Romantic Smoking Addiction

Last night I celebrated my birthday with friends and family in my backyard. I loved it! My wife worked hard both before and during the event. She deserves a special thanks. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, ate chili and cheese dip, and drank sodas, coffee, hot chocolate, and tea. All of this activity revolved around one spot, a fire.

Two weeks ago, a friend helped me cut down a dead oak tree. Since then I've been rolling it up our yard and hacking it into small pieces to help it dry. While this is tiring work, it is amazingly addictive and cathartic. Since it was dead, a fair amount of the upper wood was dry enough to burn well. This wood supplied the fire for my party.

I have never enjoyed a fire so much as I did last night. It brought a calm happiness to me. Long after our guests left I sat, gazed, poked, and relaxed around the fire. I can only surmise that this personally novel sense of relaxation and satisfaction with a fire was due to my work in preparing the wood that was burning.

I think I've gotten my first glimpse into "fire love" that I've seen demonstrated by my father-in-law ever since I've known him. He spends hours finding dead trees, cutting them, splitting them, stacking them, and burning them. My practical side used to say just use your home's furnace. Now I think I'm starting to be a romantic with a smoking addiction myself.