Yule Burn '10 - the continuing saga

So the location was selected and scouted. I wrote my report to Dave the Horrible, recommending Kelly Point as a viable spot to covert discarded holiday icons into waste heat. I figured at that point that my work was done - Dave would contact folks, point them to Kelly Point, give them pertinent instructions and my responsibility would be to simply show up with a tannenbaum and a lighter. Well, within days I started getting emails from people saying things like, "I'm told you're the guy to talk to about the Yule Burn". I... what? No, I just did recon. My work is done! But no, my work was not done.

Whether by intent, artifice, neglect or indifference, Dave the Horrible had set me up. The Yule Burn was to be my baby, and people already knew about it. Shit. by the time I realized this, I was less than a week away from a road trip to California, so if I was the guy that was going to make this happen, it would have to happen the following weekend or not at all. It was already nearly a week into January and people were recycling their trees at an alarming rate; each day that went by ate away at our fuel supply. So I got on the stick and started emailing people I thought might be interested. We'd previously agreed to keep any talk of the Yule Burn off the Cacophony Society discussion board since it's a well-known fact that local law enforcement and media types monitor the board for information about our various semi-legal activities.

Lots of offers for trees started springing up, but very few offers to schlep them. I own a small SUV that will hold 3 medium trees on top, so hauling a buttload of trees was not something I was going to be able to help with. I just kept forwarding the offers to the various people on the email list and hoped trees would meet trucks somehow. I had no idea if this event was going to take off, but I certainly wasn't going to stress about whether or not I would be successful in gathering a bunch of drunken pyros to light some trees on fire. This thing was going to happen or not, and apart from the "Butterfly Effect" there would be little net impact either way. I took my trip down to California giving the burn little thought

By the day of the event I had only 5 confirmed trees: my own, my friend Jason's, Jason's neighbor's (which I spotted while picking up Jason's tree), and 2 that Mackin had been carting around in the back of his van for who knows how long. Well, 5 reasonably dry Christmas trees could still make a respectable conflagration, so I decided to push on with the event. I paid a quick recon visit to Kelly Point just to make sure there was no better way to get to the beach than the one I'd already scouted. Nope, the 400 yard path was it. So I posted one final email to anybody who had expressed interest, hit up some Facebook friends, and hoped it would all come together.

Rain is a fact of life in Portland, especially in the dead of winter. If you live in Portland and you don't like going anywhere in the rain, you don't go anywhere for 9 months out of the year. That said, last year's burn took place on a gloriously clear, dry day, and everyone involved was able to stand around admiring the pyre without getting soaked. This year we experienced typically wet (if atypically warm-ish) conditions. It was raining when the first of us arrived at Kelly Point at 4pm. It continued raining as other folks started arriving. It rained harder while we dragged the trees to the beach, and harder still as we piled them up amid the ruins of an old dock that had washed ashore.

We had decided we would light the fire at 5:30, just after dark. I had announced that time to a few stragglers via text message, so I felt bound to stick by it. Still, by the time we'd gotten our 5 trees stacked and ready to go it was only about 4:40 (4:20 having already been recognized, with due ceremony) and it was, as I may have mentioned, raining. I remembered (or thought I did) a covered picnic area a little further up the main trail and suggested to the rag-tag bunch that had accumulated so far (maybe 6 of us) that we go there to get out of the rain until more guests (and hopefully more trees) showed up. so we trekked down the trail in search of the picnic shelter which, as it turned out, did not appear to exist. Whether I had seen it in a fever dream or another park or it had burned to the ground leaving absolutely no trace, there was no covered picnic area to be found. We had walked for at least 3/4 of a mile in the rain, looking for a place to get out of the rain. I eventually had to admit my error and suggested we turn back to wait for the stragglers by the pile of trees, where they could find us. All agreed (and, to their credit, nobody threw anything at me) and we headed back to the beach.

Next: Torch Troubles.