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KIM BALDWIN. a clearing near her house
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a clearing near her house.
She and Erin both lived where they lived because they wanted to be close to nature, and nature was certainly putting on an amazing display for them. It’s perfect.
v
The following Saturday afternoon, Gable spent more than an hour laying the F re, erecting a carefully built teepee of twigs—matchstick-sized tinder in the interior graduating to larger and larger branches—and then the whole structure surrounded by a square framework of split logs. It was a work of art unto itself, and Erin, watching the construction from a nearby lawn chair with a goblet of merlot in her hand, nodded approvingly when it was F nished.
“It’s lovely. Seems almost a shame to light it.”
“Old habits die hard.” Gable shrugged. “I can’t build a F re unless it’s a one-matcher.”
“One-matcher?”
“Camp Fire Girls take a lot of pride in building a F re that will catch with just one match. Watch.” Gable struck an Ohio Blue Tip wooden match against the side of its box and carefully inserted it into the narrow opening she’d left in the teepee, away from the wind.
The tiny f ame caught the tight bundle of dry hemlock twigs in the center of the teepee, and the F re spread quickly upward. Soon they had a roaring F re.
Erin sucked in a deep breath. “Mmm. I love the smell of wood smoke.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by F res,” Gable said, taking a lawn chair beside Erin’s and poking at the conf agration with a long stick.
“I love building them, lighting them, watching them. Kind of ironic I now put them out!” She smiled and sighed contentedly. “I can sit by a campF re for hours.”
“This was a nice idea,” Erin agreed. “It’s so pretty out here.”
Gable reached for her wineglass, which she’d set on a makeshift table made out of a tree round, set on its end. “I think autumn is my favorite time of year, though spring runs a close second, with all the wildf owers and the baby animals running about.”
• 194 •
FORCE OF NATURE
Erin nodded. “I had two raccoons coming by regularly with their babies. They were so adorable, scampering up trees whenever something scared them. Oh! And the baby birds when they f edge and are fed by their parents. People who live their entire lives in a big city don’t know what they’re missing.”
“There’s a line in Walden Pond where Thoreau says something like…‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. To see if I couldn’t learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ I like that. I think when you live in the woods you are somehow closer to the heartbeat of life.”
“Nicely put,” Erin said, reaching out to take Gable’s hand in hers.
“I’m so glad I’m here. With you. That we found each other.”
Gable lifted Erin’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “Me too. I can’t remember ever being this happy.”
A comfortable quiet settled over them as they enjoyed the F re and the autumn foliage, and a sky painted with the bright pinkish red of an approaching twilight. Gable fed the F re with split oak logs until they had a deep bed of hardwood coals. She buried two potatoes wrapped in foil into the embers and let them bake. When they were nearly done, she set up a grill over the F re bowl and cooked two rib eye steaks to medium rare.
“Quite the campF re cook you are,” Erin commented as she dressed her potato with butter and sour cream. “Why does food cooked outdoors always taste better?”
“Wait until dessert. Have you ever had a banana boat?”
“Don’t think so. What’s that?”
“You cut a little trough in a banana, and insert marshmallows and pieces of chocolate. Then you wrap it in foil and cook it in the coals until everything melts together.”
“Anything with chocolate in it, I’m pretty much guaranteed going to like it.”
After they’d eaten, Gable took their plates inside the house and returned with a blanket. She spread it out on the ground near the F re, up against a low log bench she had built for visiting nieces and nephews.
As she gazed down at Erin as she approached her chair, Gable’s heart stopped in her chest. “God, you’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
Erin smiled up at her, the F relight casting a soft warmth over her skin and accentuating the blond highlights in her hair.
• 195 •
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