Stable Mesa II

Stable Mesa II - preparation, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Sunday was the second day of the Stable Mesa prescribed burn. There was rain Wednesday night so things were delayed for a few days until conditions were dry enough to carry a fire.

Same basic drill as the first day, but today I was anointed a drip-torch and thrown in with the ranks and file from the Santa Fe hotshots and the Parks Service heli-tack crew.

The first time you burn with a drip-torch is feels terribly unnatural. Walking through a dry forest spitting fire all over the place goes against everything Smokey Bear had taught us. But I'm proud to let you know that the brainwashing power of the US Gov is not what it used to be, and I found the whole thing pretty fun.

We lit for about 5 hours, sometimes holding while the burn managers make sure everything is kosher. During those breaks the fire can hypnotize you. Watching it slowly grow from a black stripe on the ground to a growing blanket reminds one of the moody movements of a wild animal.

The plan was to burn 3 to 4 chains (each chain is 66 ft) in the outside border of the area to be burned. Then later in the day, a helicopter would fly through and drop 'ping pong balls' in the center of this area. The ping pong balls fall to earth from a small helicopter, bounce a few times, and blow-up into a large ring of fire. They work real good.

After 4pm I rotated out while the rest of the crew burned out the rest of the area for the day. I ate and rested in the fading sunlight of the day.

As the day cools, the atmosphere forms a band of cool air that sits about 50 -100 feet above the mesa top. Smoke from smoldering fires throughout the area collects into a large band that sits near the top of the mesa and makes everything look faded and tired.

Maybe I'm just imposing my own state of mind onto the landscape, but by the time the sun dropped it was late and I was sick of being diesel saturated. So I scrounged myself a ride back to the District and called it a day.

Stable Mesa II - burning

Stable Mesa II - burning, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Paliza: uno

Paliza1, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Saturday I had a lot of things to do. Errands and such - the normal weekend fare. But I did none of them.

I woke up late, lazed about, and then filled a backpack and went hiking in an area named Paliza in Jemez District. I drove past the small town of Ponderosa and continued north into the mountains on dirt and gravel (more dirt than gravel) roads.

My car has little clearance, so it is rare I get very far in my car on such soujorns. I ended up on a road that turned south toward the Jemez Pueblo / Forest Service boundary. Diched the car, removed compass from pocket, and began walkabout.

I was on a small mesa that bordered several east/west facing washes and one stream carved through the remnants of volcanic bedrock. It was slow going, but I wasn't in a hurry,

Eventually I hit the pueblo border, which was a 3-string barbed wire fence (well signed too) bordered by a 50-ft wide fuelbreak. It was a very well done job by the pueblo I must admit.

I followed the border east till it hit the road, then followed ir back to my car. I started late, and it was getting dark.

Paliza: dos

Paliza2, originally uploaded by craptastica.

On the Pueblo boundary in the Paliza Area of the Jemez Ranger District

Stable Mesa Prescribed Burn

Stable Mesa Rx Burn Collage, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Wednesday was the Stable Mesa Prescribed Burn. Although my job mostly includes doing paperwork, they unshackle me once in a while. Besides, there's nothing like spending a day lighting shit on fire and coming home smelling like diesel fuel.

It's amazing to me how different firefighting is than one thinks. Running from flames licking at your heals, saving houses with huge pressurized blasts of water, and saying stuff like 'Holy shit! This mutha is blowin' up!" None of that happens.

Fires do blowup, but firefighting more resembles being a dog catcher. First, you never attack the beast head on. You don’t run to the fire line and point a hose at the flames. You’ll get bit. Most of the time you spend your time on a fire your digging a line with a shovel around the fire. Lure it into a closed trap.

Much of the firefighting is terribly inglorious. It's hurry up and wait. It's drive this truck over here, pick up that trailer, stand here, check the weather once an hour. Dig from here to there. And there’s always the resident hornets nest of dust and smoke.

Yet, driving up to a wildlfire, I always get a small jolt of excitement when I smell the first scent of smoke in the air. Then there's the angry crackle of torching bushes and trees that wrenches you to attention and steps you back from the impact of the noise and the subsequent blanket of heat. And the singularity of purpose that clearly leads the efforts of all.

The stable mesa burn was no wildfire, but a prescribed burn. An operation with 40 or so folks: burn managers, media team, fire staff from nearby districts, a hot shot crew, and other ‘red carded’ layabouts like myself out for a thrill. We got to the site sat around and talked for a bit and then ran through the morning brief.

The brief is like a very loose huddle in that once it’s done people scatter all over. We were burning about 1,000 acres that day. A ‘dog leg’ section on the northwest of the burn area. The group separated into two sections: Division A to the north and Division B to the south.

Then a brand new Parks Service truck began smoking and we were delayed a bit while a small engine fire was put out and it was pushed into neutral territory. (Fire 1: Forest Service 0)

Then things began. Very casually. A test fire was run to see how the vegetation took to the flaming diesel peppering the ground from the hot shot drip torches. It reacted hesitantly, burning slowly and without much heat. Cloud cover, 68 degree temperatures, and lack of wind kept its behavior predictable and the fire managers radioed the burn plan into motion.

My job was to help run the fuel truck. Everyone starts somewhere. I drove around with Ray, Cuba District wildlife biologist, filling up the 1 gallon canisters on drip torches from the 300 gallon tank trailing behind the truck. I did this all day. That night I came home reeking of diesel fuel, and of course the obligatory smoke-stained black boogars.

The fire was dragged across almost all of the ponderosa pine covered mesa by the time the sun began to fade. Temperatures drop, humidity picks up, and the fire lays down.

It wasn’t much better during the daytime. Many acres were burned, but the fire stayed cool. Only the very top layer of the blanket of pine needles was touched and few trees yielded to the flames. We didn’t quite ‘open up’ the forest as planned, but shit got burnt and noone got hurt (except the truck).

Awake thy sleeping giant.

awakening, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Bones and Walls

bones_and_walls, originally uploaded by craptastica.

Bones and Walls. Walls and Bones. That's all that's left in these plains. That's all there ever was.

To us bones and walls are the random leftovers that happen to color the New Mexico plains between cities. More accurately they are the uneroded reminders of ruined civilations. Civilations that didn't exist that long ago.

These adobe remainders from the Rio Puerco Valley lay in the shadow of the giant volcanic neck called El Cabezon. The dilapdated and rotted wood window frame pictures this giant ex-volcano perfectly. It's not hard to imagine that this abandoned homestead once held the hopes and dreams of a small family hoping to make a living under the shadow of a geologic grace.

Their hopes and dreams, however, proved unattainable as did those before them. The plains surrounding El Cabezon are filled with the dusty wooden remains of once lively ghostowns. Most of these are the skeletons of the towns that died in the 1940s when the Rio Puerco dried up and life became untenable without flowing water.

This story is not that unlike those told by the ruins and petroglyphs left from those who came before. The 8,000-foot volcanic monument shares these stories with unnatural clarity through messages carved in stone and built from the earth throughout centuries by the Navajo, Chaco Culture, Jemez, Zia, and Santa Ana Pueblos.

So look at these photos and enjoy, but remember that you too harbor bones and walls.

El Cabezon!

framed_cabezon1, originally uploaded by craptastica.