Does anyone besides me love a good fire?

Many, many memorable campfires and fireplace fires over the years, in different places all fondly remembered.

Yep, Walkin' Jack, mesmerizing is what they are. And a connection for us with our oldest of human ancestors ... light ... warmth... survival ...

Well and truly, fire is a living thing.
 
As a teen in the mid-60s, my dad had a close friend with a log cabin in the Black Hills called "The Antlers." Built in 1917, it had a large native rock fireplace in the main room, and a wood burning cookstove in the kitchen. It had no electricity, but the globe lights hanging from the ceiling burned propane, as a concession to more modern times. It was simply the best ever hunting cabin, and I loved staying there. I learned to cook breakfast on the wood stove, which had a reservoir for heating water. The fresh water source was an upper fork of Rapid Creek, which was about 15 yards from the cabin. We cut and split firewood in the summer, in preparation for deer hunting in November. That cabin provided some of the best moments of my young life, up through High School. The fire was the center of all activities outside of eating, and one of my jobs was making sure we always had a good supply of firewood on hand. Dad, his friend, and their buddies always had a serious poker game going in the night, and I kept the fire fed. The cabin still stands, but it's changed hands. My dad and almost all his pals have now passed on, but I sometimes drive past on the old gravel road just to rekindle memories.

Fast forward into the present: My wife and I have lived in a country house with a fireplace for the past nine years . It gets nearly constant use in the winter to help heat our main room. I'm still cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. Guess who's job it is to keep a supply readily available for her Highness? LOL. I don't mind. I love a good fire.
 
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Many, many times a year - S'mores, lightning bugs, starry summer nights, etc. Luckily, the woods around us give a constant supply of dead branches, blow-downs, etc.

Here's Annie soaking up some warmth. :)
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My last house had a gas log fireplace.It was not the same at all.My current place has an old fashioned flagstone fireplace that my father built a long time ago and I love it.Used to sit right in front of it with frozen,wet feet.Those leather ski boots sucked :-D
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I don't have a fire place in the house or a fire pit.
The folks in suburbia frown on that type of thing.
The closest "fireplace like" item is a scented candle and it crackles a bit. Or sometimes, around the end of the year, one of the TV stations has a screen showing a fireplace. I know, not the same, but the image and the sound candle crackling sounds almost works.
The best fire is the camp fire. End of the day, talking, joking, laughing and having a beverage with friends.
The highlight is what we call "Hobo Pie". 2 pieces of bread, stuffed with some type of filling like apples, inside a fire pit cooker ( kinda like a mini-waffle iron)
 
Nothing like a good fire,especially at the end of a day when you sit down with a few fingers of Jack Daniels or Wild Turkey on the rocks.Now it's ice tea or coffee,but that's about as good.I liked "instant fire" and would have one roaring in a few minutes by using the traditional Southern "fat lighter" generously.People would accuse me of being extravagant using so much kindling, but that was not a problem in years past when dynamite could be easily bought over the counter.I would go to my farm and find an ancient stump of a pine,make a little tunnel near the tap root and insert about 5 sticks of Dupont's #60 with detonating cap,light fuse and run!!The reward was a wonderful ground shaking boom and watching a
refrigerator sized mass of the greatest fire starter in the world soar above the tallest trees.It would last for months of use,and the aroma of "fat lighter" splinters was wonderful.Those were the great old days before people began to practice home grown terrorism making it difficult to buy explosives,powder guns and ammo.Those blissful days in America will never return.It is sad.
 
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I like a fire, used to heat my home with wood exclusively and remember all the work that went into it and all the associated stories regarding all the years of "woodgetting" which of course have their share of vehicles with trees dropped on them, hair raising widow makers dropping and narrow misses, not to mention chainsaw mishaps, etc. Not to mention the trips coming back with the truck so loaded the front wheels kept bouncing off the ground...Oh yeah I like a fire. We have a nice little airtight stove down at the gunclub, it feels real good in the morning to go in and warm up in front of the fire...nothing heats like a nice wood fire. I have a fireplace right next to my recliner, I had it converted to natural gas...its set to turn on about 15 minutes before I get up in the morning, feels real good to wake up and sit scratching myself next to the fire, the cats both know about it and are always there every morning.
 
For the last 40 years or so, I have been touring, camping and rallying on motorcycles. a campfire has always been an essential part of the experience, and a high point of the day, from a low-profile stealth camping fire in a hidden semi-legit camping spot, to the boxcar-sized bonfires at the Wisconsin Guzzi Rally.

Like many other outdoor activities, one of the main points of the exercise is to amass a store of stories, to be recounted over and over again at subsequent campfires. The events that give rise to the stories happen usually on the ride, but the campfire is where the stories take shape, to be refined in the retelling until they become legend.

Give me a bottle of rye whiskey, a cigar and a Kermit
chair for my campfire, and i guarantee some good stories will come out of it.

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We heat the house with a fireplace insert and have it going right now. I love a wood fire but now have a young man deliver my wood and stack it rather than go out back and cut it myself like I used to do. It's a concession I had to make because of back problems.
We also have one of the portable fire pits in back we sometimes have a fire in. Should we ever build that enclosed space on the back deck I'll put a wood burner in there too.
Some of my best hunting memories were trips camping out in Michigan's upper peninsula in the snow and cold. We would build a nice campfire evenings and once the coals burned down we'd cook the evening meal. My cousin's buddy was a chef and he could make some killer meals on it for us. That led to sitting around the fire and BSing for hours into the night which made early morning wakeups hard but worth the price.
I'd like to get a chiminea for the back deck too but my wife says I junk up the back deck too much with my outdoor cookery items.
 
Yes, I like a fire. Got one going for the last few days in the basement wood stove. Have not built one in the fireplace yet this year.

I also like a big woodpile. Jesse (chocolate Lab) likes to "help" around the woodpile. She also likes to sit by one outside and watch it burn...remembering good things of both the past and yet to come I'm guessing.

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I also like burning brush piles!

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A fire place, or wood burning stove (or both) are requirements for the next house. Being in suburbia, the best we can have is one of those above ground fire pits on wheels. It will hold about 5 fireplace sized logs, which is better than nothing, but it's just not the same...
 
Your fire pit sure does remind me of the pit up at the POINT on North 7th street Phoenix...(I think it was North 7th Street) Used to like to go up there for the entertainment and the view over the city . Last I was there the entertainment has fallen down quite a it, but the fire pit still puts out a nice glow on a chilly evening.

WuzzFuzz

Gunslinger808 said:
We use our pit at least once a week when the weather cools.
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Click to expand...
 
The wife likes to complain that our wood burning fireplace is a pain cuz it creates ash that causes dust in the house. She says she wants to replace it with a gas insert, yet every night, she sits peacefully in front of the crackling fire, soaking up its warmth. We have lots of wood to burn, courtesy of our local pine bark beetle epidemic, and the Fall Blizzard named "Atlas" that left us with years of downed timber to burn. I'm not about to convert to propane and put myself at the mercy of industry pricing. I split my wood by hand with a Fiskers maul. It's good exercise, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment knowing I'm helping to heat the house and make her Highness comfortable. Course I have to complain to her about my sore back muscles cramping cuz of all that heavy manual labor I perform on her behalf :)
 
Marshwheeling said:
For the last 40 years or so, I have been touring, camping and rallying on motorcycles. a campfire has always been an essential part of the experience, and a high point of the day, from a low-profile stealth camping fire in a hidden semi-legit camping spot, to the boxcar-sized bonfires at the Wisconsin Guzzi Rally.

Like many other outdoor activities, one of the main points of the exercise is to amass a store of stories, to be recounted over and over again at subsequent campfires. The events that give rise to the stories happen usually on the ride, but the campfire is where the stories take shape, to be refined in the retelling until they become legend.

Give me a bottle of rye whiskey, a cigar and a Kermit
chair for my campfire, and i guarantee some good stories will come out of it.

img0042pg6.jpg
Click to expand...
I rallied with other British bike enthusiasts, but due to leaking Amal carbs and fuel taps, combined with oil leaking cases and wet sumping overflows, campfires were pretty much out of the question:D
 
I have a pair of boots I can't walk with. Something about the heals (plastic of course) having melted off during the last campfire they were used at. So they've been banished to the garage until I get the gumption to either get a set of new heals installed, or toss them into the trash. Can't do that with a pair of boots I bought a few years before, but if I age them for 5 more, they become just old boots. :(
 
They can limit the size of my magazine but the can't limit the size of my fire.

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Only problem I have ever had is folks in a hurry. Instead of spending the last of the light gathering mass quantities of fuel, they want warmth right now, lighting a puny pile. After dark nobody wants to go too far for more. Joe
 
Fires can be nice and warming and fun to just stare into and dream. Fires can also be incredibly destructive. If you have ever found yourself fighting an out-of-control forest fire it will give you an entirely different view of fire. I have had that experience once long ago and I never want to have it again.

Fire is a very powerful tool that needs to be handled as such. It is no less powerful a tool than is a gun or an automobile, or a chainsaw. I really like some of the in ground pits. I use a simple concrete block above ground pit, but I think I need something a little more elaborate and fool proof.

Enjoy those fireplaces while you can, as eventually the socialist will outlaw them.
 
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