Fire Shelter Practice

So what are a bunch of people doing just standing around with a beautiful mountain in the background?

They're not enjoying the view, they're getting ready for the annual fire shelter deployment exercise.

If you're a wildland firefighter (full-time, part-time, or once-in-a-blue-moon (I fall in that last category)), you have to take annual refreshers. Most of it is in the classroom, reviewing safety for various fire-related things. Then, at the end, you go outside and pretend that a roaring fire has blown up and you don't have time to get out of the way.

So you drop your pack, use your tool to clean down to mineral soil, and deploy your fire shelter. If all goes well, you will be able to live to tell all about it.

The shelters are simple, but you have to be ready to deploy it quickly, so we practice getting in them every year, and have 30 seconds to do so.

The clock starts, and the second round of recruits heads to the deployment area.

The real fire shelters are made of aluminum foil laminated to another layer, but because they're expensive and don't do well with multiple deployments, we use practice shelters instead, made of a green tarp material.

It takes a few seconds to pull the shelter out of the case.

Then it's time to shake it out.
Then you get under it and lay down on the ground, holding the interior straps firmly as the strong fire winds whip around you.

There are different preferences for how to get into the shelter the fastest.
Then the instructors come around and shake the shelters to make sure you're holding it down well. It's a bit claustrophobic inside (and this is coming from someone who likes tight passages in caves). It would be really tough during a real fire to stay calm and keep the shelter down. The super-heated air kills before the fire does in most cases.

These guys were all able to deploy in 30 seconds. You'd want your feet to be pointing towards the flames, so the guy on the left needs to rotate 90 degrees.

Last year wasn't a particularly busy wildland fire year. It will be interesting to see what happens. Many millions of acres need to burn--but they need to burn in a way that won't threaten lives, and that can certainly be a challenge!

Egg Dyeing

We've found ourselves with a lot of eggs recently, so I decided it was time to hardboil some eggs and dye them as we get ready for Easter. I have fond memories of doing this as a kid, so I was pretty sure that Desert Boy would enjoy it too. (I think I remember the vinegar smelling a lot stronger as a kid--am I losing my sense of smell as I age?)

We started off by making three little pots of water, and Desert Boy got to choose the colors. He wanted purple, blue, and green.

He has an egg all ready to go in. One of the few uncracked eggs. Somehow we managed to crack some early on in the process.

Then he carefully lowered it into the dye.

He used crayons to color on some of the eggs before we dyed them, and that had a nice effect.

In the background, Desert Girl is waving the train tickets from the weekend adventure with the cousins. I will try to get that posted before too long. I have lots of blog material because we've been doing lots lately, but not much time to sit down and put it on the blog!

Daddy dries the egg and Desert Boy decides what to do next. The rubber band effect was also kind of cool, leaving a white spot on the egg. It would have been even better if we could have found more than one rubber band!

And here's our finished product! We might have to do it all over again, it was so much fun!

Garden Cricket

Note: If you are visiting this site from Britain or one of the commonwealths, do not expect to find a post about a game that is played in said areas. There will be no talk of wickets, tippy-go, slogging, or "last ball pending soup."

I have no idea what any of those mean.

I'm not sure that I will ever know what they mean.

Do you know what they mean? If you do, leave a comment so I can give you a virtual high five. And then we'll wonder why you know what you know.

Anyway, back to my garden cricket:
We've been busy in the garden, and there are no shortage of worms and crickets there. I think this is in the genus Gryllus, the field crickets. The Bugguide website can help you identify insects, although it helps if you have a little background in entomology to get started there. (And seriously, I mean little. I've never had an entomology class, but I'm starting to figure it out. Not just identification, either. Insects are exciting. And there are so many left to discover and name!)

I thought I'd let Desert Girl get a closer look. She was quite interested, runny nose and all. (Fortunately the runny nose is gone now. That was a constant companion for over a month this winter.)

"Aw, mom, you shouldn't give me such a yummy treat to eat!"

If you're worried, no, she didn't try to eat it. But a couple nights later we had a cricket in the kitchen, and she chased it all over for a good ten minutes, catching it and then losing it. Eventually the little cricket lost in the battle with Emzilla. So we dipped it in chocolate and ate it.

Or did we?

Turkey Vultures

Although I've been having troubles photographing the little birds, the turkey vultures are coming to our yard frequently, especially in the late afternoon and evening.

Look alive! Or they might think you're carrion and come down for a nip. I guess it would help if you smelled really bad, too.

I don't think this vulture is appreciative of me taking photos of him.

The trees are starting to leaf out (at least the poplars and ashes; the catalpas are always the latest to get their leaves). The greenery will be a welcome sight, but they do make it harder to see the birds. Time to remember what all their songs are!

Playing with Water

A couple weeks ago we had a wonderful, warm Saturday morning, and we met up with some other moms and kids in the playground. The kids went down the slides, hung out on the swings, chased each other around, and did all the normal playground stuff.

Then one of them wanted a drink. The water from the water spigot is usually delicious--cold, mountain water. On this particular day, a hose was attached to the spigot. And that hose meant it was time for even more fun.

While the bigger kids took the end of it, little Isaac and Emma found a leak in the hose that was just perfect for them. The next series of photos show them exploring the leak and figuring out how to stop it. They might be little, but they are already learning to be good at managing water!

Aha, the water is stopped with Isaac's foot.

The cat Alaska stops by to watch the little kids.

Meanwhile, here's what's going on at the end of the hose.

Aron is taking a big rock to the "construction site."

It's hard to believe we had such nice weather the kids could wear short-sleeves and sandals. It's back to snow today. It has definitely been a tumultuous spring, which I guess has made us appreciate the nice weather even more!