If You Build It, They Will Come

If you're looking for an easy way to meet your neighbors, try starting a fire.

Not a little campfire, though. That just won't do. You gotta think bigger if you want this to work.

If you do it right, the neighbors will come.

Trust me.

One of the most unique changes I'm adjusting to out here is having to burn my own garbage. Before meeting Jared, I'd never even considered the possibility that people had to burn their own garbage. The only thing I'd ever known was putting the trash out by the curb once a week and bringing the empty can back to the house a few hours later. No problemo. Ok, so maybe there was a time or two in Salt Lake when I let the garbage cans sit on the curb all week. Have I mentioned that on occasion I can be...ummm....a little lazy?

Let me share a little something about myself: Unless I'm camping and have a roasting stick in my hand with a marshmallow on the end, I don't like fire. My brothers were the pyros growing up. Not me. My job when I was little was to stand guard at the side of the house with Heidi and keep watch for our parents while our brothers built little forts out of matches (and whatever else they could find) and then set their masterpieces ablaze.

My dislike of fire wasn't helped when a month before the wedding I was using a belt sander on the hardwood floor in our old-new house and had to emtpy the bag of sawdust on the pile of garbage that was burning behind the house. Who knew sawdust was that stinking flamable? Oh that's right....everyone but me. Thankfully I was wearing long sleeves and my hair was mostly back in a knot. A quick trip to the gal who cuts my hair fixed up any issues there. My eyelashes and eyebrows didn't fair so well, though. I was hopeful that they'd grow back before the wedding. Guess I didn't hope hard enough. I realized the other day, though, that they're finally back to a normal length. Yay!

 Anyway, my first three weeks of garbage burning out here went perfectly well. No mishaps at all. But then one evening what started out as a little bigger than this:

 

Blew into a pile of cow manure and leaves. And then into a pile of logs.

And turned into this:

 

And then this:

I think we ended up having six trucks stop by that night. Turns out all of our visitors live up the highway from us. Except for the BLM fire guy. He lives out in Worland. We saw more cars and trucks slowing down on the highway and one or two even sat and watched for awhile. I'm not sure how many calls were made to the fire department, but thankfully Jared's mom had already called the fire department and given them a heads up that we had it under control. And by "we" I mean Jared, Reed, and Parker.

It's pretty amazing what three men and a tractor can do.

It was fun meeting some of the neighbors though. They were all very friendly people. We don't really get many chances to visit with the neighbors out here. Our nearest actual neighbor is about a mile away... Initially I was worried that the solitude would drive me crazy. But it hasn't been too bad. I actually kind of like the peace and quiet.

The fire burned through most of the night and was mostly dead the next morning. It smoked for about a week and that was the end of it.

Or so we thought.

Two weeks later Jared and I went to Worland for our date night cause I was in desperate need of seeing people. (Despite my love for peace and quite, I still need to see people at least once a week to maintain my sanity.) We ended up not seeing a movie (our two options weren't that appealing) and eating dinner in the car (we would have gone inside but I saw a couple from the ward walk in when we got there...I told Jared that I just wanted to see people, not talk to them), but we still had a good time.

On our way home we were commenting on the big darkish cloud that had been in the sky all day and wondered if there was a fire somewhere. As we turned up the Nowood (the highway that we live on), we saw black smoke a few miles south of us. Jared said, "Well there's a fire right up there!"

- short pause -

"That kind of looks like our place."

- another short pause -

"Ohhhh shhhhhhoot....."

 

Yup. Another fire. Well, the same one, actually. (Not the same one that caused the dark cloud in the sky, although that would have been kinda cool.) Turns out Jared had dumped a few loads in the ditch earlier that day.

It had been two weeks...TWO WEEKS since our original fire. Thankfully the damage was minimal. Our temporary internet line was the thing only thing that needed saving. Lucky for me, Jared knows how to do that kind of thing.

 

I guess the Lymans weren't lying when they said that cow manure burns a really long time.

I think we're gonna stay away from that ditch for awhile.

Like maybe until next Spring.