My wife and older son had built the base of the fire on a snowy old bonfire pit they'd shoveled off, as directed, but with too much wood and not enough kindling, too much void in the 'tee-pee' structure of the limited 6-8-ft. long spruce poles they -did- have, while wasting an entire (new) smaller qt. jug of charcoal lighter fluid. (The Boy Scout's secret helper, if used properly).
With the food barely finished in the kitchen, I left the kitchen, retrieved some suitable spruce kindling from the barn that was the result of past wood-splitting efforts by my younger son a couple years ago, disassembled the clusterfuck of a base for the failed fire, re-instructed them, again, to unbury the long spruce poles that were still under 1-1/2 ft. of snow, despite earlier instruction, and re-lit their efforts, after which the fire was blazing.
Roughly a 8' to 10' diameter bonfire. Good and HOT!!
Unfortunately, they also didn't retrieve the 20+ year old stacked lengths of easily accessible 4-8' river aspen poles behind the greenhouse, so I went to do that, as well as unburying the 4' lengths of green spruce logs the wind storm had given us last summer.
I've spent a good deal of time in the bush, and living in situations where wood heat was the -only- source of heat (not withstanding the propane oven that often doesn't burn below -39 f.), even down to 60+ below zero f.
I told my wife with controlled disgruntlement (it was Christmas, after all) there's a reason why urbanians sometimes freeze to death in the bush when in dire straits. Absence of experience being an understandable key factor. I then stated, If you're not able to get a fire lit before your hands lose feeling, or, heaven forbid, before your thinking goes wonky, you may be screwed. Fire building is a very important skill to practice in this region.
Then, when the fire had gained sufficient heat and coals underneath, I went back in and prepped individual bowls of the grub pictured above.
There needed to be sufficient heat from the large fire to not have them eating frozen Christmas chow before their bowls were half-empty, and we achieved that. Though my wife managed to let her can of King St. Bewing (Anchorage, Ak.) 'Winter Warmer' (Chirstmas beer at 8% abv) freeze. It was, afterall, -20 f.
I apologized to both of them afterward. They both know I have a short fuse for frustration when taxed, relative to PTSD, and other factors, and get irritated at folks screwing around when they have the capacity to know better. But we managed to pull off a pleasant Christmas meal and gift sharing anyway.
"And so it goes..."
Last edited:
(Pringles potato chips, too, but not waterproof)
fire 
tomorrow… been playing games with little miss brunch today 
prob do as good as some of the plumbers putty i've used over the years...
