take me to the river

Tonight: Mostly clear. Lows 41 to 48. Northeast winds around 5 mph.
Saturday: Mostly sunny in the morning then becoming partly cloudy. Highs around 76. East winds around 10 mph.
Saturday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows 50 to 53. East winds around 5 mph.

As the locals know, the weather in North Florida ranges from hot as homemade sin to cold as a witch's tit in a brass bra. Somewhere between the season of massive heat and massive skeeters and the season of chilly damp followed by hard freezes, we get a couple of perfect weeks. Candy blue skies. Bonfire nights. Moonlight turning every leaf silver. Sunlight that warms your body without melting your soul.

Camping weather.

My ground tarp's cut, an 8 X 10 slice of an old billboard cover. My quilts are rolled tight and bound with a bungee cord. My cooler is washed out and waiting to be packed full of three days worth of canned beer. My backpack's crammed full of socks, drawers, notebooks, and novels.

All around town, I can imagine my friends. We've bounced a few messages off each other - I know we're all half out of town already. "I'll pick you up at 6, be ready." "We got plenty of food, don't hold us up once we get rolling." "Give me the address, I may need to stay last at work and come after."

I've got my mind fixed on one moment in time: past the hour and a half drive, past the unlocking of the gate and the turning on of the water supply, past setting up my tent in the dark (good thing I've got practice on that one), past gathering wood. The moment when we drag stumps and folding chairs up next to the fire, crack open our beers, and settle in to watch the night unfold.

Don't miss out on the good weekends, guys. You don't get a whole lot of them.

sparks

Bonfire season! The only thing better than smelling wood smoke on my clothes is smelling it on someone's skin. Fire consumes and reduces what feeds it, but when we feed on the flames our souls grow and swell.

Remember that fall that Tyggyr rented a room at Charles Mansion, and we congregated in the backyard to build fires and play baseball with beer bottles and flaming toilet paper rolls? And Jon threw a used up can of spray paint in the fire - twenty minutes later, we'd forgotten it was waiting there and it finally blew up with a bang and we all yelled and jumped back, but no one got hurt.

Remember when Shane built a rickety cardboard shack in back of Deb's work, a straggling affair of boxes with towers and crawlspaces? And we shot it full of bb holes, mostly while he danced around trying to keep it upright, and then lit it up and let the sparks singe the leaves above us.

Remember that New Years Day when my neighbors and I all drifted, hangovers in full effect, out to the little fire circle we hide downtown? And we all brought out what little food and booze leftover from the nights' party and shared it around while the fire crackled and Rob made a bellows out of a pizza box and a garbage bag. And someone dragged in a Christmas tree off the side of the street, and we stood it upright in the middle of the flames and created a 15 foot column of fire for just long enough to blow our minds.

Tomorrow night, I've got high hopes for a conflagration and a crowd of friends. Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy cold weather. Happy bonfire season.