Before our bonfire we attended a free community BBQ at a local Kalispell Park (Lawrence Park) held by a local group of people who are working at establishing a new church in the Flathead Valley: The Way.
When we arrived we found a small group of interesting people. Randy, the leader, also worked on a few of the census operations and we compared experiences. Randy and Caleb appeared to be quite adventurous and hiked and climbed a number of mountains in the area. Caleb was part of the Cops on Top team who reached the summit of Denali in Alaska this past May.
Randy and Caleb also had climbed to the top of Heaven's Peak in Glacier Park. Impressive.
By the time we got our bonfire prepared and lit it was 9 pm and getting dark.
This tree stump was a foot or more above ground, unlike the past several stumps which were only at ground level. I didn't have time to dig around another stump. This stump however was starting to rot and a good candidate for burning now.
With this stump I also finished burning the boxes and paper I decided to get rid of from when I sorted through stuff for the garage sale. I also burned the extra papers and manuals from my census work as they are obsolete and useless now. The local census office had sent far too many extra copies of blank work forms to us crew leaders.
The weather this evening was different as it was a little windy at times. Our area had trees blocking most of the wind but occasionally the wind would whip around from this or that direction. While the grass was semi-tall it also was green and refused to burn beyond what the main fire could reach from the tree stump. Good.
It was 1 am by the time the flames quit.
The stump had burned down to ground level but continued to smolder. The next morning, after I returned from taking Tammy to the train station, I checked the stump. The area was still hot and smoldering. However during the day we had off-and-on rain showers with some being heavy. By late afternoon the smoke rising from the stump was much less.
Monday, from the house, I could still see a little smoke rising from the stump. We had a few brief rain showers in the afternoon. When I checked the stump late afternoon a little smoke was still rising from smoldering areas under all the ash.
The fire had followed the stump's roots and for several roots smoke came from the holes underground.
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