In Which We Get the Hell Outta Dodge!

This blip posting is rated PG for scenes of mild peril.

My husband and I woke up in the morning to the hoot of an owl. The campsite we stay at in Sproul is probably our quietest spot. Aside from the sounds of the wind, and of any animals nearby, it's pretty peaceful.

I was lollygagging in my tent, as one does, just hanging out in my sleeping bag, refusing to come out. My husband, of course, got up and took his tent down instantly. "Taking your tent down?" I asked him. "No, not yet," he lied.

We had made a plan that we would pack up by around noon, leave our backpacks at the campsite, and walk up to a little pond we know nearby, where lots of newts like to play. But our plans were changed instantly.

Around 11:30, my husband said, "Do you smell smoke?" And I said, Yes, I did. Right after that, quite alarmingly, the woods began to fill up with smoke. There was a whole gray wall of it heading our way! All of the birds suddenly stopped singing.

There are a few cabins not far from there, and I wondered if one of them had made a wood fire that was causing the smoke. But shortly, as we saw the amount of smoke involved, we realized it could not be that.

"I'll bet it's a wildfire!" my husband said. Which was not good news. No, not at all! At worst, you and your gear and your car can get fried in one and the woods can be ruined. At best, you might be merely inconvenienced, as the first responders bring in tanker trucks and close all the roads down.

So we packed up post haste. You might even say that somebody lit a fire under us! The smoke came and went. Within about a half-hour we were all packed up. We walked out and arrived back at our car shortly after that.

We'd walked out through the smoke, and it seemed like it was somehow on all sides of us. Up the road a ways is the view at Fish Dam, and we talked about taking a little ride up there to see what was what.

We stopped at a parking lot along the road and assessed the situation; walked down to a cabin we know that has a wonderful spring, with good, cold, clear drinking water. I filled up a bunch of bottles and we talked about what to do next.

In the end, we decided not to go chasing smoke, but to just head for home. When we pulled the car out of the parking lot and started to drive down the road, this is what we saw: a plume of smoke wafting up from the forest! Oh no!

As we drove toward it, of course, the smoke cloud grew larger. Eventually, we saw a bunch of white trucks that meant the rangers were there. A brightly colored sign along the road said CONTROLLED BURN AHEAD (do not report).

Things have been quite dry here, and we could use rain. The forest service sometimes manages controlled burns to tame the brushy understory. Apparently, we just happened to luck into being there in time for one.

(For the record, when I got home, I checked the controlled burn map for PA, and while the map showed that a half-dozen were scheduled for 4/20, none were listed for Sproul State Forest; go figure. The weather map had an alert for high wildfire danger on this day; why they'd do a controlled burn on such a day, I haven't a clue.)

"I wonder if they ever incinerate backpackers by accident in their prescribed burns," I said to my husband, wryly. As we continued down the road, we saw a firebreak they'd constructed, as well as more smoke and then the actual fire itself, burning alongside the road! WOW!

We did stop once more in the forest to eat our final cheese sandwiches and take a short walk down to another spring we know, well away from the smoke. We could still see the smoke plume, though, looking a lot like it does in this photo. Eventually, the plume decreased; then it disappeared. I guess they had finally put it out!

Well, THAT was quite a bit more adventure than we had signed up for. But somehow we escaped the blaze, and had nothing worse to show for it than an hour or so of being scared sh*tless. But hey, isn't that what backpacking adventures are all about?

It is my custom to include a soundtrack song, and I wanted this one for its line, "And they played Fire on the Mountain, Run Boys Run. Devil's in the house of the risin' sun. . . " Here is the Charlie Daniels Band, with The Devil Went Down to Georgia.