminalization of
woods-firing, the huge cut-down of forests ca. –, and the subse-
quent creation of vast state and especially federal protected forests and na-
tional parks were becoming clear. Access to and use of what had once been
a commons was effectively closed, except to privileged hikers, climbers,
hunters, fishers, and vacationers, and also to influential lumber compa-
nies that were able to log in government forests with permits. Add to this
the emergence, by about , of the South as the nation’s premier paper-
maker. Pulp and paper manufacturers bought and leased many thousands
of acres, mostly in the old, coastal piney woods, but some in piedmonts and
the mountains. Nearly everywhere they grew loblollies (sometimes slash
pine) like any agricultural crop; it was monoculture of vast proportion,
maintained chemically to prevent deciduous trees (now, in effect, ‘‘weeds’’)