Whew! Good thing SHE'S gone!

When we checked in at Kanuga on Friday, I asked the guy at the front desk if our cabin had a fireplace.

"Yes," he said, "and there's firewood stacked on the side of the cabin. We have fire-starters and newspaper here if you need it."

The fire-starters were wrapped with the newspaper in tight, neat little bundles. I took two with me from the desk, thinking I'd use one per night.

Unfortunately, the firewood was VERY wet, having gotten snowed on, then soaking up the melting snow. Our attempt at a fire the first night failed miserably, despite the very green kindling the boys drug into the living room (imagine that!), and we used up both fire-starters. The wood burned and charred but never really caught on fire.

The next night, I was determined to get a fire going. Don had mentioned to me that there was a cabin a few down the road from us that had wood under an overhang and it might be drier. I headed out with a flashlight. First I checked our woodpile and there, on the end, were beautiful, perfectly-sized kindling pieces. I examined each log separately and took in several that looked drier along with my beautiful kindling. Then I headed to the cabin next door. It was unoccupied, so I felt quite free to hit their woodpile. Sure enough, their wood was MUCH drier than ours. I chose about 6 nice logs and took them into our cabin.

Needless to say, within minutes I had a roaring fire. I think I piled on at least 6 logs at once. Eventually, it got so hot that I was able to put some of our logs on. The heat dried out the logs and they burned nicely. For 4 - 5 hours, I had a roaring fire, which was so hot at times that we had to open the front door to cool off the cabin.

The one piece I forgot to mention earlier is that I sent each boy into the front desk separately for fire-starters. Then I waited until a new employee was manning the desk and got two more.

Sunday morning, as we were dressing for church, I ran into the living room to check the fireplace; lots of ashes, two small, charred ends of logs pushed back into opposite corners. All my wood had burned nicely and completely. Don walked into the room and noticed me smiling as I looked at the fireplace.

"These people are going to be very happy to have you gone," he commented. When I looked up at him quizzically, he continued, "Never in the history of Kanuga has any one family gone through so many fire-starters and so much firewood."

Yup, I thought. That's what fireplaces are for. If they didn't want us to use them, they shouldn't have put them in the cabins.