A Conversation for The Lounge

I am a firestarter (not)

Post 1

Paigetheoracle

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)

Post 2

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

In a deciduous forest you would likely find a lot of dry leaves lying around. Just sayin'


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 3

Recumbentman

There is one exception: my uncle the farmer used to say "Ash when green is fit for a queen".


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 4

Paigetheoracle

This is Scotland. Mostly conifers.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 5

Paigetheoracle

The SAS suggest using Silver Birch, despite it growing in wet conditions because it burns so well


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 6

ITIWBS

...Smokey the Bear tours Scotland...


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 7

Paigetheoracle

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)

Post 8

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

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. smiley - erm

My neighbor has a Scots Pine.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 9

ITIWBS

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)

Post 10

Recumbentman

"My neighbor has a Scots Pine"

Does he pine for unobstructed views?


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 11

ITIWBS

Heather grows to fifty feet in height in central Africa.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 12

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

I can make central Africa disappear by making it someone else's problem smiley - evilgrin.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 13

ITIWBS

I wonder, though, if someone is monitoring Scottish heather for height.

Grows only inches in arctic tundra.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 14

Recumbentman

Trees are needed. Sheep cropping saplings create species-poor and water-shedding bare hillsides.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 15

Recumbentman

Maybe that should read 'Sapling-cropping sheep'. smiley - sheep


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 16

Baron Grim

Fifty foot tall heather... wow!


I bless the rains down in Africa.


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 17

Paigetheoracle

ITIWBS - that's a tall girl! Scottish girls of that name are stunted


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 18

Paigetheoracle

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)

Post 19

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

Scots pines are rare in Scotland because the Americans and the Russians are hoarding them. smiley - winkeye

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_pine#/media/File:Pinus_sylvestris_range-01.png


I am a firestarter (not)

Post 20

Caiman raptor elk - Inside big box, thinking.

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)


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