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The reluctant burn pile
This is the one burn pile that never realized its full potential in life. When we had the lake made, the dozer man took down hundreds of trees that had been in the Central Valley. He made long piles of them that he later set afire. They all burned to ash. Except for this one.
You’ve seen the glass chunk on top of that stump before, but I don’t think I’ve ever shown the pile of branches and felled trees that surround it. When the dam was finished and the valve was closed, this pile was still smoldering, sending a wispy line of white smoke into the air. The builder assured us that the coals would eventually re-ignite the wood and the pile would be gone long before the lake bed filled. That never happened.
Libby and I would visit the pile of dried wood in the empty lake bed and stuff old phone books into it then set them on fire, confident that the pile would burn to ash, if not this time, then the next time we did it. Or the next time. That never happened.
Eventually we understood that the water gods had appropriated the burn pile with the intent that it serve as underwater structure for the fish that would be teeming in the deep waters of our lake. So we carried some steel fence posts out to this pile along with some rope made of a substance not of this earth and tied down the pile to the stakes (driven by Pablo into the unyielding Ozark hardpan, by the way). I put the glass chunk on the top of the stump to mark the location of the pile so that I could drop a line beside it and pull out lunker bass all day long. Then we waited for the lake to fill. That never happened.
Well, it did happen. Quite a few times, actually. But it all drained away. So the burn pile that became fish structure became a conventional brush pile. When there was water here, I’m sure the wild fish explored the intricate structure with an eye to settling down there. They’re all about a hundred feet to the west for the time being. Now when we pass close to this pile, flocks of little gray birds burst from it in panic. I’m sure terrestrial critters have explored the intricate structure with an eye to settling down there. But the spring rains will come and flush them out. By July, all of the fish that had moved in again will have retreated to the part of the lake that still has water. And the cycle continues. That part does happen.
It must be frustrating to be this pile. It’s never realized its full potential as a burn pile. It’s never realized its full potential as a fish structure. It’s never realized its full potential as a brush pile. About the only thing it has really done is kept me frustrated, and maybe that’s what its real potential is. Good work, then, I say!
I’m standing at ground level in this picture, with the camera held before my face. The glass chunk is higher than my head, and the lake has been higher than the glass chunk, so the water is plenty deep here for lunker bass curious about the lure that has been dropped in their midst. That might happen.
Missouri calendar:
- Look for goldfinches, cardinals, titmice, chicadees and nuthatches.
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