August 1, 2010

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Yesterday around 5:30pm I walked down to the beach via the Lucky Gap access. That access places you near the south end of mile 219. When I arrived & later, when I left (about an hour later), a group of people had built a beach fire using what looked like a large stump.Today, 24 hours later, the people are long gone, but they left the stump burning, although there are no flames. Plenty of smoke though. I've attached a photo. While this fire wasn't built directly in the beach grass, there is vegetation nearby and whoever the people were, they arranged other beach wood in a kind of rectangle arrangement around their fire. I don't know if the wood is close enough and the wind likely to get high enough for the other wood or vegetation to burn (before the fire finally burns itself out) but I suspect neither did the people who built this fire near vegetation and near other wood. They couldn't be bothered to use water from a nearby creek (maybe 40 feet or so away) to put the fire out. They just walked away. On the 31st, I left a message for the state parks rule enforcement officer, just to let him know I thought there'd be smoldering wood the next time he was in the area, so he could check it if he felt it necessary. When I returned to that stretch of beach the next day, I was sorry to see that I was correct and the people who built the fire couldn't be bothered to put it out. I think what they did is poor practice.