“I’ll pay you $20 to drink that can of bacon grease.”
That was around Day 4. We had all arrived in The Nature Conservancy (often referred to, redundantly, as ‘The TNC’) house at Wah’ Kon-Tah Prairie, near El Dorado (pronounced ‘El Dur-AY-Doe’) Springs in western Missouri on February 19. However, because of the unseasonably cold weather, all nine of us ended out being cooped up indoors going through training courses for about a week.
“No.”
“$25”
This, as might be imagined, created some unrest.
“No.” Pause. “I’d cut off my own hand for a thousand.”
“Come on, there’s only about 12 ounces there. Just drink it quickly. I’ll give you $45.”
Pause. “No.”
“$85.”
Immediately: “Okay!”
A minute later, one of the guys had drunk, and vomited, the can of bacon grease, another had started throwing up himself just from the sound of it, and the other had paid up his $85. He declared himself enormously pleased, took photos of the results on the snow outside, and said he would have happily paid twice as much.
I just don’t get some people.
Drunken dares notwithstanding, however, it seems like a good group of people. We’ve got a Peace Corps volunteer just back from Panama, a vegetarian with dreadlocks, and a local guy just out of the navy. Most of them have previous experience doing this kind of work. We had originally planned on splitting into two teams, but the Osage Plains crew leader’s appendicitis, and the family emergency of one of their members, knocked them down to only three people, so they’ve joined the six members of the Ozarks crew for the time being. We’re now staying in a tiny two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Van Buren (in eastern Missouri, where the weather is nicer at the moment) but since we’re able to leave the house here, it’s not too bad.
After spending five days in training in El Dorado Springs, driving east to Van Buren, and taking a couple of days off, we finally started with actual work, culminating in a prescribed burn on Saturday.
That was around Day 4. We had all arrived in The Nature Conservancy (often referred to, redundantly, as ‘The TNC’) house at Wah’ Kon-Tah Prairie, near El Dorado (pronounced ‘El Dur-AY-Doe’) Springs in western Missouri on February 19. However, because of the unseasonably cold weather, all nine of us ended out being cooped up indoors going through training courses for about a week.
“No.”
“$25”
This, as might be imagined, created some unrest.
“No.” Pause. “I’d cut off my own hand for a thousand.”
“Come on, there’s only about 12 ounces there. Just drink it quickly. I’ll give you $45.”
Pause. “No.”
“$85.”
Immediately: “Okay!”
A minute later, one of the guys had drunk, and vomited, the can of bacon grease, another had started throwing up himself just from the sound of it, and the other had paid up his $85. He declared himself enormously pleased, took photos of the results on the snow outside, and said he would have happily paid twice as much.
I just don’t get some people.
Drunken dares notwithstanding, however, it seems like a good group of people. We’ve got a Peace Corps volunteer just back from Panama, a vegetarian with dreadlocks, and a local guy just out of the navy. Most of them have previous experience doing this kind of work. We had originally planned on splitting into two teams, but the Osage Plains crew leader’s appendicitis, and the family emergency of one of their members, knocked them down to only three people, so they’ve joined the six members of the Ozarks crew for the time being. We’re now staying in a tiny two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Van Buren (in eastern Missouri, where the weather is nicer at the moment) but since we’re able to leave the house here, it’s not too bad.After spending five days in training in El Dorado Springs, driving east to Van Buren, and taking a couple of days off, we finally started with actual work, culminating in a prescribed burn on Saturday.
For people unfamiliar with this, the idea behind it is that fire is a historically important part of woodlands and prairie ecology: it returns nutrients to the ground, and leads to improved vegetation growth later, which in turn helps wildlife. Because they don’t want to burn down the whole region, though, the Nature Conservancy attempts to control their burns by only starting fires under set conditions, and only burning areas surrounded by some type of fireline (in the oak woodlands here, that means ATV trails cleared with leafblowers).
Because the weather here has been changing so frequently, we weren’t initially sure how much of the unit we could burn yesterday (“Okay, so, after we finish putting in line, we’re going to do
either a small training burn, or a thousand-acre fire.”) Weather conditions ended out being just about perfect, so we spent most of the afternoon lighting fires along one edge of the unit. The way this works is that we create a fire along the north edge of the property when the wind is coming out of the south; because it’s difficult for the flames to cross the fireline we created previously, it has to spread south, against the wind (a ‘backing fire’). We then make sure that everything anywhere near the fireline has been burnt completely (‘blacklining’). That way, when we start a fire at the south edge of the property later on, it will spread with the wind to engulf the full thousand acres, but will be kept inside the unit by a strip of pre-burnt land in the north.
Obviously, there are complications. The main one is that, as we’re creating a fire along the north property line, it’s easy for the wind to carry embers across the six foot wide fireline, so we have to put out any fires on the wrong side of the line (‘spot fires’) as soon as they start. For practical purposes, this means that everyone on the line has to carry 5-gallon, forty-pound tanks of water on their backs, as well as all of their other equipment, the whole time the fires are being lit.
My feet hurt.
Because the weather here has been changing so frequently, we weren’t initially sure how much of the unit we could burn yesterday (“Okay, so, after we finish putting in line, we’re going to do
either a small training burn, or a thousand-acre fire.”) Weather conditions ended out being just about perfect, so we spent most of the afternoon lighting fires along one edge of the unit. The way this works is that we create a fire along the north edge of the property when the wind is coming out of the south; because it’s difficult for the flames to cross the fireline we created previously, it has to spread south, against the wind (a ‘backing fire’). We then make sure that everything anywhere near the fireline has been burnt completely (‘blacklining’). That way, when we start a fire at the south edge of the property later on, it will spread with the wind to engulf the full thousand acres, but will be kept inside the unit by a strip of pre-burnt land in the north. 
Obviously, there are complications. The main one is that, as we’re creating a fire along the north property line, it’s easy for the wind to carry embers across the six foot wide fireline, so we have to put out any fires on the wrong side of the line (‘spot fires’) as soon as they start. For practical purposes, this means that everyone on the line has to carry 5-gallon, forty-pound tanks of water on their backs, as well as all of their other equipment, the whole time the fires are being lit.
My feet hurt.
Other than that, though, it was a lot of fun. I got to start fires in a forest for several hours (take that, Smokey!), watch them burn, and tell myself it’s good for the environment.
It's usually around this point that my cousin tells me that my life is crazy...
3 comments:
Tsk tsk, your face is dirty. Love Auntie Pam :)
Or could you all just be closet pyromaniacs?
Beverly & Luther
Actually, we're pretty open about our pyromania here...
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