by Megan Quinn

Content Warning: Eating Disorders

I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes until lunchtime. I just had to finish four more meters on this transect. I was counting flowers along the 50-meter transect tape measure to record data on the quality of the pollinator habitat of this post-burn site. 

“3,4,5…” I muttered as I counted the purple flowers shaped like small tubes. The flowers blurred together into a purple mass. I glanced at my watch again. It still wasn’t time for lunch. 

After a few more counting efforts, I wrote down “9” on my data sheet in the 46 meter row for Penstemon linarioides, PENLIN for short. These were the last flowers along the transect, so I shoved my data sheet into my backpack. My watch struck 12:30 pm. 

I headed back to the truck among the burnt and brittle trees of the Mangum Fire scar, their blackened limbs hanging like ghosts over my head. I scrubbed my hands with water, but the oily black just spread over my skin. I was on day six of my eight day hitch, and my whole body was covered in ash.

Inside the truck, I found my trail mix bag was full, and I knew I should dump a small portion into my ½ cup cubic ziploc container. That was my rule. But I was exhausted. Too tired to grab the container from the backseat, I reached inside the bag.

It was like a trapdoor opening over a bottomless shaft. I had the urge to eat everything in the world. I shoveled popcorn and nuts into my mouth, half of my brain screaming to fill the pit and the other half screaming to stop. 

When half of the 30oz bag sat as a pebble in my empty stomach, I threw the bag into the truck. My brain shouted, “You’re a failure. You can’t control yourself.” 

As an ultimate perfectionist, this feeling was crippling. I’d always made sure I had the highest grades and was the most gnarly skier and mountain biker. Because maybe if I was “the best” I would have worth: some justification for being alive.

***

In the American west, Indigenous peoples co-existed with fire before colonization. However, when the Euro-American settlers came to the region, the fire regime completely changed. They brought diseases to Indigenous populations, agriculture, and grazing. In 1905, the Forest Service was established by the government for the main reason of fire suppression. 

The policy of the Forest Service was perfection: to put out every single fire. With this fire suppression, the forests of the southwest became extremely dense and fuels continued to accumulate.

***

When I moved to attend graduate school in Biology at Northern Arizona University, suddenly, I was as far from the best as I’ve ever been. I was the youngest graduate student, and I assumed  the least competent. Flagstaff sits at 7,000 feet, and oxygen is scant. With my sea level lungs and larger build, I no longer felt like an athlete.  

Without my intelligence and athleticism to support my self-esteem, I didn’t know who I was anymore. 

Since my undergraduate, I’ve struggled with food. I felt ashamed at the amount of food I ate to support my active lifestyle. I became seasoned at playing tiny games of restriction, and I discovered it gave me a sense of control. 

When I was in control and able to restrict my food intake, I lost weight, and people complimented me.

Voila, I found an identity. I had worth.

My food restriction led to anorexia – the mental health illness with the highest death rate.

This restriction completely took over my brain and my life. 

One time, I sat with a friend on the edge of a mountain bike trail while she wheezed from an asthma attack. She was scared and needed her friend. But the only thing I could think about was the extra workout I’d need to make up for resting.

I was experiencing physical symptoms of anorexia: Exhaustion. When I drove, I was unable to keep my eyes open. Cold. I was constantly shivering. Incontinence. My pelvic floor muscles had wasted away so much that sometimes while working out, I couldn’t hold in my pee. 

That winter, when I arrived home to visit my family, my mom’s mouth dropped open.

“You’re so skinny!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide in horror. I felt a rush of pride.

The second half of winter break, my friends visited me in Flagstaff. One of my friends would later tell me that when she hugged me, she was scared I was going to break in half.

At lunch, my friend Mady pointed at my meager lettuce wrap. “Is that all you’re going to eat? That’s not enough protein.” 

A wave of fear and defensiveness came over me. I had built my identity around this disorder and if they tried to take it away, I didn’t know who I would be anymore.

“I’m not very hungry today.”

Weeks later, I finally came to the realization I needed to have more energy, especially for the upcoming summer of intense field work. But I was terrified of gaining weight.

***

When the Forest Service took on suppressing all fires, the landscape of the Southwest transformed to look like a different ecosystem. As the forests became denser, the understory could no longer receive light for flowering plants and grasses to grow. The ecological diversity of these landscapes waned. Dead plant material and other fuels became sleeping giants without any small fires to clear them out. 

Soon, this buildup of fuels caused fires, that were sparked by either natural or human causes, to become huge large-scale high intensity fires. More and more of these fires were occurring across the Southwest, becoming harder and harder to put out, and more and more destructive. The goal of perfection to help the forests became the thing that was destroying them.

***

The solution I came up with was instead of eating more with the group, I’d sneak out to the car to eat. That way, I felt in control of my food intake – mostly raw vegetables – and didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing how much I ate. When I started this routine, I realized I was starving. But what I didn’t realize was that my perception around portion size was so distorted, that even though I was eating too little, it still felt like I was bingeing.

After lunch on day six, I headed to an older site that burned 17 years ago. I made a deal to do a long run that night to make up for the extra trail mix I ate and re-focus on my field work. I needed to collect data for my thesis project, which looks at how wildfire affects pollinator habitat.

There was a sea of flowers at this burn site. PENLIN, LUPKIN, ERIDIV, ACHMIL, just in the first couple of meters.

But I couldn’t concentrate. My mind ran in loops: here in Jacob’s Lake, there aren’t as many hills as Flagstaff. I am going to get fat for sure. The feeling of being a failure joined the loop in my mind, yelling at me that I was insignificant and worthless.

A week before my second year of graduate school begins, a friend sent me a video about an influencer who died that week from her diet of only raw fruits and vegetables.

For the next few days, I couldn’t get that video and my friend’s concern out of my head. One afternoon, I sat in the small square grass park in downtown Flagstaff. The shade of a tree cast enough of a shadow for me to see my computer screen. I was inputting all the data I had collected on pollinator habitat in wildfire burn scars into a spreadsheet.

The entire time I typed away at my computer, my brain thought of how I wasn’t exercising as much, just sitting there, and planning how I would put more vegetables to replace the recipe’s call for beans and rice in my dinners that week. 

Someone threw their dog a ball. A couple ate a picnic under another tree. People napped in the shade. 

I finally decided that I’d had enough. I called my mom. 

When she picked up, I broke down crying. My back turned to the park so no one would see me, I said, “I have an eating disorder. I need help.”

It’s been about a year. It hasn’t been easy. My therapist says anorexia is one of the hardest mental disorders to recover from. I know what she means – the voices in my head scream in disgust every time I look in the mirror, buy larger clothes, or eat a new fear food.

But also I’m learning to wrestle with those voices and explain to them I am valuable without being the best. I’m beginning to build my sense of self in aspects of myself that I actually love: my curiosity, empathy, and love of adventure. 

***

In 1968, the Forest Service re-evaluated its policy on complete fire suppression. They began to do research and conduct experiments in national parks on the role of fire in the ecosystem. Ten years later, they abandoned their complete fire suppression policy.

These high-intensity wildfires still can occur today due to the damage that has been done to the forests and also climate change. While high-intensity wildfires can never be deemed as good, not everything about the destruction is bad. These fires can create the pollinator habitat that was once lost. The downed trees can provide nesting material for pollinators. Without a dense canopy, light can reach the forest floor, allowing wildflowers to grow. Wildfires, events we consider a huge failure, might also be seen as a place for restoration and growth. 

Today in Flagstaff, the Forest Service implements prescribed burns and forest thinning policies to manage the fire regime. These methods reduce the amount of fuel that could feed large high-intensity wildfires. The forests are beginning to look like a repainting of a beautiful mosaic of grass, trees, wildflowers, and pollinators.

***

This summer, I sat amongst the grass while I watched my students count pollinators in the Museum Fire scar. While their eyes were fixed on small bees jumping from flower to flower, I watched a hummingbird nestle its beak into a trumpet shaped flower named Lithospermum macromeria. For a second, I stop to soak in this moment.

I am the girl who ate the trail mix and also the woman covered herself in ash. Perhaps what I am going through is also helping me grow into the person I am becoming. 

For Further Reading:

Carbone, Lucas M., et al. “A Global Synthesis of Fire Effects on Pollinators.” Global Ecology and Biogeography, vol. 28, no. 10, 2019, pp. 1487–98. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12939.

Matonis, Megan Shanahan, and Dan Binkley. “Not Just about the Trees: Key Role of Mosaic-Meadows in Restoration of Ponderosa Pine Ecosystems.” Forest Ecology and Management, vol. 411, Mar. 2018, pp. 120–31. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.01.019.

Ponisio, Lauren C., et al. “Pyrodiversity Begets Plant–Pollinator Community Diversity.” Global Change Biology, vol. 22, no. 5, 2016, pp. 1794–808. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13236.

Singleton, Megan P., et al. “Increasing Trends in High-Severity Fire in the Southwestern USA from 1984 to 2015.” Forest Ecology and Management, vol. 433, Feb. 2019, pp. 709–19. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.11.039.

Roos, Christopher I., et al. “Indigenous Fire Management and Cross-Scale Fire-Climate Relationships in the Southwest United States from 1500 to 1900 CE.” Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 49, Dec. 2022, p. eabq3221. science.org, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abq3221.van Wagtendonk, Jan W. “The History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use.” Fire Ecology, vol. 3, no. 2, Dec. 2007, pp. 3–17. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.4996/fireecology.0302003.