Campfires

There's just something about a campfire.  Is it the smell, the surroundings, the actual fire or the friends that normally gather when there's a campfire going on?

  The answer is d. All the above.

 I woke up one morning this weekend with campfire on the brain.  I muddled around the house for a for a bit while I came up with a plan of how we could actually pull this off.  A campfire shouldn't be an actual task, but when you are living in the equivalent of an Arctic dessert with not a single tree to be seen, a campfire takes a bit of preparation.  By noon "the fire" had taken on a life of it's own.  Initially R looked at me as if I had lost my mind, but I could tell he was intrigued.  When he suggested we use the truck instead of the quads to gather wood, I knew he was on board. 

This is what he showed up with.

N was on the hunt too - for the next hill to run down

Meanwhile, I was on the hunt for serious wood to burn.  I gathered up an armful of driftwood sticks and knew we were going to need a plan b if the campfire I had been dreaming about was going to last more than 20 minutes and since we had met one person on our way out to collect driftwood and invited him to the campfire, we were too far in to bail.

Plan B was pallets.  We had spotted a few stashed under the stairs at the house and R said they had a few stashed at work so we decided we'd burn the pallets.  Turned out to be a great plan or at least I think it was a great plan.  R might have a different opinion on this as he was the one tearing them apart.  He started out with a hammer, progressed to some sort of power tool, which broke and then onto a hatchet, which like the power tool broke.  It ended up in a few pieces and I'm pretty sure at that point R was wishing we'd continued hunting for driftwood a bit longer.

It ended up being better than I even imagined.  We had hot dogs, smores, jiffy pop, a guitar and of course the best part - great company.  As the evening came to an end we all promised to do it again before it gets too cold.  Being that we are in Pualatuk - I guess that means we'll be having another campfire very shortly!

This morning when I woke up and looked out at "the pit" it didn't look like it did last night.  Last night it was energized.  There were stories being told, songs being sung and hot dogs being roasted, this morning it looked barren.  I guess it's just waiting for the next big fire.  I hope it's soon - until then, I'll be collecting wood.