fire and ice

The weather promised to be beautiful for late February in my part of the world, so my wife and I took off for our little cabin on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks on Tuesday. We were not disappointed.

We had no agenda for our day in the woods. I had thought about maybe taking a long walk in the forest since there are no bugs to worry about this time of the year. I could walk along my southern property line (a half mile) and just see whatever was going on there (and hoping nothing was going on there). But that would have left my wife alone at the cabin for a few hours, and though she could easily occupy herself, I didn’t want to do that.

Instead we had a fire in the ring. Fires are often problematic. Mostly it has to do with the weather and specifically with the lack of recent rain, so the forest is frequently tinder dry. Even a small, well-tended fire can get out of control (this has never happened to me, but maybe that’s because I’ve been overly cautious). But when I kicked the leaves on the forest floor this visit, they were wet underneath from the snow that had melted on them. Just a week before, there had been a four-inch snowfall in the area, and though the temps had been climbing since then, we could still see patches of it on the ground on the north-facing hillside. I was confident that the forest was still wet enuf to have a small, well-tended fire safely.

And that is what we did. Using skills I’ve practiced many times, and that I’ve spoken of devoutly in my novels, I was able to build and light a successful one-match fire in the ring. Unfortunately, we had no idea we were going to do this when we left suburbia that morning, so we didn’t bring anything to cook over it, like burgers, which always seem to taste better there. Thus we only had the fire for ambience.

Keeping a fire well tended means keeping it well watched. Once we had it going and put some substantial logs on it, we had to stay with it. We couldn’t go off for a hike or even down to the lake. That was fine. The sun was shining out of a blue sky and the breeze hadn’t picked up yet. It was easy to sit in the comfy chairs and stare into the flames. The winter weather had brought down lots of branches around the cabin, so I was able to collect those and burn them into ash. The fire was productive as well as pleasant.

Before I had started the fire, though, I had hiked down to the dam. The beavers have a pond they’ve constructed below the dam, and I wanted to check its status. Both the beaver pond and much of the lake were still frozen from the frigid weather the week before. I took the picture below of the ice on the lake because I was puzzled by the pattern in it.

That pile of sticks at the center (on the shore) may be a beaver lodge. Perhaps that explains the concentric rings somehow (though there aren’t similar rings before the two other lodges). I paid attention to the thermometer on the cabin porch throughout the day, and it reached 78 degrees, which is insane for late February in Missouri! I wasn’t complaining. By the time we left in the late afternoon, about half of the ice had melted on the lake. I suppose the water is fully open now.

The view from the cabin porch showed about half of the iced-over part of the lake, but we saw a beaver pop its head out of a breathing hole in the ice and then moments later out of another hole nearby. We rarely see the beavers themselves, but we do see the white oak trees they have continued taking down near the cabin.

We had a nice, relaxed day at the cabin, but responsibilities in suburbia called us back. The weather is not forecasted to be so freakishly warm over the next two weeks, but we may find another chance to sneak out to the cabin. Stay tuned.