The Wild Quiet

In the summer of 1988, Yellowstone burned.

What began as a collection of smaller fires grew into a months-long event that affected nearly 800,000 acres inside the park. Firefighters defended Old Faithful, historic buildings and nearby communities—but in the end, only rain and snow could stop the flames.

This is the story of Black Saturday, a bison walking onto a snow-covered roof, the fight to save Yellowstone and what happened when the smoke finally cleared.

It is also a story about the way we describe a burned landscape—and why “burned,” “destroyed” and “dead” are not interchangeable.

This solo episode accompanies my conversation with fire ecologist Dick Hutto, Is a Burned Forest a Dead Forest?

See historical photographs, the final fire map and the young lodgepole forest that followed in The Wild Quiet Companion Sheet : Charred, Alive, and Misunderstood - What We Miss in a Burned Forest

A burned forest can look empty: blackened trunks, bare ground and smoke hanging over what appears to be a dead landscape.

But fire ecologist Dick Hutto sees an entire living community most of us have never learned to notice.

In this episode, we step inside a severely burned forest and listen for beetles chewing beneath the bark. We meet Black-backed Woodpeckers, explore lodgepole pines waiting for fire and ask what can be lost when we treat a burned forest as something that must immediately be cleaned up or repaired.

We also talk about climate change, salvage logging and the difficult truth that wildfire can be dangerous to people while still creating ecologically valuable habitat.

Dick Hutto is professor emeritus of biology and wildlife biology at the University of Montana and the author of A Beautifully Burned Forest: Learning to Celebrate Severe Forest Fire.

Listen next: The Summer Yellowstone Burned, a companion episode about the fires that transformed Yellowstone in 1988.

Learn more and explore photographs, maps and resources in The Wild Quiet Companion: Charred, Alive, and Misunderstood - What We Miss in a Burned Forest

What happens when one wild animal becomes someone?

P-22 was a mountain lion living in Griffith Park, surrounded by Los Angeles. He crossed two enormous freeways, spent more than a decade in an unusually tiny home range, survived mange and exposure to rat poison, and somehow became one of the most famous wild animals in America.

In this episode, I follow P-22 from the Santa Monica Mountains to the Hollywood sign—and into the much bigger story his life helped people see.

We get into the secret lives of mountain lions, wildlife communication, habitat fragmentation, rodenticides, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, and what happens when the lines humans draw across a landscape mean absolutely nothing to the animals trying to move through it.

Plus: Grizzly 399, Yellowstone wolf 1090F, a suspected koala incident, a mountain lion on Grandma’s roof, and my six-year-old’s insistence that P-22 looks exactly like our very-not-a-mountain-lion house cat, Bonez Malone.

P-22 — National Park Service

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/puma-profiles-p-22.htm

P-22 — Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

https://nhm.org/experience-nhm/exhibitions-natural-history-museum/p-22

Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing

https://101wildlifecrossing.org/

The Wild Quiet Companion Guide

Coming soon: photos, maps, wildlife-crossing rabbit—NOPE. 😂 —wildlife-crossing resources, P-22 links, and a few more strange and fascinating things I found while researching this episode.

[ADD COMPANION GUIDE LINK]

Find one place near you where an animal has to navigate something humans built.

A road. A fence. A parking lot. A neighborhood. A culvert. A bridge.

Then look at it from the animal’s side.

Where would you go?

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place in it.

The Wild Quiet Co. on Substack

https://thewildquietco.substack.com

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@thewildquietco

We tend to think of roads as routes to somewhere else. But for wildlife, those same roads can become moving fences—cutting animals off from food, mates, migration routes, and sometimes entire futures.

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb joins me to explore the strange and surprisingly emotional world of road ecology: wildlife bridges, salamander tunnels, migrating pronghorn, mountain lions trapped among Los Angeles freeways, road noise as habitat loss, and why the animal always gets the final vote on whether our solution actually works.

We also discuss the tragically underused historical insult flivverboob, which deserves another chance.

ABOUT BEN

Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist and the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet.

Ben’s website:

https://www.bengoldfarb.com

Find Crossings:

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005896

GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Companion Guide—with wildlife-crossing photos, migration videos, maps, and additional road-ecology curiosities:

https://thewildquietco.substack.com

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing:

https://101wildlifecrossing.org

ABOUT THE ROADLESS RULE

This episode is being released during the week of National Public Lands Day and while the U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule. Ben and I recorded our conversation before the proposal was announced, so we do not discuss it directly.

Official proposed rule and public record:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-16965/special-areas-roadless-area-conservation

USDA’s explanation of the proposal:

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/08/18/usda-acts-remove-roadless-rule-restrictions-exacerbate-rising-wildfire-risk

A look at arguments for and against rescission from the University of Wyoming College of Law:

https://www.uwyo.edu/law/centers/center-for-land-and-water-law/blog/long-road-rescinding-roadless-rule.html

National Public Lands Day:

https://www.neefusa.org/npld

LISTENER ASSIGNMENT

The next time you travel a familiar road, look beyond the lane—preferably as the passenger. What does that road divide? Is there water on one side and nesting ground on the other? A game trail ending at the pavement? A culvert or strange green bridge you once ignored?

Who was moving through there before we decided it was the way through?

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

https://thewildquietco.substack.com

Instagram and Facebook: @thewildquietco

What happens when you plant milkweed for monarchs—and discover an entire tiny world living there?

What started as a few volunteer milkweed plants in my front yard became a miniature neighborhood full of ant farmers, aphid mummies, four-eyed beetles, chemical warfare, disappearing caterpillars, strange pollination tricks, and conversations happening through the stems that I can’t even hear.

In this companion episode, we’re looking past the monarchs to explore some of the other lives tangled up in a milkweed patch—and the surprisingly complicated relationships happening on one ordinary plant.

We get into monarch caterpillars stealing milkweed’s chemical defenses, ants farming aphids, parasitoid wasps growing inside their hosts, red milkweed beetles flirting and fighting through vibrations, insects getting caught in milkweed flowers, and my own inability to remain emotionally detached from a caterpillar once I’ve found it.

Turns out, I planted milkweed for the monarchs.

The drama is what made me keep looking.

GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Companion Guide — Insects, Milkweed & Tiny Dramas:

https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

Photos, research, books, insect art, milkweed residents, and a few more strange things worth getting curious about.

LISTENER ASSIGNMENT

Find one plant you pass all the time—a tree in your yard, a weed growing beside the sidewalk, something in your garden—and give it a few minutes.

Don’t just look at the plant.

Look underneath the leaves. Check the stems. Watch the flowers. Notice what lands, crawls, eats, hides, hunts, or just hangs out there.

How many lives can you find using one plant?

You don’t have to know what any of them are yet. Just notice them.

Then, if something makes you curious, go down the rabbit hole.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

Instagram and Facebook: @thewildquietco

What happens when we stop sorting insects into beautiful, useful, annoying, disgusting, or terrifying—and actually look at them?

Biologist, artist, and author Barrett Klein joins me to explore what can happen when we start paying closer attention to the tiny lives around us.

We get into sleeping bees, monarch mysteries, mud-dauber architecture, childhood encounters with dead butterflies, insect-made art, milkweed beetles, the strange ways insects are woven into human culture, and whether understanding something can actually change the way we feel about it.

We also assemble a three-creature team for an insect bank heist. For science.

ABOUT BARRETT

Barrett Klein is a biologist, entomologist, artist, professor at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and author of The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture. His work explores insect behavior, sleep biology, cultural entomology, and the intersection of science and art.

Barrett Klein + The Pupating Lab:

https://www.pupating.org/

Find The Insect Epiphany:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/barrett-klein/the-insect-epiphany/9781643261362/

GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Companion Guide — Insects, Milkweed & Tiny Dramas:

https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

A deeper dive into some of the insects and ideas from this conversation, plus books, research, insect art, milkweed drama, and a few more things worth getting curious about.

The Pupating Lab:

https://www.pupating.org/people/

Learn more about Barrett’s research into insect behavior, sleep biology, cultural entomology, and the intersection of science and art—including current research into monarch butterfly sleep.

LISTENER ASSIGNMENT

The next time you notice an insect, don’t worry about identifying it right away.

Just watch it for a minute.

What is it actually doing? Where is it going? Is it eating something? Building something? Hiding? Hunting? Resting? What is it interacting with?

And maybe pay attention to your own reaction, too. Did you immediately decide it was beautiful? Gross? Scary? Annoying?

What changes when you give it another minute?

Then, if you want to know its name, go down the rabbit hole.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

Instagram and Facebook: @thewildquietco

The Wild Quiet is a new podcast about nature—and our place within it. Every Tuesday, Bre Harris follows a new curiosity about animals, plants, landscapes, and the complicated ways humans live alongside them.

Sometimes through conversations with people who have spent years paying attention. Sometimes straight down the rabbit hole.

The Wild Quiet launches September 15. Follow the show now so the first episodes are waiting for you.