Honey Prairie Complex?

[Jim]

Seems a little distant for a fire in the "Sunshine State" to be on the HAZ homepage. Any particular reason, other than the event calendar getting thin? I was following the fire for a while on the Inciweb. Seems from my time down there I remember the Okefenokee burning over every couple of years. Makes me wonder how swampy it really is? Not really.

BTW, you know a place is wet, swampy, or choked with water, when they have many names for what an outsider would see as just a "swamp". First, there is swamp, then there's slough, dome, wet prairie, bay, glade, marsh, wet flatwood, pocosin, and seep. All of them different and specific. More, too, I'm sure. Water down there like AZ has rock.

Perimeter Map http://hikearizona.com/map.php?QX=876

[chumley]

We have a few of our own repetitive/redundant descriptions. Park/meadow/cienega comes to mind.

[PaleoRob]

I thought cienega referred to a swampy area near water.

[satillayakker]

I live in the edge of the Okefenokee, have for most of my life except my stint in the Corps, mostly in AZ. Most of all the area around here is swampy. Spent many days in the "swamps" in the area coming up. The different terms relate the type of area, sub-habitat so to speak, within the swamps. Marsh-mostly treeless with tall grass and shallow water, Bay- deeper waters with lots of tall cypress, but no dry land other than the tree and some root structures, and so on and so on. (The stereotypical idea some people have, granted like alot of other things is media driven, that a swamp is a nasty smelly ugly place is just wrong and ignorant. Hey, sorta how I was about AZ. I really didn't know AZ had more than bland rocky desert til I lived there!) You are exactly right on how they are different and specific. But just as I learned in AZ, it usually only makes sense to people from that area.

The Honey Prairie is a very large area of the Okefenokee, in fact a large majority of the marshland interior. Right now, the swamp is very dry, as is all of South GA and North FL. In '07, we had a fire burn through alot of the swamp and surrounding area that took well over 700,000 acres, and the Honey Prairie has rekindled memories, and burned some of the same area, of that one and really gotten alot of attention. The Okefenokee does burn every few years, but it has such thick vegetation and very rich soil, so it doesn't take long to be ready to go again. One issue in the Okefenokee is the peat moss and other dead vegitation. It gets so thick on the ground, it actually can burn for years underneath and reignite looser material later. (Most survivalists can relate to this idea, as you can actually travel great distances over a long time with a thick smoldering pile of embers and make new fires!). That has been a concern for Georgia and Florida. The Honey Prairie is believed to have been started by lightening, which because of the thick dead vegetation on the ground is quite frequent there.

I am happy to see Hike AZ have this on here!! I love AZ and how beautiful it is, and will be visiting again next year, but I also dearly love the natural beauty of my home here at the Okefenokee. Thanks to Hike AZ for getting our situation out there too!!

[chumley]

I thought cienega referred to a swampy area near water.

There's a bunch of cienegas out in the white mountains. More on the reservation, if I recall.

Quick search, here's a couple on one map... more if you move around
http://hikearizona.com/map.php?QX=884

[Jim]

First, I realize that for some reason I confused Florida for Georgia. Don't know how that happened, but it probably stems from me also watching the Impassible Bay fire in the Osceola NF.


Chumley, while they might seem redundant, they really are all quite different.

Bays can be nice, especially in late spring and early summer when the gordonia and sweet bay are flowering.

Add bog to the list. As in a pitcher plant bog, or cranberry bog.

There was a fire in 2007? I remember another around 2002, and then another a year or so before that, and I thought there was one around 2004. It depends on where it burns in the "swamp", since a lot of it isn't really swamp. Flatwoods can burn twice yearly, if done right.

[chumley]

Chumley, while they might seem redundant, they really are all quite different.

I realize that they all have different definitions, but I've experienced some that seem to be misidentified by name based on what I'm seeing in real life.

And what's the difference between a saddle and a pass? And what about a draw? I can't even find the definition for a draw online, at least not the geographic kind.

[satillayakker]

Yeah, There was a very massive fire here in 2007. Several big fires that combined. (Official estimates from 500,000 to 700,000 acres, depending on the source. )It (the first fire) started in a wetland, that wasn't so wet after a couple years of droubt, just outside Waycross. (A downed powerline ignited grass. If it had been in an urban area, it could have been out in minutes. No one got there in time though.) Burned into the Okefenokee, the State Forest (Dixon Memorial), Down into Florida, and into the Satilla River Basin in some places. The State Forest got ravaged. It actually burned almost completly around Waycross and destroyed millions and millions (60+ million) in pine plantations. There were firefighters from all over including western state wildfire fighters and smoke jumpers here to help. All they could do really his stop the fires from getting to homes and let it burn around them, then on to the next. This went on for 2 and a half months. I patrolled the roads in the fire perimeter to make sure people were not "inside the fire line", and tried to keep people off secluded roadways near the fire. (Was a State Trooper at the time.) An experience I don't care to do again!!! The smoke was just horrible!
There were several in the area in those years. They just usually are not nearly as big. Usually a large one would be 1000 acres.

http://www.wildfirelessons.net/document ... dfires.pdf