Gazing in the Mirror

April 6 - Lessons Learned from Fire - Part 2

I'd rather fight 100 structure fires
than a wildfire. With a structure fire
you know where your flames are,
but in the woods it can move anywhere;
it can come right up behind you.
~ Tom Watson

It is through the revelation of the self,
to the self, that one understands life;
that he approaches the power which is
at the heart of God. This comes through
a recognition of the unity of the individual,
with the Spirit back of, in, and through all.
~ Ernest Holmes

Our final score is 50-50. 50% of our controlled burn fires of fallow pasture land have been textbook perfect and 50% of our intentional fires went unintentionally out of control. Of course there remains a lot to be grateful for. We've lost nothing so precious as to cause us heartbreak. There are some trees planted in the riparian buffers in the two out-of-control burns that have been impacted though mostly on the ground surrounding them but in some cases up on the trunks a bit. Trees are surprisingly resilient to fire. I see trees along our creek with many, many years on them and burn marks still evident at the base of their trunks. So it may turn out that since we were unwilling to chemically kill the vegetation at the time we planted the trees that the fire will somehow actually allow the survivors to thrive and take off rather than remain stunted as they are now due to competing for moisture and nutrients with grasses and other brush.

Though we were better prepared this time due to our previous experience we were not expecting trouble. Because we didn't expect the unexpected and that everything that could go wrong might go wrong – we did not have the tractor pre-staged well enough and we were not proactive in other ways that hindsight informs us we could have been. But then we wouldn't have because we expected an easy burn. Thankfully the day before my husband taught both me and our 12 yr old son how to get the tractor to move. No wonder I couldn't move our tractor that first day without instruction. It is a rather complicated 5-step process. Though I could have used some knowledge on how to back the tractor up in reverse and that was not in our training that day. The tractor controls do not make it clear where "R" is.

We were actually "warned". My husband had been out for 5 hrs that day from about 10am to 3pm with our Dept of Conservation Forester marking trees for our next logging cycle. Funding being uncertain these days it is important to learn how she makes these decisions in case we lose the benefit of her assistance some day. She told him after hearing about our experience on Monday that grass fires are the hardest to fight. I'm a believer. And this expert admitted that one had gotten away from her before. She also told us the humidity was dangerously low – in the 30s – and that it could spawn fire tornados. These are rotating wind convections caused by the fire's effects on the air around it. We had seen little ash or smoke whirlwinds previously. However a fire tornado is not what got the better of us yesterday.

We checked the weather forecast and the humidity was due to climb into a safer 40s within an hour. The winds were due to die down and weren't any stronger than our previous day's experience when we were burning the first 2/3rds of the same field. We were aware of two danger zones – a line of tall cedars (which go up like gasoline torches when flames reach them) and the planted area opposite the cedars along the creek with a lot of thatch or grassy fuel. All would have been well and textbook perfect but brief unexpected gusts of wind sent the fire over the green buffer line and into the planted area we didn't want to burn. I struggled with the cedar line but was holding my own and couldn't expect help for my husband and son had their hands full on the opposite side of the field. At one point a black line (the already burned area) reignited on my side and raced towards the cedars which then did begin to flame. My son came to help me and shortly thereafter my husband joined us too with the backpack blower. So that area of concern was taken care of rather quickly.

Back in the planted area getting the fire out was not so easy. The fire was raging. My son's snow shovel which he was using as a swatter broke so I gave him mine. My husband waved for me to come all the way across the field to where he was and so I had to leave a spot that I was concerned would reach the forested area. Fortunately my awesome 12 yr old son – who became a fully participating "adult" in the experiences of this week – saw that and took over containing it there for me. My husband wanted me to bring the tractor with the mobile water tank because our fire was in danger of spreading on into the western end. If that happened it would definitely have been beyond our ability to control and could have reached a portion of the field that would have endangered someone's house located adjacent to it. So I hurried back to our tractor. It was parked in such a way that I had to leap off of a 2 or 3 foot high rocky ledge to get down to a pasture trail. If I would have known how to back up I could have taken a safer route. The sharper boulders blew out one of the brand new 10-ply tires on the water tank trailer but I kept going. The water definitely made all the difference and allowed us to get the fire put out along that line.

Even so there was still one other area of great concern. This is a swampy area that has beaver pools and dams and is wetland with cattails but this has forest beyond it. There was some belief the fire had spread in that direction. My husband was walking towards it with the backpack blower extinguishing flames along the way. The instructions he sent by way of my son were for me to move the tractor train into position for that fire. I knew it was swampy and I did not want to go in there. I was in the field above that and my son was yelling at me that I had to "find a way to get the rig down to where the fire is – drive over the trees, if necessary. That is what Dad told me to have you do", he said. Against my better judgment I tried. I should not have gone against my own instincts but I did. I've been told since that it is a common "initiation" for a novice tractor driver to get stuck somewhere. As I write this, the tractor is mired deeply in muck and two attempts to extricate it so far have failed. We will have to await heavier equipment. Thankfully one man, one small woman and a 12 yr boy got a raging wildfire contained by our own efforts and got it totally out without additional assistance. Phew !!

~ perspective

When does one feel like the
lessons learned will become
confidence that one is not
foolish to continue ?
Never trust that a fire won't
ignite just because it has been
quiet for awhile.
Take some dry grass and a gust
of wind and the unexpected is
certain to happen.
Experience helps – one can't
learn unless they have true
experiences – then all the theories
and suggestions become instinct
and inner wisdom during a crisis.
Maturity is not measured by age
in years or even by acquired
experience but comes from an
innate guidance, common sense
and a utter willingness to do
whatever must be done.

#cedars #forester #gratitude #hindsight #instinct #optimism #training #water #wildfire #wind