- What did you accomplish last week?
-Onboarding
-Got to meet our new community of protocol study!
-Hosted a successful 52-acre burn at the School for Inclement Weather with a diverse group of stakeholders and partners from different cultural backgrounds and diverse relationship to fire protocol. First seasonal case study for our research.
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What do you plan to do next week?
-Determine 3rd jury member
-Design/refine interview questions
-Refine list of interviewees and begin scheduling interviews -
What (if anything) is blocking your progress?
- I wouldnât say anything is blocking us, just the natural fledgling process of beginning and finding our feet, calendaring / getting into our rhythm for meetings, protecting our time and focusing attention.
- Fun insight/tidbit, link, or idea?
A reflection from the burn we hosted a few days ago:
fire is a kairotic practice - a study of the right time - when temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, fine dead fuel moisture, soil moisture, probability of ignition, good lift and dispersal of smoke, availability of trained community and water resources, recovery of humidity at night, and much else all align together to allow for the land to burn in the way it is seeking.
(Choosing a day to burn is a matter of consulting the oracle just as much as it is consulting the weather forecast)
Lighting a fire in the wake of colonial disaster requires deep alignment with kairos. The Kashia Pomo burning that has happened here for so many centuries transformed by Old-growth clear cut â climate collapse â> thick tanoak resprout â> fire suppression â> Sudden Oak Death â> bomb cyclone has created a scenario where fire needs to be held in a very specific way. the ravines are suffocated with fallen trees - too soft and the fire wont do anything besides remove the fine fuels. Too hot and the fire will burn up everything including the second growth redwoods and push against our containment lines.
kairos means just the right conditions so that the fire burns up the heavier fuels below the canopy / leaves smoldering logs in contact with the earth, new bacteria to fight sudden oak death, while letting the mature trees stay green above the flames and the perimeters stay where they are. The immense and vital tension is that fire in these deeply damaged places often requires a style of militancy that is unromantic and uncomfortable for many. It requires squads and chain of command, chainsaws, heavy machinery, maps and firing sequence. It also requires prayer, permission, tribal partnership, years of observation, local knowledge of weather, of history, readiness to sit with the impact. It also requires burn plans, Calfire permits, air quality permits, liability release, financingâŚ
Iâm curious about that kairos especially - the alignment between weather, fuel, topography, cultural practice, militancy, bureaucracy and heart.
This 52 acre burn held some of the most beautiful fire effects Iâve gotten to participate in. A terra-forming event for this land on a long healing journey.
Jiordi was the Burn Boss (trainee) and evaluated by Sasha Berleman (Federal Burn Boss). Overall the evaluation went really well and will be submitted to the State Fire Marshall in June with a written report.