A really big lunch fire!

When I worked in the North Maine Woods, I used the men on the road crew to refurbish property lines for International Paper Company. I was the supervisor of construction and engineering at the time, 1981 to 1991 out of Clayton Lake. This kept the men working all year, where as before some of them would get laid off in the winterI One thing I always kept my eye open for was tall dead standing White Pine trees, to use to make a lunch fire with! These trees were like natural lightening rods throughout the forest, and because they were dead, they burned very well! They made a safe fire in the winter on the snow and helped cut down on the the number of trees standing throughout the landscape! They also burned well and made a great lunch fire. When the trees were hollowed out you could stick your sandwich in the hole and it would get toasted on both sides at once. I remember using one big pine for a lunch fire one day and coming back the next day and after six inches of snow the tree had fallen down but there was still plenty of coals left to toast our sandwiches the next day. A few times Clayton Lake would get called by the Airforce reporting a fire that one of their jets out of Loring AFB had spotted. I mentioned this because these big White Pine made a big fire and it was a lot safer to have them burn them on the snow in the winter, than having them get struck by lightening and start a forest fire during a dry summer. These big trees did have some wildlife benefits, but I alway checked to make sure there were no bear or other small animals living in them before setting them on fire!