Holy Smokes!

Woohoo! We finally burned some actual forest yesterday! Five acres of pitch pine-scrub oak woodland are now 99% blackened. The picture above shows a typical conflagration of scrub oak toasting the lower pitch pine branches. Scrub oak leaves contain flammable oils causing them to literally burst into flames, much to the delight of pyromaniacs...I mean, wildland firefighters. As for wildlife, one crew found a female box turtle, safe & sound, crawling through the ashes after the burn, and I almost stepped on a whippoorwill in a severely burned area. All in all, lots of exciting fire behavior in a wilder setting, and a great deal of ecological restoration accomplished. But that's only the silver lining!

After a mere two hours of lighting comes the laborious and unglorious task known as mop-up, which is what most wildland firefighting work actually is. On my back goes the 50 lb. bladder bag of water, and I tromp around stomping & spraying every piece of smoke I can find. And with 10 rainless days in a xeric ecosystem, there were a lot of stubborn smokey spots, especially in the deep fluffy needle duff around the pitch pines. Thirteen men with water (including three fire trucks with 4 hoses) worked for 4 hours putting out smoke, and there are probably dozens still smoldering this morning. So, that's where I'm off to now, to shoulder another bladder bag and stomp out the rest of the smoke. It's not all fun & flames, but every once in a while a whippoorwill flaps its wings in your face and you feel that all the thankless work and aching shoulders must be worthwhile in the long run.