Types of Wood to Burn in A Fireplace
An interesting graph from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory, that tells the benefits of burning various types of wood. Good knowledge not just for home heating, but also for camping and back-country activities.
fire
Previously Used Lands Can Revert to Wilderness
One of the claims sometimes made is that previously industrialized or man made landscapes can not ever be reversed into wilderness. It is claimed that once man touches a landscape, mines, farms, or timbers it surface, it can not ever revert back to a natural status.
The reality is that is far from that.
Man made works, while remarkable, quickly start to fall down and revert back to a more natural status, quickly after abadonmnet. Certainly man is powerful, can move large mounds of earth, and bring materials from far away. Yet, as soon as man walks away, plants start to grow into cracks, water erodes roadways and causes buildings ot fall apart, and animals start to return to recolonize a land once dominated by man.
Fragmentation and private inholdings can make it more challenging for abandoned lands to revert back to wilderness. Any attempt by man to upkeep man’s works, will prolong their existence. Man can fight the natural forces through his active stewartship of his products, and through design, but he can not stop nature’s processes once underway, by simply standing on the sidelines.
Buildings make take decades to fall in and rot away in soil. The lost of old growth timber might take hundreds of years to be replaced. Eroded soils, rock cuts might take thousands if not million years to be disolved back into a truly natural state. Yet, still man’s battle against wilderness is only temporary at best, for once man takes his hand of wilderness, it only starts the long path into wildness once again.
Mount Arab
Why I Still Like Burning Trash
Anybody who has read this blog for a little while knows I am at least a little bit of a pyromanic. I like starting campfires, watching them burn, and I really like watching trash burn. While I’m against destruction of valuable or useful property, burning waste material and campfires under controlled conditions is so much fun.
People say burning trash is bad, it pollutes and it smells pretty nasty, especially if you have a smoldering fire with lots of plastic. It’s hard to disagree, although after ones burns trash for a while, you hardly even notice the smell of trash smoke. Indeed, in our vast rural areas, the impact is pretty low.
And I still think it’s a lot of fun.
- I love watching paper burn, the faces, the pictures, the text blacken up and burn with flashy yellow flames.
- I love watching plastic deform in the fire, drip, melt, and burn, with bright and colorful flames. The color varies on the plastic, vinyl chlorides burn blue and green.
- I love watching as the flames rip through the trash bags and chew their insides. Watching the destruction of waste, converted into soot and into smoke.
Hell, I’m such a pyromaniac. It gives me such an increadible high!
Burning wood and campfires is fun. The flicker of the flames and coals can mesmerise one. Yet, it lacks the drama and the fun of burning trash. Their simply aren’t the neat compounds and materials in wood, that make trash burning so interesting to watch. Their isn’t the statification of watching your waste material disappear before your eyes.
I really like watching trash burn. While no longer legal anywheres in NY State, I still burn trash when I’m camping in hot campfires. I also keep my “burnable” trash in summer, and burn it when camping. It’s destroyed almost instantly, but with all the beauty of a trash fire. I don’t litter, I carefully seperate unburnables and makes sure not leave any trace behind.
Some day I am going to own a place out in the country, and probably not in New York State. As a real country boy, I’m going to have my burn barrels, I will burn all of my burnable trash, far away from the neighbors who might otherwise complain about the smell that I actually kind of like. I’m not against recycling, and indeed I will seperate out cans and glass, but I sure love to watch and see my garbage burn.
…I so love burning the trash.
Pyromania
People automatically assume that everybody who really likes playing with fire is a dangerous arsonist who destroys property without rhyme or reason. Yet, it turns out according to studies by a variety of psychiatrists that the lover of fire (the pyromaniac) is much different then the person who sets destructive fires (the arsonist) to buildings and other structures. Let’s investigate.
Arsonists are motivated by many different factors. The most common form of arson is not motivated by mental illness or even a desire to set fire, it’s simply done out of anger or jealousy to another person. Such a person knows the differences between right or wrong, they simply want to avenge some wrong against them.
Much rarer is the arsonist who sets fire simply because of his passion to watch things burn and is too concerned with suiting his own passions to reflect concern on what he is doing to others. That person is a pyromaniac but also a person whose passions overwhelm their commonsense and understanding of the meaning of life and property of others.
Indeed, there are plenty of other pyromaniacs that don’t go to around destroying other people’s properties. Many adult males love to play with fire—they just become firefighters or spend lots of time outdoors using fire in their recreation or camping. They sublime their beliefs into something productive.