Burn Baby Burn

Woke up early Sunday morning and headed out to the property in Talkeetna to burn the old wood. It was a great day for it – wet, rainy, and overcast.

The drive out was uneventful. Rob slept most of the way, so I got to drive by myself. I must say, I was rather miffed at Rob: I was tired, too, but no – he had to be the one to doze thru the whole drive. Ah well, such is life.

We made one little stop in Willow to pick up the burn permit at the Fire Department. I don’t understand the whole “burn permit” concept: I thought it would mean filling out an application and turning it in to an actual person. At the very least, they might want to know who we were and where we intended to burn. But all it was was a piece of paper with some rules on it. No form to fill out. No human being attached to it anywhere. Absolutely no one to check in with or talk to about our intentions.

Very strange.

At least we got the paper required in case somebody happened by who cared. No one did, by the way.

Our first task, according to the rules, was to rake out the area where we intended to burn, making sure we had a fire brake of several feet worth of dirt and non-combustibles. The fire itself was to be no wider than 10 feet around and no higher than 4 feet high – so we piled up some of the wood, doused it with lighter fluid, and set it on fire.

It wouldn’t burn. We ended up using an entire can of lighter fluid on it, and it just wouldn’t burn!

Honestly, we were a bit stumped (no pun intended). How were we supposed to get the darned fire going when the wood was so wet you could have used it as a sponge during your bath? Maybe if we got some charcoal briquettes to start the fire? Or maybe cut up some of the dryer deadfall lying around? A trip into town and roughly an hour’s worth of work down the hill and finally, we got our fire going.

My, what a fire it was too! Of course, it got bigger than 10 feet around and 4 feet high. At one point it was so hot Rob singed his hair just adding more logs to the fire! We burned for 4-5 hours but only got about half the pile taken care of, so we’ll have to go back again to finish up.

Putting the fire out was interesting, too. It was so big, and burned so hot, I made Rob stop putting more logs on about an hour before we thought we’d want to leave – but that still wasn’t enough time for it to burn out. We raked the coals around to cool them off, then dumped 3 very large containers of water on it (I don’t know how big the container was, but I couldn’t lift it – I know that!), and finally – with a little help from the weather – it was finally safe to leave.

On our way home we stopped in at the Sheep Creek Lodge and had a really tasty pizza for dinner, along with a drink of some really good Alaskan made vodka (birch flavored even!).

And yes, he slept the whole way home while I drove again. But at least I now have a very impressive colorful bruise to show for my weekend!