Burn Day.....
We finally got a burn day.....
I call every morning to Cal-Burn (1-800-CAL-BURN) to see if we can burn parts of our mountain. Three months ago, James and I spent a few days with his pole chain saw cutting dead wood and Spanish moss and making burn piles. The theory was to make it difficult for a fire to climb from the crackling, corn flake crunchy piles of oak leaves and dead poison oak up into the crowns of the live oaks that we have in abundance all around us.
The famous Basin Complex Fire of last summer only burned around 30% of the area of responsibility of the Cachagua Volunteers. All of us who experienced that loveliness are fixed on getting a jump on The Fire Next Time......
But......
Ever since October......no burn days.
As the dry days stretched into weeks, and then into months.....all our hard work turned from a positive to a scary negative. Piles of combustibles, nestled into acres of combustibles.
The recording at Cal-Burn goes on and on, burning up minutes on my cell phone: "You are required to ensure that only dry wood is burned, and that you not burn in wet conditions....."
And, the first Burn Day in months occurs after 18 hours of pounding rain.....when absolutely nothing in Christendom is dry and flammable......and it is still pounding rain.
Yeah, well....fuck it. Burn baby, burn.
Yesterday we bought a new couch.....
Buying a new couch for our weird, extended family is on the order of a national currency switching to euros......Traditions fall....
Dozens and dozens of folk have succumbed to the embrace of our old couch. Our old couch has a broken back, because the boys and their friends used to stand on the balcony above, embracing their giant stuffed animals and leap through the air as paratroopers......slamming into the poor old couch.
Dozens and dozens of folk have gathered on the old couch to watch soccer: the '90, '94, '98, '02, and '06 World Cups....plus twenty years of Champions League, and the Euros.....I still remember a Brazilian house guest.....snuggled into the old couch....shouting out each goal of each Brazil match at 4am in the Japan-Korea World Cup. We were too exhausted to actually watch.....but our shades kept track....from the screams from the old couch.
Anyway....the new couch came with a giant cardboard box. Suitable for a small rental unit for an optomistic newly immigrant family.
Dealing with Cal-Burn makes me understand the Republican abhorrence of Government. Weeks of beautiful, dry, non-polluting burn weather go by.....and on the dampest, pissiest day ever.....I must burn all the soaking crap I can find. All of which is assured to generate the maximum cloud of steam and pollutants to destroy my neighbors, the ozone layer.....and the planet.
All my dry brush.....laboriously collected for months.....would not begin to burn. I was in Catch-22 land....trying to get an appointment with Major Major Major. You can only see him when he is not in.....
Yeah, well.....Fuck you. I have Couch Box.
Once I got that fucker burning.......everything went just fine.
Sorry, Optomistic Newly Immigrant Family....back to Craig's List!
Meanwhile....the only reason I have a house is that my sons and I are immune to poison oak. Our property sat empty and unloved for decades because it was home to the largest poison oak vines ever observed. Six inches across was nothing....
For a year.....on my breaks and days off from my restaurant.....and my kid's soccer team (that is a joke.....there are no days off from restaurants, or youth soccer) I would drive out to Cachagua and cut and burn poison oak.
At first, I would wear hazmat suits and use respirators.......eventually I got over it, and fought poison oak like Louis X fought Saladin. Actually, more like Saladin v Louis X....because I won. Poison oak trembles in fear on my 14 acres.....
That was twenty years ago.....
Today, in 53 degree damp weather, in pissing rain......I got one of my ten burn piles done on the lower forty. I raced around, chopped brush, hauled hoses......slammed Pulaskis into piles of brush, chopped away with my blue steel machete.....and kept up the pressure on the fire with my good fire-poof pitchfork.
After three hours I was whipped. Soaked in sweat, filmed with pure poison oak fatty acid that is bubbling out of the brush all around me. My boots were wrecked, laces ruined. New jeans tatooed black with poison oak gel. I thought I had a slight blister on a toe.....and found my sock soaked with blood because the toe was smashed.
All last summer.....we had fire guys and gals tromping through our hills and mountains doing this same work.
I saw a prison crew with four-foot bar chain saws slung over their backs....sprint up a ridge that would crush my heart if I were only carrying a water bottle.......
Only it was not 53....it was 120 degrees. One night.....the air temperature got all the way down to a chilly 108 on Blue Ridge......
And the shift was not 3 hours....it was 20. And, often 36 straight hours of backbreaking, soul-crushing, Neanderthal labor.
And the fire was not in a four by four fire pile.....it ran to 240, 000 acres....
I just want to give a tip of the hat to the fire grunts......
Wow.
Burn Day.....indeed.
I call every morning to Cal-Burn (1-800-CAL-BURN) to see if we can burn parts of our mountain. Three months ago, James and I spent a few days with his pole chain saw cutting dead wood and Spanish moss and making burn piles. The theory was to make it difficult for a fire to climb from the crackling, corn flake crunchy piles of oak leaves and dead poison oak up into the crowns of the live oaks that we have in abundance all around us.
The famous Basin Complex Fire of last summer only burned around 30% of the area of responsibility of the Cachagua Volunteers. All of us who experienced that loveliness are fixed on getting a jump on The Fire Next Time......
But......
Ever since October......no burn days.
As the dry days stretched into weeks, and then into months.....all our hard work turned from a positive to a scary negative. Piles of combustibles, nestled into acres of combustibles.
The recording at Cal-Burn goes on and on, burning up minutes on my cell phone: "You are required to ensure that only dry wood is burned, and that you not burn in wet conditions....."
And, the first Burn Day in months occurs after 18 hours of pounding rain.....when absolutely nothing in Christendom is dry and flammable......and it is still pounding rain.
Yeah, well....fuck it. Burn baby, burn.
Yesterday we bought a new couch.....
Buying a new couch for our weird, extended family is on the order of a national currency switching to euros......Traditions fall....
Dozens and dozens of folk have succumbed to the embrace of our old couch. Our old couch has a broken back, because the boys and their friends used to stand on the balcony above, embracing their giant stuffed animals and leap through the air as paratroopers......slamming into the poor old couch.
Dozens and dozens of folk have gathered on the old couch to watch soccer: the '90, '94, '98, '02, and '06 World Cups....plus twenty years of Champions League, and the Euros.....I still remember a Brazilian house guest.....snuggled into the old couch....shouting out each goal of each Brazil match at 4am in the Japan-Korea World Cup. We were too exhausted to actually watch.....but our shades kept track....from the screams from the old couch.
Anyway....the new couch came with a giant cardboard box. Suitable for a small rental unit for an optomistic newly immigrant family.
Dealing with Cal-Burn makes me understand the Republican abhorrence of Government. Weeks of beautiful, dry, non-polluting burn weather go by.....and on the dampest, pissiest day ever.....I must burn all the soaking crap I can find. All of which is assured to generate the maximum cloud of steam and pollutants to destroy my neighbors, the ozone layer.....and the planet.
All my dry brush.....laboriously collected for months.....would not begin to burn. I was in Catch-22 land....trying to get an appointment with Major Major Major. You can only see him when he is not in.....
Yeah, well.....Fuck you. I have Couch Box.
Once I got that fucker burning.......everything went just fine.
Sorry, Optomistic Newly Immigrant Family....back to Craig's List!
Meanwhile....the only reason I have a house is that my sons and I are immune to poison oak. Our property sat empty and unloved for decades because it was home to the largest poison oak vines ever observed. Six inches across was nothing....
For a year.....on my breaks and days off from my restaurant.....and my kid's soccer team (that is a joke.....there are no days off from restaurants, or youth soccer) I would drive out to Cachagua and cut and burn poison oak.
At first, I would wear hazmat suits and use respirators.......eventually I got over it, and fought poison oak like Louis X fought Saladin. Actually, more like Saladin v Louis X....because I won. Poison oak trembles in fear on my 14 acres.....
That was twenty years ago.....
Today, in 53 degree damp weather, in pissing rain......I got one of my ten burn piles done on the lower forty. I raced around, chopped brush, hauled hoses......slammed Pulaskis into piles of brush, chopped away with my blue steel machete.....and kept up the pressure on the fire with my good fire-poof pitchfork.
After three hours I was whipped. Soaked in sweat, filmed with pure poison oak fatty acid that is bubbling out of the brush all around me. My boots were wrecked, laces ruined. New jeans tatooed black with poison oak gel. I thought I had a slight blister on a toe.....and found my sock soaked with blood because the toe was smashed.
All last summer.....we had fire guys and gals tromping through our hills and mountains doing this same work.
I saw a prison crew with four-foot bar chain saws slung over their backs....sprint up a ridge that would crush my heart if I were only carrying a water bottle.......
Only it was not 53....it was 120 degrees. One night.....the air temperature got all the way down to a chilly 108 on Blue Ridge......
And the shift was not 3 hours....it was 20. And, often 36 straight hours of backbreaking, soul-crushing, Neanderthal labor.
And the fire was not in a four by four fire pile.....it ran to 240, 000 acres....
I just want to give a tip of the hat to the fire grunts......
Wow.
Burn Day.....indeed.
posted by Txacoli at 11:17 PM
1 Comments:
Is an "optomist" someone who can see a brigher future?
It is hard to type with the handcuffs the Grammar Police use....
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