Trees Are The Answer

Please note that this is a work in progress. The running title for my manuscript is Finding Satori Within Nature. There are currently 14 chapters being edited. I will attempt to post the following chapter within 2 weeks.

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The Fire Journal: Part Two

Monday.

The wind is painting 2½ ft of snow around. Crew leader C_______ and I have driven up to Camp Ripley in central Minnesota for wildland firefighting training. The rest of the crew is certified already and had their annual refresher, so the two of us are about to be launched into a campus of new faces, full of potential studying friends.

Seeing as how the military base cafeteria doesn’t provide much in the way of fresh vegetables, or so I hear, I have brought a cooler filled to the absolute brim with ingredients for daily home-cooked meals. I have since conquered the kitchen in our barracks. Upon our arrival, I was assigned to the colloquially named ‘T-Building’. Barrack 9–135 sits in a blanket of concrete, a mile’s walk into the encampment. I sit here alone in the dim lights atop steel countertops eating stir fry with couscous. Our Sun is setting over the snow. This will be my place to call home with our CCMI crews from all over the state during our 50 hours of schooling.

One aspect I do respect about the base are the 50,000 acres of protected land. A portion of which, or so we were told, is successfully conserved. One of the managers from Northern Minnesota confirmed there are trails to explore. I may just have to find myself walking along some this week, won’t I? On the walk back from the auditorium just now, I noticed in the distance to the East a field of solar panels. These will have to be explored. The mind smiles with secrecy. Maybe with all this land, they are covering a secret missile launchpad that I’ll stumble upon and suddenly find myself swept away into a John Buchan novel. I am interested in doing some detective work tomorrow in the form of a long hike.

This facility does give off a sort of demanding vibe. Every single last light switch has a condescending down arrow instructing all to turn off the lights if not absolutely necessary. The recycling bins are annoyingly authoritarian. I bet the soldiers start to resent sustainability protocols once their service is over specifically because of how demoralizing this implementation feels. YOU WILL RECYCLE THAT SOLDIER. IS THAT CLEAR? SIR! NO! SIR! I feel like the regulations of this caliber creates dissociation from why conservation is needed in the first place.

There is a plaque in the mess hall only the size of a paperback displaying the process of solar thermal energy installed on the roof. It warms roughly 30% of the cafeteria’s water. Crew Leader E____ of the Gooseberry Falls region noticed me reading it and started a conversation. To my understanding, the panels heat a glycol solution that circulates down to a water tank. How cool is that? Does it even need any electricity to operate I wonder?

People have started to trickle into the mess hall attached to this barrack kitchen. There are people here from the epic four-hour dodgeball game during orientation in Clearwater a couple of weeks ago. A_____, C_______, T______, S____, C_____, J___, and I have become acquainted through a card game called Star Fluxx. I play the time traveler to win this round. Tomorrow, these new friends and I will embark on our first lessons with controlling fire!

Tuesday

*Anchor/Flank/Pinch, Contained vs. Controlled, Accountability, and Topography*

The volunteer firefighters were openly firing information at us hoping some of the knowledge was able to stick. Between our poetic 9–135 Building and the auditorium, I have counted so far 47 rows of solar, about half I suspect. Each row is maybe a story high and twelve paces apart. Or about 1/5th of a chain, as fires are measured. I’m currently cooking broccoli, parsnip, and cabbage before the group collaborates on our assignment tonight. They’re all at the base cafeteria with, “decent at best food,” according to T______.

The Three Methods of Heat Transfer are:

1.) Convection (gaseous)

2.) Conduction (touch)

3.) Radiant (waves)

I might as well fill this homework out first and then compare answers. There are questions on the Incident Command System, the 18 Watch Out Situations, and the 10 Firefighter Orders. I wonder if my table buddy T______ will come to join. If not, I’ll go count the rest of the solar array.

Wednesday

*Fire Shelters. Personal Protective Equipment, and Radio Communication*

I wound up counting the solar panels after talking to T______ briefly. A sign states the system was built in case of an energy blackout. 193 rows on 62 acres produce 17,000 mW per year. A viewing area has pictures of Milkweed, Purple Prairie Clover, and Hoary Vervain that grow at the base of the panels in the warm season. The panels are estimated to last three decades before being recycled. This array cost $25,000,000. Whoof.

I am back in ‘my’ kitchen. Pa’s garden has done blessed us wit’ a bountiful selection o’ colorful veggies to cook wit’ this evenin’. After supper, I shall meddle with the townsfolk for another round of cards.

Thursday

T______ was here.

Friday

*Mop-up, Hazards, and Hands-on Experience with Tools and Hoses*

We’re heading home early as C_______ is very sick. This has me saying PEACE OUT RIPLEY! Peace out.

Well, that was a nice memory to edit. The time is now to trek out to another park for a different perspective. I’ve biked over a giant 90-year-old concrete bridge across the Mississippi to Minnehaha Regional Park along Ford Parkway through the neighborhoods of St. Paul Several happy kids are running around on the playgrounds. Parks in the city are reminiscent of communal outdoor enjoyment, aren’t they? Just think of it, These parks serve millions of people per year. Couples are holding hands as their kids run around in the gravel. A gnarled root system provides a perfect seat to watch the river flow past. The water is, as I look over the cliff-side, spiraling in the turbid banks below.

I want to take a good friend or lover here to walk around and enjoy time together. Though, I also wish I had a typewriter, Oh man would that be cool. Internet and batteries are not required if it’s just me, the Sun, and the various park-goers going about. I wonder if there are simple Wi-Fi-capable typewriters that can back up to the cloud after a good offline session. Maybe there is a way to type and fold mini zines and place them in numerous Little Free Libraries that scatter about the street corners.

When socializing with friends, it is important to invite peers outside to experience perspective focusing. A visit with me in Springtime means we are hiking, we just are, There is no other way. My good friends I__ and S_______ road-tripped out to see me recently for a relaxing evening and an artsy day. A Nepalese restaurant satiated our appetites in Uptown Minneapolis before we traveled to Elm Creek Park Reserve. We visited the 6000 trees and shrubs our crews planted this past Spring. Goose Lake is now prime habitat for Red-bellied Snakes (Storeria occipitomaculata), Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus), and Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata). At least, these were the animals spotted hobbling around while we were planting. It was almost as if they were waiting for us to do so. At one point, I even had an opportunity to carry in my hands a twitchy two-foot genetically prehistoric Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina). I had lifted the reptile, to the witness of my college classmate K____ and his coworker, off of a bike trail back into the safety of a marsh. Such smelly creatures they are. They’ll snip off a finger if you let them.

My friends I__ and S_______ are poets. When they were here I took them across a footbridge where John Ashbury’s poetry is engraved over the Interstate. We walked from the Walker Arts Center to the national Loring Park Art Festival. Hundreds of vendors were there, each with their craft to charismatically show and tell. The downtown Minneapolis skyscrapers loom overhead like a beehive of busy worker humans.

To take a step back from society, we visited a little secret park I love in a Saint Paul suburb. We got to pay our respects at a hidden Lakota burial ground where we were, and this is true, greeted by an antlered forest protector who strutted out humbly from the treeline when we entered. The buck watched us in gentle silence before he determined we were welcomed. Take whatever significance of ancestral spirituality you may, we were in appreciative awe.

Here in the afternoon Sun, it is apparent that both Minnehaha and Crosby have implemented energy-free infrastructure. A six-person pedal-car is whisping by. The three guys in the front are glistening with sweat. The girls in the back are pedaling along and probably talking about how much their boyfriends’ necks look like thumbs.

My typewriter idea has me whistling curiously as I consider what prospective entries to edit next. What would I type at this park? Maybe, just maybe, I would type this:

We are off to Blaylock Circle in the forests of the Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve to conduct a two-acre prescribed understory burn. This is an attempt to send nutrients down for this year’s growing season. Nutrients in the soil will wash through the Springtime showers laying the groundwork for seeds to start their lives. Birds are arriving back to continue their genealogy. Sandhill Cranes, Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans, Ravens, Pileated Woodpeckers, Indigo Buntings, and Scarlet Tanagers have all been spotted. For the fire today, our 60 hours of prep work have paid off.

Lunch break is here, now that we have arrived. The rest of the crew eats in the Corps truck while I venture through the sticks to find a fallen giant to sit beneath, or on. How can the air be so saturated with such operatic amphibious croaks when I can’t even see a single one? I bet the sound emanates from below the water’s surface. A pond in a breezy ravine provides a chorus of Leopard Frog (Lithobates pipiens) mating clicks and crescendos. What vibrancy there is seems to be contained within the Willow Brackets and thorny brush. I spin around to spy for Oyster mushrooms, berries, and moss. There is a soft moss growing up and down a 40-foot deceased bench. The tree is ever so subtly bobbing in the water. If Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) wasn’t such a bully for attention in these woods, we could foresee many forms of wildlife able to thrive.

I take a moment to close my eyes.

…

There is a distinct train whistle to the East.

I open my eyes again to admire the pond. The water now flows in the opposite direction from four sentences ago. It is time to head back to conduct our burn.

…

A forestry technician named E___ is listening to me talk about fossil fuel divestment as we ride back from the successful fire today. We burned under the guise of forest specialist D___. Our work here, according to D___, is an attempt to slow down the spread of a wilting fungal infection affecting the Oak trees. I looked into this, it is called Ceratocystis fagacearum. Bugs in the Nitidulidae family are attracted by the sweet aroma of the fungal spore pads that grow at the Oak’s base. E___ says the park district recently purchased a root severing blade with a matching tractor that weighs nearly 14 tons combined to help. The rig cuts root connections between the Oaks. They naturally graft their roots together sharing nutrients, water, and well…sexually transmitted infections.

E___ says that even though the machine is a diesel hog and has already broken down half a dozen times, the quarter-of-a-million dollar purchase is well worth the hassle as it is proactively helping the foresters save the old canopy. As our purposeful conservation conversation weaves into prairie burning and out to environmental justice, I begin to talk about respecting cultural values and imperialism. “If I am to travel the world as a tree planter,” I tell him, “I first would want to create a set of moralities to justify my intrusion on other worldviews in a foreign land.” I have no intention of intruding my privilege upon others, I merely want to help and to learn more about the externalities of petroleum. I want to learn more about traditional and subsistence life where people do not abuse the surrounding resources. The whole process of reforestation is necessary because the colonists of the past didn’t fathom the gravity of their greed’s impact. To replant our nation’s land will require a cultural shift to restore and not consume the ecosystems that deserve to exist. For hundreds of thousands of years, and in some places millions, the wilderness has provided answers to the battle against pathogens, and parasites, and for the construction of resiliency.

“We can’t duplicate presettlement, yet we can set up biodiversity,”

D___ told me,

“With everything going on in the world, carbon sequestration and woodlot restoration are great against climate change. Sustainability is the key to car pollution, messy agriculture, and development. We have the technology: trees are the answer.”

Lunch is favorable here in the Twin Cities. I have left Minnehaha Regional for the shops and eateries in Highland Park. Ladies are walking in and out of a nail salon next door to the sandwich shop I’ve set up camp at. They are as happy as can be in conversation. The outdoor tables provide a place to relax and finish this writing for today. The morning and afternoon have passed so fast! I munch on some peanuts to recuperate my protein while the veg is fried inside. While the weekend is here, I can sit and enjoy the um…hmmm…rain cloud that fast approaches now that I look at it. I wonder if I will be pedaling through a thunderless drizzle soon.

A lady has sat down to read a paperback at an adjacent table. I look up to the sky again and ponder adjusting my evening plans. A bead of precipitous sweat rolls down my face as quiet thunder rolls beyond the building skyline. As the reader’s husband enters the area with their sandwiches, his face immediately lit up, looking at my journal. “I used to journal too when I was your age.” He smiles. “I bet you have plenty of reading to reminisce through tonight then,” I offer in response. I wish them well as a Bald Eagle circles us above. I begin to accept it may be time to pedal home. Either that or I’ll have to learn how to pen on waterlogged pages.

Baamaapii (until later).

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Copyright 2024 Casimir Curney. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.