Musings from Mark

We burned three days this week, all in deciduous oak forest. I hadn’t heard of this type of burn before, but as it turns out oak leaves will carry fire, and a good fire will kill invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle while not harming oaks. Much of the time was spent cursing at the leaf litter and running with drip torches trying to get something to burn, but on Wednesday we had a great fire on the bluffs above the St. Croix River. Since there is no way to drive ATVs on the steep, narrow firebreaks, woodland burns are a real pump-can carrying workout.

When the fire has burned through the underbrush, the next task is to put out all of the rotting logs and dead trees that caught fire. Affectionately known as “mop-up,” this process takes hours as our saw men cut down burning/smoking trees and the rest of us put them out with pulaskis and pump-cans. (I have plenty of chainsaw experience, but as I have not taken the two-day DNR saw training course, they won’t let me saw.)

Tuesday and Wednesday were both 11-hour days, and yesterday was 9.5 hours. We are off today and tomorrow (rain, wind, and cold again), but on Sunday we are going to hit the road to western Minnesota to burn some real prairie.

Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday, and we will be celebrating tonight at the Happy Gnome (a bar/restaurant known for good food but primarily for its excellent selection of quality beer). As my mom doesn’t drink, I’m not sure why she chose it, but I am certainly looking forward to it 🙂

I updated the photos of the day page with pictures of the Northfield derailment site and last weekend’s snow.

Since I won’t be getting any nice days off this spring, I have to enjoy nature when we can’t burn. Light rain and 60 degrees isn’t so bad, so I chose today for my first spring bike ride. I rode the Gateway Trail, an old railroad bed, from St. Paul to near Stillwater–36 miles round-trip. My only mistake was not packing food and water, since the drinking fountains along the trail were still shut off for winter. By mile 14 my body was running out of fuel, so I ended up taking frequent rests until I could refuel and re-water at a Burger King at around mile 28. Yellow-rumped Warblers were my constant companions once I got out of the city. Small groups of them, some with kinglets as well, were searching for insects in debris on the trail or watching me from the low branches. I probably saw close to 50 of them by the end, which seems high for this early in the year. I hope they can survive the coming cold, rainy, snowy weather.

No work til Monday on account of weather and broken equipment. Time to go help Ed plant the garden in cold mud, just like in past years.

I owe my occasional readers an update. Trouble is that my time has disappeared. I worked 12 hours on Sunday, 9 hours yesterday, 10.5 today. The weather has been good for fire, and we have clocked 3 burns in the last 3 days. Sometime, if I feel like it, I will write about our crew and the 8-foot wall of flames we had yesterday. But tonight I am looking forward to going to bed early…

First day of work today, and the burn crew looks like a good group. Two burn bosses and four crew like me, all guys and most in a similar place in life. We started the day with a mountain of paperwork before moving on to the most-annoying two-hour computer ATV training. This was followed by some pretty simple ATV riding and the beginning of some fire training. By this point it was 3:30 and it was too nice to stay inside, so they hauled out the 40-pound vests (MUCH more comfortable than packs) and announced the pack test. The test was rather anticlimactic, a fast walk down a nice trail along the train yard. As it turned out, I matched pace perfectly with one of my co-workers, so we chatted throughout and finished in 39:58. One guy, in great shape, finished in about 38 minutes, and the bosses and the rest of the crew rolled in at about 42.

Michele was waiting with a letter from OSU when I got home, a very simple letter saying that I am accepted. So it is finally official!

Not much notice, just the subtle addition of one line in the table. Decision: Admit.

Now I can get on with my life…

My OSU application no longer says “pending department decision.” It doesn’t say anything else either, unfortunately, so I’m not quite sure what that means…

A short job, but a job nonetheless.

I’ll be working on prescribed burns on SNAs (Scientific and Natural Areas) with the DNR from April 14-May 23. Pay is $13 per hour plus time-and-a-half for overtime and weekends. My hire is, however, contingent upon me passing the “pack test” on my first day of work. For the test, I will have to speed-walk three miles in under 45 minutes while wearing a 45-pound pack. Probably doable, but the manual recommends 4-6 weeks of training. I have 10 days, so I’m hoping I can at least come close to 45 minutes on my first try. Time to drive out to Renville to get my pack, fill it full of rocks, and start getting myself in shape!

The first-generation Surly Darkness, brewed in early 2006, was rated the third-best beer in the world on RateBeer.com. It seems that last-year’s production slipped a bit, as Darkness is now rated #5 among the world’s beers. Regardless of its current rank, it remains the highest-rated beer that can be purchased in Minnesota and by far the highest-rated beer brewed in Minnesota.

So, when I heard that the Acadia Cafe, over in Minneapolis, would be tapping a keg of 2006 Darkness for their grand opening, I figured I ought to taste what all the craze was about. After failing to rouse Andy from his “other plans” (which seemed to involve a girl and some potential romance), I gobbled down an overly large dish of Malaysian curry chicken and squeezed into the standing-room-only confines of the cafe, only to learn that I would have to wait another 40 minutes for them to tap the keg. Under normal circumstances, having extra time in a place eager to serve me very good beer of many varieties would be a good thing, but given my present need to drive home after consuming beer, I had to watch and wait as more and more people crammed in, eager to pay $5 for a little glass of Darkness. Eventually, Todd from Surly brewery arrived, tapped his keg, and started pouring as the throng of people ceased their alcohol-enhanced milling about and pushed toward the bar as one, eyes on Todd, imagining the taste of his award-winning hop-filled concoction. I got in a slow line and waited about a half-hour, all the time wondering exactly when that little keg would run dry. But the keg held out, and I got my Darkness.

I am not a great beer critic, but I can say that Darkness is one of the best–perhaps the very best–beer I have tasted. By style, it is an Imperial Stout, the “king of beers” made with thick, roasted malts and extra sugars, fermented to a high alcohol concentration, and aged to allow the flavor to develop. But Surly made the bold step of adding plenty of high-alpha hops–about the same amount as in an IPA–with the result being a pitch-black, well-balanced, almost syrupy beer well deserving of its reputation. I probably wouldn’t wait in line for a half hour again, but if I ever find Surly Darkness for sale, you can bet I will be stocking up.

Aside from drinking beer, transcribing, and attempting to find a job, I have been reading the extremely-absorbing Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix–so absorbing in fact that I finished the entire 1500+ pages in about three days. Now I either need to find some more good fantasy or go back to meatier, more realistic books about social ills, the environment, or consciousness.

I e-mailed some folks at OSU today and learned that the Bioengineering department accepted me back on March 4. My acceptance now hinges on the general admissions committee, which is apparently working with a three-week backlog. It sounds like this is pretty much a rubber-stamp process, so I am about 95% sure I’m in at this point.

Wait and see….

To be fair, it is 40 degrees today, not 10 below, so it IS more than a wee bit warmer than a month ago. That said, we just got 10 inches of snow last weekend and another half foot is in the forecast. We have only hit the 50-degree mark twice. Last year, we hit 80 degrees this week amid a number of beautiful 70-degree days. El Nino kicks ass. La Nina sucks. I’m sure all those who get flooded or fail to catch any fish in El Nino years would disagree, but in Minnesota La Nina means frigid and El Nino means we get our share of global warming times two.

Easter brought no eggs or fake pink bunnies but plenty of tasty food in the form of apple cake, quiche, pumpkin pie, maple salmon, and herb bread. We all wished it was warmer but went out walking anyway and discussed our current spiritual and practical goals in life. Cottontail rabbits were unusually abundant, perhaps aware that on this one day the human race develops a sudden unconditional love for lagomorphs.

I am still waiting to hear from Oregon State, and in the meantime I am applying to work as a prairie burn tech for the DNR this spring. Can’t beat getting paid to burn stuff…