Photographer Claire “Vimala” Anderson knows what it is to be unafraid to be near fire.
On June 5, 2020, a lightning strike lit up the Santa Catalina Mountains, igniting the Bighorn Fire. That blaze went on for seven weeks before it was extinguished. During those weeks, Anderson was there to record the fire while it burned, the immediate aftermath and finally the regrowth.
“I never felt in danger,” she said. “With the fire I just felt like it wanted me there. It wasn’t going to hurt me because I was there by invitation of the fire and nature itself.”
Now readers can see what she saw in “Bighorn Song: Portrait of a Mountain Wildfire,” a new book by Anderson. With pictures and a few words she tells the story of the fire, at least from her perspective.
Although the fire lasted seven weeks, over the course of 48 days, Anderson ventured into the Catalinas many, many times and took thousands of photos by her own count.
Two images in particular are seared into Anderson’s mind.
“The smoke that was coming off the (mountains) was incredible,” she said. “I’m looking at this smoke (in Finger Rock Canyon) and some of the smoke is black. Some of the smoke is white. There are all these different shades and (a ranger from Idaho) was telling me which trees were causing which color.”
Then there was another time, when she and a friend were looking at the mountains.
“While we were sitting there just watching the fire, something caught,” she said. “I don’t know what caught, but the amount of smoke that went from that was insane. We watched it go from nothing to this hundreds-of-feet billowing tower of smoke.”
A man happened by and he stopped to chat for a moment. He was coming from Golder Ranch, which had been evacuated.
“He said, ‘It’s too much. I’m just going down to get a few things,’” she said. With that short exchange, “the human element came through strong that day.”
Still, Anderson said the fire did not make her sad because it was caused naturally by lightning and fire is a natural process. It’s the human element that annoyed her.
“I thought (the firefighters) would have that fire out by day two but they had problems with drones,” she said. “Drones were stopping their air operations because they weren’t allowed to fly the planes and helicopters while there were drones up there. It got to be a problem, people watching.”
She had another fear about the fire.
“The Idaho ranger told me that we had lost 40% to 60% of the saguaros,” she said. “It was tragic for me to hear that. He said it was because of the buffel grass, which burns way hotter. A saguaro can survive a natural desert fire but it could not survive that buffel grass because the heat was too hot and the cacti were exploding from the heat. They were blowing up just because the water in them was boiling.”
She also worried about the rattlesnakes.
Anderson began work on the book in November of last year; it takes time to go through thousands of photos. She thought she would be done by January. That didn’t happen, but the book is ready now. It’s one way of sharing her “wealth,” meaning her art and the places she’s been. Plus, the Bighorn Fire was and is important.
“It was a significant event,” she said, “and it was beautiful in its own way. It was destructive. It was nature doing something different.”
“Bighorn Song: Portrait of a Mountain Wildfire”
by Claire Vimala Anderson
Available at online stores, $38.99
This article appears in 06-19-2025.