The Forest Service does something that feels completely backwards—they set the forest on fire. In this trip I headed into the Ozark National Forest to see a prescribed burn up close, but from a respectful distance. These burns are planned, controlled, and intentional, and the more I learned (and the more I smelled that top-10 scent in the air), the more it clicked: what looks destructive in the moment is often the thing that restores the land. Fire used to be part of the Ozarks’ rhythm—lightning, indigenous land management, open oak and hickory woods—and when we suppressed it, we built a forest that can burn hotter and uglier later. We scouted the burn zone, camped just outside the border, and rolled into Bigfoot Hollow—muddy trenches, emerald water, and one of my favorite little Ozarks quirks: that table that’s grown into the tree. The real heart of this one, though, is time with my son Abraham… “Hammer.” I tell the story of how that name actually happened (spoiler: it wasn’t me trying to sound tough), and we do what we do best out there—cold plunge, build a legit fire, cook camp fajitas done right, and wake up to bacon in the ashes. By the time we drove back past the charred forest floor, it hit me again: introduce a bit of moderation, prep, and control, and chaos becomes creation. There’s a sermon in there… but I’ll save that for another day.