One of the first things I noticed driving into Alligator River NWR was the smoke. Apparently there's a huge wildfire here. Wildfires are not uncommon in the Alligator River area, during the summer when the thick peat layers dry out, a very long-burning fuel is created. "Fires" can rage on and spread thousands of acres and burn for over a year, without any visible flames. The one we are having right now is probably like this, it might not be out for a long time, and the first reports I heard of it yesterday it was at 22,000 acres and there were no visible flames. Yesterday smoke filled the sky while driving over the causeway onto Roanoke. Today it's blowing right into Roanoke, covering the island in a thick campfire-smelling haze. I'll bet they don't like that. Its acreage reached 30,000 acres today and the firefighting crews' containment of it has gone down from 85% yesterday to 65% today. One firecrew member we talked with today reports flames reaching 100 feet above the treeline. Still, nothing to worry about for us, it's to the southeast of the refuge, not close to our cabin. Staff and volunteer crews are very busy working on it. Today for second day of orientation we met at that center and saw much of the center of the efforts; volunteer staff waiting at tents to be called on, gigantic double-rotored helicoptors carrying "bambi buckets" flying overhead.
Still, we are not really worried, even if the fire were to actually spread too close to our cabin and were asked to evacuate, we might just have to move from our Alligator River Cabin over to the pea island one for a little while. But as I said that's not likely to happen, it is well away from our area. So don't worry about us! Everything's fine... Just want to make that clear... Very interesting though... It's possible we might get some opportunity this summer to work ourselves a little bit in the firefighting efforts... I don't know much detail yet about that but we'll see... More on that later...
As I said, these are just things I'm hearing straight from the best source, those involved directly in the firefighting efforts. There is some smoke in the air here and there, but as I have to keep stressing, don't get the wrong ideas! We're not walking around in an ashen-filled post-apocalyptic wasteland right now... everything is quite fine around here and things are everyday and fairly normal. There is no chaos, fear or worry about fiery doom raining down on us at any moment. I just want to stress this so no one gets too worried.
Saw no bears today or yesterday, but havn't made direct effort to, will have to make the wildlife drive again this evening.
I should really talk more about what else is going on, well, we checked out pea island, and the lovely isle has an enourmously diverse population of various shorebirds! I'm no birder myself, but my fellow interns are majorly into it, memorizing and pointing out bookos different bird species they spy here and there and checking them off in a bird list. Although I do feel it may be useful to know alot about birds I just can't get interested in birds that much. I don't know why. I'm all over mammals, but those lightweight feathery dinosaurs for some reason fail to pique any extended interest in me, even if I try to make myself interested in them. They flap about, make alot of noises, and there's 20,000,000,000 different kinds of them, all with goofy names, and they are everywhere. You often have to look awhile to find a mammal in the wild, but no matter where you are you can probably see a bird. And personally I can live without knowing wether that quacking boat-shaped animal over there is a American Widgeon or a Eurasian Widgeon. I'll bet you totally thought they were just ducks, didn't you? Well apparently you'd be wrong too.
Although, I have to admit the truly unique ones with defining traits that really obviously set them apart can be pretty interesting. Black skimmers are cool. What kind of a way to catch fish is that? An awesome way, that's what.
No comments:
Post a Comment