Woodland Winter Bonfire Work - and unexpected pleasures

Somme Woods has 20 or 30 people who team up a couple of weekends a month to enjoy healthful teamwork. But on some winter days, the roads may be only semi-passable, and most people stay home.

But those days can be all the more intense and magical for people who can make it. This day, Katie Kucera, steward of First Pond zone in Somme Woods started the fire early.

She brought dry wood from home. Later, she would get green wood, wet wood, snowy wood all to burn just fine - once there's a hot fire going. But that little bit of dry wood at the beginning makes all the difference.

The key tree, above, is the skinny pale-barked tree with a festive blue-and-white ribbon around it, if you look close.  

The invasive buckthorn was cut from this section years ago. But semi-invasive pole trees keep it too dark for the recovery of the original white and bur oaks. The main goal this day was to decrease excess shade and, in so doing, favor such oaks. This area was originally oak savanna and woodland with mostly bur and white oaks. If you were to walk through the preserve a mile west (crossing one street, a ditched river, and a set of railroad tracks), you'd be in Somme Prairie. For thousands of years, hot fires came from the west and kept this area a park-like stand of widely spread oaks, with tall grass to fuel the fires underneath.

But one hundred years of fire suppression let faster-growing, more-shade-producing red oaks and basswoods out-compete the slower-growing burs. What's wrong with that? The open-grown, thin-canopied bur oak is the species that most favors the hundreds of species of plants and thousands of species of animals that we conservationists are hoping to save here. Some populations are now so low they are "on the edge" of loss. The once-declining, now-recovering animals are mostly small: butterflies and beetles - but also fox and flying squirrels, weasels, coyotes, woodcocks, red-headed woodpeckers, and many others. We indeed see these animals and many rare plant species increasing, year after year, as the restoration advances.

The photo above shows about half of today's crew taking a break. We joke. We discuss. We're a learning community, but deeply enjoy, the learning, the fun, and the work, all three. 

Rebeccah Hartz cut this chunk of log from near the top of a downed tree. Looks like some woodpecker found tasty beetle grubs in there. She also rescued a short-tailed shrew from near the fire. It crawled around her coat for a while. That's our report, on a snowy and fulfilling day.

For workday schedules and other tidbits, check out the Somme Woods Facebook page.

FIVE (Count them!) FIVE BONUS PHOTOS

On Feb 13, an even colder and snowier day, 19 people showed up to help Steph Place clear big pole trees from a beautiful swamp-white-oak swale, which has small, shrinking patches of forked aster, cardinal flower, diverse sedges, and such treasures - which this next summer will now explode as a result of today's "Let there be light!"

This scene shows break time. Delicious treats. Happy conversation. And heat from the "bonfire"? But is this pile a bonfire? Indeed - the green, fat logs burn slowly. But the heat is more than we need. No one stands very close for very long. (And, except from some smoldering coals, it will all be burned up by the next day.)

The above photo from Somme Prairie, three weeks earlier, makes it easier to see what the cut-down trees look like (without the deep snow obscuring them). We typically cut big invasive trees down with chain saws the day before - for quiet and safety on the workday. 

Then we load the bigger pieces into easily-sliding plastic sleds for "the Planet's most elegant use of petroleum for transportation." 

Here Christos and John toss such a log on the burning pile. More "people power" than fossil fuel energizes these workdays. (An exercise blessing, especially during Covid.)

Back at Somme Woods, some unknown person created a sculpture. We do not know its esoteric meaning. Our authorization as stewards does not include making art. Thus, soon it will burn. Yet, fun seems good too!