Fire pits . . . In most parts of the world, very cool. We happen to live in "high desert" up here, 6,000--8500' above sea level in my community. The driest country you can imagine, and it's all pine forest.
Some years back, a friend up the road wanted help one day to burn off a bunch of slash that a previous owner of his property had pushed into a mining pit. I went up there one day, midwinter, and helped burn this pile of crap. There was knee-deep snow on the ground, hard to walk through. We had to fight to get that $hit ignited and keep it burning. We got a bunch of it burned and called it quits about 4 pm. Then shoveled a ton of snow on it--easy to do as there was plenty available.
Two days later, early in the morning Dave was shaving and caught a strange glint from the window. Flames leaping 2' in the air from that pit.
Which explains why our fire chief and others were on hand yesterday afternoon when a bunch of out-of-town folks were enjoying a campfire on national forest land during a "fire ban" (they were just beyond the big sign announcing it). I'm sure they thought it was cool, as there's still patches of snow from the 15" we got a couple days back. Someone among them was presented with a $500 fine. No sympathy here.
