The Don't Move Firewood blog has dormant lately for technical reasons, but we are back! While we were away, a friend sent me this on email. For background, this friend lives in the Kalispell area, in Montana, which is near Glacier National Park.
Just got back from Lake Powell in southern Utah. They were selling firewood, for campfires along the lake, for almost $8.00 and the wood came from Kalispell, MT. We were there with some people from Kalispell and one of them had bought firewood in Kalispell that came from Firth, Idaho. The bottom line is that they all got lectured about how firewood from outside the area could be bad. I told them about the sign just south of Kalispell and they mentioned that they had seen the sign but they weren't quite sure what it was all about.Now they know!
This whole anecdote is depressing on a lot of levels. I'll go through why it saddens me quickly so that you can understand.
- At $8/bundle, the price is so high that it clearly dis-incentivizes buying wood at the campsite. That's not good.
- Further, that wood wasn't local. Lake Powell is a rather tree-sparse area, so if that wood was clearly labeled as heat treated despite being from far away, that would be fine, too. But that's an exception.
- My friend's companions brought their own wood from Idaho! That's crazy.
- The billboard that they drove by in Kalispell clearly was not sufficiently informative to get the point across. It is a shame that this opportunity was missed.
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