Right now I am taking my afternoon breaks in the shade of a youngish tree that stands on the large raised part of the meadow behind the UW applied arts - sculpture, ceramics - complex of buildings at the North Eastern section of the campus, just south of Fiver Corners, the intersection of 45th NE, Union Bay/Mary Gates Drive, and the spur that leads to 35th Ave NE. Around 3:30 I started hearing some fire engines and, looking South, notice smoke rising in the eastern part of Kwakium Prairie as the revitalized once Seattle dump is called, a prairie indeed with prairie grasses, ponds, pheasants, night time coyotes, all kinds of bird life, geese and ducks in its ponds, raccoons, a pair of eagles, trails... fairly heaven... the prairie grasses very high and dry and yellow. I could tell exactly where it was burning, near an area that had burnt a couple of years ago. There are some high stands of poplars there, and the rebuilt Horticultural Center is just a tad to the left of the poplars. Very good, one fire engine shows up, one UW Police car, the new small black kind, not one of the lumbering white ones and pulls in by the Horticultural center. And stands there for a bit, and then drives on to the point where the fire is and a trail leads off to the right from the main trail to the UW, but cant make a right cause the wind is coming from the Northwest. So the smoke is increasing and really billowing to the East now. After a half an hour the engine drives along the trail toward the bridge across the Ravenna Creek and makes a left at that end of the roundabout trail, and chugs toward the fire on the fire's right side. Then some more engines show up, another couple of UW cop cars, anda couple of batallion chief in their personell carrier type fire red vehicles. By this time the fire has been burning for about an hour and the smoke is strong and dark. Then it starts to subside, the first engine evidently has put it out;after all, the lake is right next door to it, as is one huge pond that never dries up. Then two more engines show up, the kind that carry miles of hoses. Then a ladder truck. Then another engine. The fire has been put down long ago. Even at 7:30 a couple more engines show up and another battalion chief. Two more engines show up as two engines pull out. Mary Gates drive is completely blocked with fire engines around the Horticultural center, they don't know which way to turn to get the hell out of there. It gets too dark to read Handke's MORAWISCHE NACHT and I go to Burgermaster for din-din and a gallon of lemonade. By the time I walk home past the Horticultural Center around 10:15 AM there are still a couple of engines getting ready to pull out. A simple grass fire that was burning toward the lake, and was stopped just short of it by a single engine, involved at least a dozen Seattle Fire Department trucks, including the investigative lab truck, half a dozen UW cop cars, and a KOMO NEWS truck, that also pulled out around 10:15. All at what cost? And of overtime???? Up around 5 AM this morning I take my customary walk out into the prairie, one man in a white shirt is running with his black dog. About 10 acres of grass have burned, revealing several dozen of those this 6 inch diameter pipes that relieve the methane gas that the old dump is emitting even now. The robins don't chirp as loud as they used to in Spring, pretty much everyone has mated by now, other chirpers however are starting to chirple.
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MICHAEL ROLOFF Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Societythis LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS: http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html "MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" {J. Joyce} "Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde" [von Alvensleben]
