Today's Marvellous Adventure

Author's Note: I apologize for the lateness of this posting. As you can see by the date, it was begun months ago, but due to Blogger's habit of kicking me off my blog every time I tried to post a picture, I hadn't finished it until today. Enjoy.

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After work today I decided that, since it is tolerably warm out, I'd go outside to work on my shelter (see pics on my facebook account). I did a little branch-weaving, then the sudden thought popped into my head that I absolutely must have a fire. After all, I thought, today's probably one of the last chances I'll have to build a fire before the snow flies!

So...I dug a hole. A very small one.

Then I struck a few matches (OK, fine, twelve!!) and lit some dead leaves on fire. Or tried to.

Finally, success! A tiny fire! A breeze was blowing, so I sheltered the fire with my shovel.

Then it started to rain (figures!!), so I propped the shovel over the top of the fire to keep the rain from putting it out.

Here is proof that it was raining. You can see the drops on the shovel handle. I just wanted pictorial proof that it really was raining in case anyone doubts my ability to maintain a fire. *sings* "Well, I've seen fire, and I've seen rain...."

At last, sheltered from wind and rain, the fire blazed prettily and quickly burned through all the small sticks I had gathered. I raced to gather larger sticks so I could set a cup of water into the fire pit to heat up.

Here is a short video. Unfortunately the neighbor chose this moment to run some noisy machinery, so this video doesn't quite have the 19th-century ambiance I was hoping for. Oh well. Leave the volume on low and just look at the pretty flames.




Well, the water had started to boil and was looking pretty good when a gust of wind knocked ashes into the cup. Even as un-squeamish as I am about ashes....this was too much. So I dumped it out and started again.

Eventually I got myself a nice semi-ashy lukewarm cup of hot chocolate. Complete with marshmallows. Huzzah!

Though I was loath to do so, I let the fire die down.

Then I skilfully covered up the hole to avoid all traces of detection, just in case someone was on my trail. A few extra leaves and sticks scattered about, and voila! No one would ever know. Sort of. Maybe. If they were blind.

There...what a beautiful idyllic picture. I look forward to many more days spent out at the shelter, bent over on hands and knees blowing wildly and uselessly into a tiny fire pit, trying to coax a blaze out of wet sticks and old leaves so I can enjoy a hot cup of wood-ash-flavoured tea or cocoa. Should be highly entertaining.