“When it burns, camera crews arrive. When the green returns, nobody is interested. Catastrophes sell; healing does not.”
A wildfire is a catastrophe for the landscape, yet for my lungs it is almost a cure. As soon as fire moves through the hills, the pollen burden disappears as if by magic. The air is full of smoke, but free of blossom dust, grasses and allergic irritation. However painful the loss of trees and olives may be, during those days I breathe better than in any allergy season.
The paradox has a simple biological reason:
- Immediately after the fire, nothing flowers and nothing releases pollen.
- Later, the ash acts like turbo fertiliser and grasses shoot up like soldiers at morning parade.
- The result: before long, the pollen returns more strongly than before.
I did not press the ignition button, but people say that shepherds sometimes set fires to provide fresh grass for their goats. For my health that means a few heavenly weeks, followed by an allergic nightmare.
Every damage also has a benefit
The official media report that wildfires destroy landscapes, threaten houses and villages, devastate wildlife and symbolise climate change and human negligence. Images of blackened olive trees, fire brigades and desperate residents illustrate the headlines. Everything appears to be pure catastrophe, with no exit and no light.
Those who live here see a second reality. Fires have been part of the Mediterranean cycle for centuries. They destroy, but they also renew.
- For me as an allergy sufferer: after the fire the airways are clearer than ever. No pollen, no coughing, no blocked nose.
- For shepherds: ash fertilises the soil, young tender grass grows and the goats find abundant food.
- For birds of prey: buzzards rise into the smoke and catch animals fleeing in panic.
- For hunters: when fire season ends, hunting season begins. Wild boar crowd into the last wooded areas and become easy prey.
- For nature: pine cones open after heat, grasses grow with new force and wild boar reproduce even more quickly despite hunting.
When the wind changes and the sun presses the smoke over the hills like a bell, I see the first signs. For me it means: today I can breathe freely. For wildlife, however, the escape begins. That is when the buzzards rise, majestic hunters taking the small animals running from the flames.
As if that were not enough, fire season merges almost seamlessly into hunting season. The few patches of forest spared by the flames become overcrowded with wild boar. Hunters have an easy task there: tightly concentrated animals with no escape corridor.
Even the wild boar fit perfectly into this cycle. After fire and hunting their numbers seem to collapse, yet the following year even more animals stand in the undergrowth. Less competition means more food, fertility rises and the females produce larger litters more often. While I breathe freely for a while, the next wild-boar offensive is already being prepared.
Timeline: fire and its consequences
- Fire → pollen zero → air clear.
- Two to three weeks → fresh green growth → first blossoms.
- One to three years → pollen explosion → allergy maximum.
Casa Nova, hidden
Two kilometres from the fire lies the sea. Casa Nova cannot be seen from the road. This house needs no address and therefore has none. Invisible to postmen and headlines, visible only to those who live here. Anyone who wants to find it needs not a street name, but a geopoint and trust.
The headlines find the fire.
The hunters find the wild boar.
The shepherds find the meadows.
But the post does not find Casa Nova.
The official view may not be wrong, but it is incomplete. Whoever knows the cycle recognises that every damage also has a benefit. The question remains: for whom?
