To Start a Fire

Yesterday I built a fire in my front yard. Although my experience was not as tragic as that of the protagonist in the Jack London story, it was frustrating. Making a bonfire anywhere on the property is something that I couldn’t do anywhere else I have lived. In most communities, it is against the law, and neighbors would have come running,complaining loudly about the smoke and potential fire danger. Since I am in Indiana, where there is no official, of unofficial for that matter, interest in taking care of the environment, I just got my sticks, newspaper, pine cones and matches and commenced to build a fire in the perennial bed. Before I lit it I pulled the hose over and made sure that it worked after a winter of sitting dormant. I had visions of a rip roaring bonfire that would require vigilant attention. What I got was a difficult-to-keep-going, smoky little fire. The logs and limbs are from tree trimming that my brother did three months ago while he was here at Christmas. The branches and small logs have not had a chance to dry out in the last three months. Initially, the leaves, crumpled newspaper and pine cones started burning, and I thought, this is a piece of cake, I will have all my unwieldy yard waste gone in no time. Then the dry twigs and paper burned up and smoldering started. None of the bigger pieces of wood burned easily, instead they smoked, hissed and popped—some pieces even had bubbles and steam coming out the end. At times there was so much smoke, I felt bad for neighbors even though we were in Indiana and many of them have their own brush fires.

It took an hour to get a good base of coals and although it wasn't rip roaring, most of the damp, green wood was burning. By then it was lightly raining and I was bored and getting wet and sick of constantly moving my lawn chair out of the smoke and every ten minutes frantically fanning the coals. After all of my efforts, I picked up the hose and doused the little fire.