Organizing Fire

We started as usual at the beach, marveling at the high surf and puzzling over some mystery tracks. This four-legged creature apparently went from a diagonal lope to a direct register walk, heading from the dunes up the trail to the road. Please help us identify this apparent newcomer to the beach! Here are the measurements:

Lope group length: 11-13"
Intergroup length: 6-10" getting shorter toward the walk.
Stride length in a walk: 7"
Straddle in a walk: 4"
Front track compression in loose sand: 2 1/4" long X 1 3/4" wide
Hind track compressions were considerably smaller.

After exploring this mystery, we moved up to the Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve for some trailing games in the sand. We regrouped out in Jon's yard for fire, food, and a good night's sleep.


The next morning after a bird sit and debrief, we gathered with Cultural Mentoring and RDNA Essentials for a special presentation. Jon's family was hosting some natural builders from Portland who brought some in-depth fire knowledge. Their interactive presentation articulated the properties of fire as a fluid, and gave us new tools to organize the flow of fire as a tool in our daily lives.


The centerpiece of the presentation was one example of a highly organized fire system: the rocket stove. They built this simple dry-stacked brick burn chamber, and lit the fire. It burned kind of smoky and, predictably enough, straight up.


Then they took an insulated stovepipe and "organized the flow" of the hot gasses coming out of the burning wood. One good blow on the little blaze and the fire turned upside down! They explained how the stack effect helped to organize the flow of air around the fire.


The fire now burned down and horizontally through the burn chamber, and a little flame even made it up the heat riser. Extremely hot exhaust fountained out of the stovepipe.



They finished the thing by building a second box of bricks around the rear of the burn chamber, and putting a metal barrel over the heat riser to redirect the flow of hot gasses downward. Now the vaporized wood completely combusted in the heat riser and no smoky smell escaped. The chinks in the brickwork, where the exhaust was escaping, began to bead with water -- the product of complete combustion.



The presenters also built a simple, free-standing Rumford fireplace to reflect the heat of a little campfire and better organize it's flow. I'm eager to see if of some of the Rumford ideas could make for efficient fire-heated lean-tos and other primitive shelters.