[pct-l] Whatevee happened to --

[CMountainDave@aol.com (CMountainDave@aol.com)]

What the hell happened to all those alcohol stove geeks? Did they all go over 
to the Dark Side??
  I must confess, I used a Zip stove the entire way. I found wood or shrubs 
to burn the entire way. When it started to rain I would gather twigs as I 
walked and always had dry wood. The only place there wasn't at least shrub 
twigs was at the Muir Hut. But here I lucked out. Somebody had previously 
brought up firewood by horse for the fireplace within, but apparently some 
ranger had strictly adhered to the no fires above whatever thousand feet. He 
had scattered the wood out into the alpine "meadow" -- grasses among the 
scree and talus. Now I can rationalize among the best so I therefore reasoned 
the following: Wood that size had no business being thousands of feet above 
timberline. It was incongruent with the surroundings and could possibly even 
be detrimental to the alpine ecosystem by introducing microorganisms that 
belonged far below. What to do?? Packing them out like litter seemed 
illogical considering that a horse carried them in. Then another thought 
occurred to me like magic.  I had a vision of the Builders Of The Hut and 
they whined and moaned that they had built this here fancy fireplace and NO 
one was allowed to use it. Have a fire they implored again and again. 
Otherwise we will put a curse on you. So what else was I supposed to do? And 
I helped the environment and got a hot meal, too!