Fighting Fire with Water

As I was headed in to town at about 2:30, I noticed a lot of smoke on Turtle Island [also called M Island], a favorite camping and blueberry picking island just to the west of Franson Island. When I landed on the island, I discovered a large perimeter of fire that was fanning out from a spot where some idiot had apparently dumped out a Weber grill. Several larger trees were burning, the bushes were on fire and the flames were headed towards a really nice section of youngish red and white pines, so I went to the boat, emptied out a square tote and started fighting fire. Amazingly, considering the speed of the southwest winds, I managed to knock down the flames. Then a fire team from Fort Frances showed up as well as a team from Rainy Lake, so I went back to my boat and headed into the library for my daily fix.
One of the insights from this is the fact that there is a concept called "tragedy of the commons" that holds that whatever is held as "public land" will be abused. Unfortunately, this small island is routinely messed up by people who have no idea how to make an outdoor latrine, who like to save themselves a trip to the garbage cans, and, now, don't really take care to see their fire is out. I guess we need to buy kay a boat so he/she can check for blight and fire on the islands because I'm not sure I want to become an unpaid island fire department.