More burning

So we burned quite a bit of land the last 2 days. Apparently thursday was a local area record of 160 acres, it took about 6 hrs to do, which is a long time to be standing in smoke. It was mostly boring from my end as I was charged with patrolling a stretch of firebreak to make sure the backfire didn't jump. Eventually I was positioned next to a tree that was smoldering a good 20 ft up and given a radio and a water pump pack to deal with it in case embers blew across the road and lit the dry grass which burns suprisingly hot, even if it burns briefly. As I was worried about the tree falling I was a good 30 ft away on the other side of the road. Around this time they lit the headfire (for those who don't know as I didn't, the downwind portions of a plot are burned first along the firebreak, here that means a dirt road, and when that has burned against the wind a good distance out they light a "head fire" which spreads with the wind until it meets up with the backfire and both are extinguished) now the smoke from the head fire was at the time blowing directly into my face causing me to get all teary eyed and basically blind, despite the goggles "they do nothing". At this time embers from the tree jumped the road. I did not see this initially being somewhat blind, but fortunately steve did, steve was the head fire guy, and after drawing my attention we each put out one of the two minor flare ups. At this point steve left to continue to patrolling and I was standing right on top of the extinguished spots suddenly very alert. About 15 seconds later 3 more spot fires flare up within 3-4 seconds of each other. Even being right on top of them I can't get them out fast enough and they combine and start to spread and generate heat at an alarming rate. So there I am, trying to radio for help, flee the very intense heat (basically unbearable for more then 2-3 seconds at 5 feet) work the pump on the water dealy, when I wasn't carrying it (it should have been on my back), to fight the fire all at the same time, and all to ill effect. Fortunately two other people were chopping down a tree about 200 yards away and noticed the situation, they drove the pickup truck with a hose and water tank over quite abruptly (breaking a side mirror in the process) and fortunately with them positioned in the primary direction of spread for the fire and me finally using the pump sprayer with more aplomb than clumsiness we put out the fire. The whole episode lasted about a minute and a half, it took the truck about a minute to get in position after the fire spread, but it was quite the adrenaline rush.
we're burning to restore a savannah (basically grass land intermixed with individual trees, even in minnesota it looks surprisingly like the landscape in all those cool lion videos from africa) I guess savannah used to make up a major part of the state but gave way to affordable tract housing and farms, especially when fire began to be suppressed. Essentially the burns blacken the ground, and eliminates any sort of ground litter, most trees and even very small saplings (anything with a fair amount of water in it) survive. Trees that burn generally have a strip of bark ripped off near the base that allows the fire access to the inner woody material, or so I gathered from 3 days of observation so its not like every tree burns. Anyway, have seen a bit of avian wild life already, numerous cranes, cardinals, blue birds, a dove, several hawks, red-headed woodpeckers and turkeys.
I also ran quite a bit this morning in a very light drizzle, unsure about the distance or exact time but I'd guess it was 6-7 miles in 50-55 minutes. It felt good, was my first decent run in some time..