"I think the automatic response people have is, 'This is devastation, this is apocalypse,'" Henry Art said. "Yet, it's not. It's part of what that system is adapted to do.
"For me, it's part of nature. I think it's entirely appropriate to make fire lines around Mass Avenue where the fire could really do some harm."
But deep in the woods of East Mountain and Pine Cobble, where firefighters battled a wildland fire for four days this month, fire can be restorative to the ecosystem and beneficial to a particular species of pine tree.
Art, an emeritus professor of biology and environmental studies and a longtime member of the Williamstown Conservation Commission, was not criticizing the efforts of those firefighters and was as thankful as anyone for their efforts to keep the fire from encroaching on inhabited areas, like Massachusetts Avenue in North Adams.