When the first Europeans came to southern New England they found woods looking like the parks of the aristocrats back in England. The locals had burned the underbrush to make it easier to hunt deer. After the newcomers had taken over the land, the previous owners having conveniently died off from European diseases, they cut down the trees to build houses and clear the land for farming. The deer, bears and wolves retreated to the north and west. Southern New England became so barren of trees the people had to import firewood from Maine.
Eventually farming moved to more productive lands out west. The New Englanders concentrated on mills and factories. The forests returned and with it underbrush. The deer loved it. If you drive around the area now, much of the undergrowth is interspersed with impassible thorny vines.
Our Wannaskan woods don't have thorny vines but they are full of brush and deadfalls. We've always meant to get out there and tidy up the woods, but it's time consuming. During Covid, we had lots of spare time. In November, 2020, the snow held off right through the middle of December. This was perfect weather for cleaning the woods. We started along the driveway because cleaning this stretch of woods would have the most visual impact.
It took a bit of coaxing to get the damp wood ignited but soon we had a cheery little bonfire. Some of the bigger branches we cut and put onto the road to be hauled to the woodpile. Everything else went on the fire. Our woods began to take on the park like appearance of some lord's estate back in the old country.
We hoped to continue this project but the snow came early in '21 and stayed. Same in '22. Then this October 30 we got five inches of wet heavy snow. We thought there would be no wood's tidying this year. Then the temperatures started climbing in November and by the 13th we had a fire going again and another section of the woods is looking spiffy.
Some have suggested that what we're doing could on a larger scale prevent forest fires. Based on the amount of time it took us to clean up about a half acre of woods, this would be impracticable. Perhaps the government should do controlled burns as the aborigines did in New England, but some group or other would find a reason to oppose it. Better to learn to live with nature. Mother knows best.
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| Dreaming her fire |
ReplyDeleteBack in early 1970-something, after I had purchased this farm, my father, my then-wife, and I cleaned up its homestead that had grown high in sweet clover, brush, and saplings. Piling it, along with other debris left over from when the house and barn were moved off the place prior to my purchase, we asked the farmland renters what we should do with it -- and of course, they said, "Burn it."
"What? Just burn it? Isn't that against the law?" We three were from Iowa and had no previous experience burning anything bigger than in a 50-gallon trash barrel behind the house. But lo, burning, even 80-acres at a time, became a natural practice in the years that followed, some of it amazingly intentional.
The scary part of this presently wondrous snow-departed landscape is that it remains a tinderbox left over from our drought-stricken condition condition across northwest Minnesota. High humidity and colder temperatures may temper its explosiveness; and patches of remaining snow offer firebreaks of a sort here and there, but should wildfires ignite 'twould be a terrible business to put them out with lakes and rivers frozen.
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