Garnet Ring

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Garnet Ring honors, through the landscape, those lost lives during the 2017 wildfires, protecting and enriching the communities of today and tomorrow with the integration of fire as a process and social catalyst.

Through ecologic fire rekindled by culture, this strategic succession of community clearings, plantings, control burns, and seasonal fire festivals provides economic opportunities. It does so through both a novel educational stewardship program and village patronage events that, together, illuminate a fire-resilient future here and there.

Forging the Future:

By reframing and redistributing existing knowledge of fire management, Garnet Ring proposes to rewrite existing perspectives and practices of fire—its role and our relationship with it by re-establishing fire as a generator of cultural and ecologic health, joy and wealth, and new eco-economic possibilities.

The path forward is through the path we once walked, together, united with our neighbors and with the spark of our species, fire itself. To embark on our new future, with fire directed by people and plants, WE REKINDLE.

Village under focus: Linhares, Pracerias, Adcasal, Nogueira, Aveleira, Torrozelas, Adela, Acor, Arganil, Portugal

A proposta Anel de “Rubis” homenageia, por meio da paisagem, as vidas perdidas durante os incêndios florestais de 2017, protegendo e enriquecendo as comunidades de hoje e de amanhã com a integração do fogo como processo e catalisador social. Por meio do fogo ecológico reacendido pela cultura, esta sucessão estratégica de clareiras comunitárias, plantações, queimas controladas e festivais sazonais de fogo oferece oportunidades económicas. Esta proposta imagina que um novo programa educacional e o patrocínio de eventos locais nas aldeias centrados na cultura do fogo possam iluminar um futuro mais resiliente, aqui e ali.

Forjando o futuro: Reenquadrando e redistribuindo o conhecimento existente sobre a gestão do fogo, esta proposta imagina reescrever as perspetivas e práticas existentes do fogo—seu papel e nossa relação com ele para restabelecer o fogo como gerador de cultura e ecologia, saúde e deleite, e novas ecoeconomias. O caminho a seguir é o mesmo caminho que um dia percorremos, juntos, unidos aos nossos vizinhos e com a centelha da nossa espécie, o próprio fogo. Para embarcar no nosso novo futuro, com o fogo conduzido por pessoas e plantas, NÓS REACENDEMOS.

Aldeia em foco: Linhares, Pracerias, Adcasal, Nogueira, Aveleira, Torrozelas, Ádela, Açor, Arganil e Góis, Portugal

1. Welcome a new perspective: Through a system fueled by community engagement, landscape management stewardship will be aligned with cultural creation to set forth a new precedent for Portugal’s perception of fire.

2. Invoke Ecologic solutions: We believe the soundest protection against future wildfire lies at the intersection of people and plants. Our approach is two fold, and relies on the collaboration of these two foundational actors to create enduring change. We must return these lands to their native ecological systems, in which regular, controlled fire was used by humans to prevent devastation while providing physical and economic sustenance.

3. Reignite our relationship with fire: To exist in the future, we must rekindle the negotiations once held between land and inhabitant through economic opportunities that incentivise healthy land use and subsequently nurture familiarity between human, land, and fire.

4. Employ cultural shifts: We believe the first steward must be employed, to initiate a novel cultural shift in perspective drawn from traditional fire practice and mark the significance of this remembered relationship.

5. Share Knowledge: To plan the future, we must understand, collectively, the difference between wildfire and fire, their origins and intentions. This knowledge must be shared with those in positions to make the most immediate impact in fire’s potential extent, those who live within its route.

6. Initiate community confidence: To grow together, we must listen, speak, and trust. These first village adopters will develop a community model partnered with employed stewards to craft a wildfire preventative landscape through fire that generates community safety while creating events for economic gain.

7. Navigate balancing resident + visiting interests: While the cultural significance imbued in these regular landscape maintenance practices are intended to celebrate the returned role of fire for the prevention of wildfire, they are also intended to more importantly foster a new relationship for those residents who live in the wake of fire. Maintenance interventions will scale between the ceremonial and the habitual.

8. Designate opportunities to uplift residents to leadership: We believe the best leaders rise from experience. We believe community stewardship roles may, through provided additional training, transition into specialised stewards, compensated employees of this new wildfire employment regime.

9. Lead by example: While the cultural significance imbued in these regular landscape maintenance practices are intended to celebrate the returned role of fire for the prevention of wildfire, they are also intended to more importantly foster a new relationship for those residents who live in the wake of fire. Maintenance interventions will scale between the ceremonial and the habitual.

10. Encourage rekindling through shared experience: Wildfire is not a picky antagonist, and rural abandonment isn’t either. This cause and effect is global, but what we learn, implement and succeed at here can help revolutionize fire-prone communities around the world. Through the controlled, collaborative glow of fire intentionally started here, in both ceremonial and daily practices, we will captivate hearts and ignite curiosities across the globe to reimagine their own relationships to rekindled fire. When we celebrate, we invite the world in.

Garnet Ring: A Beacon for Change

Sarah Doonan

172 Garnet Ring: A Beacon for Change

Sarah Doonan

Abundant store of flammable fuels, highly combustible unchecked forests. Traditional fire management practices overwritten by fear of devastation possible by fire suppression mismanagement strategies.

Woods thinned, brush and trunks harvested, grasslands responsibly ignited by Flame Keeper to cleanse.

New cultural-ecologic paradigm initiated, in which humanity and fire re-establish a working relationship through renewed cultural management! Native algarve goats shepherd by village Keepers pastured to alleviate excess forest floor fuel. Shrubland ignited responsibly, post-goat, by Flame Keeper while training Community.

Community Fire Attendant, fully trained by the Keepers and with permission, performs a controlled burn on grasslands.

The culture established through work, through engagement, with ecologic fire, now community wisdom. Native shrub seeds sowed by Community in first postfire recovered zones.

Process as path, path as process, from start to finish, burned through! Garnet Ring channels and bonfires invoked to commemorate for and with Community. New shrublands developing.

RENEW In spring, a grove fire festival marks the March spring equinox, followed by the April Memorial Shower. During this ceremony, 100 community planted Prunus avium cherry trees honor those taken by fire through a cloud of white blossoms. In summer, these trees offer sustenance for both bees and residents. Garnet Ring: A Beacon for Change

Sarah Doonan

REPLENISH In fall, groves of village chestnuts are harvested in November to celebrate the magusto festival. An accompanying Goat Feast pays respects to those guardian goats who are spared and who spare us of the wildfires that could have been, if not for their grazing.

REFLECT A Ilex aquifolium holly tree planted for each of the 66 people who died in the 2017 wildfires, this evergreen grove bears witness yearlong to the efforts of survivors to change Portugal’s future through a culture of rekindled ecologic fire. In winter, the wind-breaking planting hosts intimate holiday bon fires generated through the summer reaping of fragrant Eucalyptus globulus bark. Aromatic steam and smoke pleasantly focus. Garnet Ring: A Beacon for Change

Sarah Doonan

REMEMBER The largest of all festivals, the Cork Grove Remembrance Fire Festival gives space to recollect the tragedy of past wildfires within the protective embrace of 150 Quercus suber cork oaks. In early summer, their barks are stripped, sold, and returns distributed among villagers.