Blue-black snags clawed at the sky. Without shade, without greenery or moisture, the sun weighed as heavily on Anna's back as her pack. With every step, cinders crunched under her boots. Black dust boiled up to stick in the sweat and DEET sprayed on her legs. Despite the insecticide, horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes followed. With only a brief window of opportunity in which to slake their thirst, they were fearless.

Despite the ash and grit, she blessed the fire that had torched ten thousand acres of America's crown jewel, taxed the Glacier superindent's courage, not to mention the Waterton superintendent's faith in the good sense of the

U.S. superintendent as he watched the NPS "let burn" policy crackle toward the Canadian half of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Waterton-Glacier was a unique and highly successful experiment. The only park of its kind, one half was in Canada, the other in the United States, with major environmental decisions and park regulations worked out jointly between the two countries.

The Canadian superintendent was less optimistic than the American superintendent when it came to letting nature burn where she would, but Glacier's superintendent stood firm. The fire had been left to burn itself out and Anna was glad. She was no great devotee of trees; they blocked one's view of the forest. And fire cleaned out the deadwood, exposed the soil to light and air, making possible the riot of life that followed fire's necessary cleansing and renewal.

Against the scorched earth, with the liquid gold of the lowering sun, a carpet of glacier lilies glowed with an electric green so intense she could remember seeing it only in the altered states of consciousness of the late sixties and the paintings of Andy Warhol.

Glacier lilies were fragile yellow blooms, smaller than a half-dollar, that hung pointed and curling petals in graceful skirts around red stamens heavy with pollen.