August 5, 2013

Today was mostly uneventful aside from a few hangovers until after lunch….

While washing the dishes, Bobby (a workawayer from up the road whose taking care of a finca) shows up red in the face and out of breath. We immediately all start joking about the night before, laughing about “who looks hungover” and “how are you feeling”. In the midst of our immaturity, Bobby calmly but desparetly explains, “Umm…I’m having a bit of a crisis. The fincas on fire!!”.

We were without words but immediately everyone was dispersing and springing in to action… The boys loaded into the truck and headed for the fire with hoes and shovels, Vicky was calling the bomberos, and Michael was getting the water tanks loaded and ready. Theresa and I stuck with the dishes while this was happening so I figured we were gonna miss out on the action until Michael instructed us to get in car… While in route to the fire, I got to thinking… this is either going to be a really bad fire (a somewhat normal scenario in dry San Rafael), or its the boy who cried wolf (or in this case some poor volunteer, like me, who is freaking out because he accidentally set a few too many leaves on fire in the canals).

When we arrived it was definitely a lot bigger than my boy who cried wolf scenario, but it wasn’t quite the other end of the spectrum either, which was a full force finca fire… So good for us right?

The boys were fiercely beating out the flames as they crept across the pastures. It was a windy day so it was apparent that it could have easily gotten out of hand, especially with all the dry brush that ran along the perimeter of the property. Fortunately, Michael wasn’t the least bit phased. He even joked about making the boys sweat a little longer before he called and cancelled the bomberos. Lucky for us, he was right. It stayed pretty tame and with a little bit of water and lots of hands, we put the damn thing to rest.

I realized as I was stamping out a blazing pile of horse poo that we had been looking at the stars in this exact spot the night before. Now its a giant pasture of black, charred grass that I can write my name in by cutting through the sut with my foot…

We found out the next morning that there had been a total of 12 fires that day. Exciting day.

the aftermath (photo courtesy of Tatjana Phillips)