Sunday, April 30, 2017

Burning the East Side, April 8, 2017

Rod Moyer and his excellent crew did some backburns to protect the house.  I appreciated the time they took, as they had thousands of acres to burn that day.

After they left, I burned around the Writer's Shack and the solar panel at Jerry's Pond.

The fire crossed onto our land from neighboring pastures.

From Cemetery Ridge the fire jumped to our woods.  In one place it jumped the Oak Road, both tracks of which were running water--and it jumped downhill and against a southwest wind. 
Fire makes up rules as it goes along!

Fire maintains a grassland--without it there would be no prairie--but fire is capricious.  It is helpful but in no way does it confine itself to the helper role.

The woods provide back-access to the house, so I spent most of the day burning the woods near the house--depriving the fire of fuel for a surprise attack.

Everything went smoothly because the ground was wet.  Burning in the woods meant crawling under fences and fighting through brush--it's not an easy place to move with water tanks.  But I was able to drag my flapper around and through tight spots.  With the flapper, I could push the flames down into the damp earth where the moisture put them out.   Why did I need a water tank?  The earth was waiting for me with all the water I needed.

Some of the final clips--with the narration--are video-cards I sent to Ron, who was back east with his family.   Ron recognized immediately other things on the sound track--but I want to draw others' attention to the songs of meadowlarks setting up territories and the Western Chorus Frogs calling from the pond.   While the fire consumes the prairie, small lives on the edges go on!  And overhead, the vultures circle.  They are like the burn itself--ready to turn death into new life.






I forgot all about the trail cam!  It was positioned at the Oak Road overlook, facing northeast.  It thus caught the fire coming down from Cemetery Ridge and moving west.  Luckily (it certainly was nothing I did!), the fire stopped just before the camera.  It remains in good shape!

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