A Conversation for The Lounge
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I am a firestarter (not)
Paigetheoracle Started conversation Aug 4, 2018
I cannot believe the amount of people trying to start camp fires over the summer, using wood chopped down from live trees. Not only that but dragging branches up to ten feet long and putting them on a fire only a couple of feet across. It is like putting a kettle of water on a stove and expecting it to burn, not boil. Green plants are full of water. They do not burn. Sure they drag plastic waste bins onto fires because they know that they burn but dry, dead wood? When we lived in Glasgow, I saw local kids trying to burn live bushes.
In Ayrshire at a local loch, I have seen the same thing of branches being chopped down and thrown on a fire. People have been coming here for years, yet it never seems to occur to any of them that this means firewood has been picked clean ages ago, along the shoreline. Do they go back and search for wood elsewhere along the road they came in? No, even though it is laying around in abundance. They prefer to try to defy reality and burn green wood. Even covered in petrol it isn't going to burn. Common sense? More like common dense.
Perhaps it is time to bring in compulsory scout camps for boys or get the SAS to teach survival courses, to those who obviously know nothing much about nature and the real world.
I am a firestarter (not)
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Aug 4, 2018
In a deciduous forest you would likely find a lot of dry leaves lying around. Just sayin'
I am a firestarter (not)
Recumbentman Posted Aug 6, 2018
There is one exception: my uncle the farmer used to say "Ash when green is fit for a queen".
I am a firestarter (not)
Paigetheoracle Posted Aug 6, 2018
The SAS suggest using Silver Birch, despite it growing in wet conditions because it burns so well
I am a firestarter (not)
Paigetheoracle Posted Aug 6, 2018
Not that I have seen but idiots are setting fire to moorland because the heather burns so easily, though what they set fire to in California or even Australia, is beyond my ken.
I am a firestarter (not)
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Aug 6, 2018
In 1900, only 5% of Scotland was forested. Efforts to reforest have brought that figure up to 17% So what's the reaction of Scots? They miss the unobstructed views across the heather.
My neighbor has a Scots Pine.
I am a firestarter (not)
ITIWBS Posted Aug 6, 2018
Obviously, the firestarters are millenialists seeking to bring about the heat death of the planet, initiating a new order of things predicated on hellfire and damnation.
I am a firestarter (not)
Recumbentman Posted Aug 6, 2018
"My neighbor has a Scots Pine"
Does he pine for unobstructed views?
I am a firestarter (not)
ITIWBS Posted Aug 6, 2018
Heather grows to fifty feet in height in central Africa.
I am a firestarter (not)
ITIWBS Posted Aug 7, 2018
I wonder, though, if someone is monitoring Scottish heather for height.
Grows only inches in arctic tundra.
I am a firestarter (not)
Recumbentman Posted Aug 7, 2018
Trees are needed. Sheep cropping saplings create species-poor and water-shedding bare hillsides.
I am a firestarter (not)
Baron Grim Posted Aug 7, 2018
Fifty foot tall heather... wow!
I bless the rains down in Africa.
I am a firestarter (not)
Paigetheoracle Posted Aug 10, 2018
ITIWBS - that's a tall girl! Scottish girls of that name are stunted
I am a firestarter (not)
Paigetheoracle Posted Aug 10, 2018
Scots pines are rare. In Celtic Britain the place was covered in deciduous trees apparently and lots of them, now its conifers. What's a conifer? I never did find out because conis became extinct before I was born.
I am a firestarter (not)
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Aug 10, 2018
Scots pines are rare in Scotland because the Americans and the Russians are hoarding them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_pine#/media/File:Pinus_sylvestris_range-01.png
I am a firestarter (not)
Caiman raptor elk - Inside big box, thinking. Posted Oct 26, 2018
Never tasted pine scotch. I used to have a bottle of grappa di pino though. Like drinking a forest with a bite. (that could have been a squirrel)
Key: Complain about this post
- 1
- 2
I am a firestarter (not)
- 1: Paigetheoracle (Aug 4, 2018)
- 2: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Aug 4, 2018)
- 3: Recumbentman (Aug 6, 2018)
- 4: Paigetheoracle (Aug 6, 2018)
- 5: Paigetheoracle (Aug 6, 2018)
- 6: ITIWBS (Aug 6, 2018)
- 7: Paigetheoracle (Aug 6, 2018)
- 8: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Aug 6, 2018)
- 9: ITIWBS (Aug 6, 2018)
- 10: Recumbentman (Aug 6, 2018)
- 11: ITIWBS (Aug 6, 2018)
- 12: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Aug 7, 2018)
- 13: ITIWBS (Aug 7, 2018)
- 14: Recumbentman (Aug 7, 2018)
- 15: Recumbentman (Aug 7, 2018)
- 16: Baron Grim (Aug 7, 2018)
- 17: Paigetheoracle (Aug 10, 2018)
- 18: Paigetheoracle (Aug 10, 2018)
- 19: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Aug 10, 2018)
- 20: Caiman raptor elk - Inside big box, thinking. (Oct 26, 2018)
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