Ultimately, you can’t control how every reader interprets a 280 character post.
Joined February 2013
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Natalie retweeted
“All things share the same breath, the beast, the tree, the man—the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.”
~ Chief Seattle (1786-1866) – at United States
Natalie retweeted
Turn my music up
Let the rhythm drive,
Because I can never escape my mind.
Sometimes I don't know what I want,
All I know is...
To me,
Living is art,
Art is life
If I can't buy it,
I'll create it
And if I can't find it,
I will be it.
*original poem
#poetry
📸 unknown
Natalie retweeted
"Just put the fires out!"
Ever seen a boreal wildfire? I have. I used to fight them.
When fire behaviour becomes extreme, you're not getting close to them.
The radiant heat from a crown fire is face-melting from hundreds of metres away.
All attempts at direct attack will fail, because dropping water on it becomes akin to trying to spit on a campfire...it evaporates before it even hits the flames.
Additionally, reduced visibility, high winds, and turbulence makes aerial attack hazardous.
As a wildland firefighter, I've been extracted off of wildfires twice as our fires blew up, both times having our gear burned over. We returned to find firehoses and metal melted into the ash.
I've seen fireballs launched hundreds of feet high, and fires intense enough to produce lightning, influencing the weather around them. I've seen wildfires grow to the size of a major city in a short period of time.
So no, we can't just put the fire out.
Not being able to stop such a natural process is a truly humbling feeling.
Natalie retweeted
Tom Waits on meeting Charles Bukowski:
"It’s like when I met Keith Richards, you try to match them drink for drink. But you’re a novice, you’re a child. You’re drinking with a roaring pirate. Whatever you know about holding your liquor, you’d better let go of it right now.
So I thought I could hang in there, but I wasn’t able to hang in there with either one of them. They’re made out of different stock. They’re like dockworkers. But it was interesting."
(full post below)
Natalie retweeted
From a Canadian firefighter who knows what’s going on:
#canada #wildfire #smoke
(Worth the read)
“I know you may know, but people need to know and understand that most Canadian wildfire management agencies have fire “zonation” policies similar to Alaska.
This means in large areas of their jurisdictions, especially in the northern part of the country, wildfires are left to run there natural course w little or no direct action or suppression. We’ll protect values at risk, ie. infrastructure, communities, critical habitat or culturally significant features on the landscape, we’ll map them and maybe try to burn them to natural barrier, fight one flank and let the rest roll (limited action) but we are not putting them out.
On many of the fires we don’t even try. A number of these fires are huge boreal gobblers (I am currently assigned to a 250,000 ha fire, well over 600,000 acres and you could fit the org. chart on one side of a beer can).
The only thing that is going to put out this fire out and many across the country is winter, 5 months from now. It’s going to be a long, smoky summer for everyone. You have a wide reach, it would be great if you can help people understand these dynamics in the Canadian wildfire scene when they’re bitching about the smoke.
Cheers 🍻 and thanks.”
Pretty decent picture of what’s going on. Thanks for the insight.
In the industry we call this letting a fire “Do its thing”. It’s especially common in these vast boreal forests. Siberia does the same thing. Identify hazards and values at risk, mitigate, let it go.
Cheers.
