A useful way to think about the American fire scene is to consider the three types of fire – those set by nature, those set by people in living landscapes and those that burn fossil fuels, or lithic landscapes.
That’s according to Steven J. Pyne, a fire historian and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, who will deliver the 2024 Wallace Stegner Lecture at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12, in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies. The event is free, open to the public, and will be followed by a reception.

Pyne spent 15 seasons with the North Rim Long shots fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park, 12 of them as crew boss. He is the author of more than 40 books, most of them dealing with fire, including his most recent, “Five Suns: The Fire History of Mexico,” published in 2024. In his lecture, he will draw a narrative on the unbroken saga of humanity and fire and how it joins the past and future.

The Stegner lectures are sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies in MSU’s Department of History and Philosophy in the College of Letters and Science. The series continues the legacy of the late Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, environmentalist and historian who is often called the “dean of Western writers.” The series and work of the Stegner chair focus on teaching and research in history, literature and philosophy, with a concentration on pressing Western issues.

For more information, contact Mark Fiege, MSU professor of history and philosophy at mark.fiege@montana.edu.