My Soul Is Mended

And I'm Warm Too...


Pat and I did something the past two nights that we've never done together, and I haven't done in thirteen years.

OK, get your minds out of the gutter, it's nothing like that--I'm talking about having a fire in the fireplace in the house I live in.

You see, after growing up in a house with a fireplace, spending weekends in my grandfather's house that had three fireplaces, and having fireplaces in both of my first two houses, I've allowed myself to live since late 1994 in houses and condo's without a real wood burning fireplace.

Of course the last house which I lived in that I owned didn't have a fireplace either, but it did manage to burn to the ground one April day in 2001. I guess that spontaneously combusting and burning down doesn't count because I wasn't there to enjoy the blaze and when things finally died down all of the wood and most of my possessions were reduced to ashes.

I suppose that you could say that it was the first and last fire in that house's 35 year history...all in the same four hour period.

Any way, living here on the coast in south Georgia makes a fireplace a truly seasonal luxury, but the past couple of nights the temperature has gotten down into the mid 40's and I just couldn't resist digging into the small pile of firewood that the previous tenant left sitting beside the edge of the driveway.

Last night's effort could hardly be called a roaring blaze because the wood was a little rotted, bug infested, and slightly damp on the outside, but I separated everything this morning to let it dry out during the day and then took a big hammer and masonry chisel (I don't own an axe or hatchet) and split the 6" and 8" logs into nice manageable wedge shaped pieces.

I fired things up about 6:30 PM while cooking Almond crusted Tilapia for dinner, and now I'm coming up on the sixth hour of this evenings inferno. I've been sitting at the coffee table about eight feet from my spirit healing blaze enjoying the cracking and popping, and now reluctantly in the interest of saving some wood for tomorrow night I'm forcing myself to let things burn down for the evening.

For some reason I'm sad for people that insist on using gas logs (and gas grills for that matter), because there's something instinctively soothing about the sights, sounds, and smells encountered while sitting in front of a real wood fire on a dark winter evening.

Maybe it's just an ancient inherited human trait...