Cold Air, Warm Fire, Repeat

Winter always has a way of sneaking up on me, expecting me to be ready and waiting for it. As if there will ever be a world in which I stretch, yawn, see my breath in the air first thing in the morning, and immediately think, “Yes, absolutely, let’s do months of this.”

I admire people who find winter as invigorating as any other season. Truly, I do. But they’re built differently. For the rest of us, winter feels more like a slow, dirge-like dimming of the entire world around us. Or at least that's the case until the day you decide to make your own light.

That’s where the fire pit comes in.

A Backyard That Becomes a Hearth

Our backyard is far from fancy. In fact, it's a little scruffy around the edges and absolutely half-feral in a couple of the distant corners. It's also lovingly guarded by Oscar and Bert, our plum trees, who have more raw personality than most people I’ve met.

But give the air a touch of that sharp bite of December, throw some wood into a metal pit with legs, and suddenly it turns into our very own warm winter hearth.

It's a modest ritual, to be sure. But if life's taught me anything over the years, it's that rituals don’t have to be solemn or ancient to also be effective. Sometimes they’re simply two people hunkering down outside in chairs, like stubborn woodland creatures refusing to let winter have the last word.

The Ceremony of Getting the Fire Going

Anyone who's ever tried to light a fire in cold weather knows it's its own little ceremony. Seth handles the flame part of the equation, because fire loves him and he loves it back.

I handle the mood-setting. The Christmas lights on the trees and along the fence, incense stubbornly drifting into our orbit from somewhere over my shoulder, maybe a little music if the speaker cooperates with the temperature. Sharp-spined holly clipped from our backyard bush in a rustic vase on the bistro table instead of flowers.

The neighborhood is always quiet in winter, like everything’s waiting to see what we’ll do next. There are no more kids out late playing at this point or impromptu backyard barbecues where the music always gets a little too loud. Instead, the air seems crisp and clean, like a blank page in a leatherbound journal, just waiting to be filled with new memories.

Then, sometimes after a little trying and much shivering, the fire finally catches.

Just a little at first, a shy flicker testing its boundaries, as fires do. But give it a few seconds and it's a new living thing developing confidence and finding its voice. Before we know it, we’re staring into something ancient and crackling and alive.

Fire always knows exactly what to do, and we love it all the more for that.

The Kind of Stillness You Can't Manufacture Indoors

Five minutes into staring at the flames, I noticeably feel my shoulders drop three inches. The knots in my stomach decide they have somewhere else to be. And the winter blahs — the money worries, the eternal pile of deadlines, and the nagging knowledge that my winters are numbered at this age? They don’t necessarily vanish, but they do loosen their grip.

This is usually the point where Seth starts doing his own personal fire pit shuffle. Poking the logs, adjusting the airflow, stepping back to admire his handiwork like he just negotiated a peace treaty between the elements. Meanwhile, I’m rotating myself every few minutes like a marshmallow trying not to wind up irrevocably burnt on one side.

Nights like these are never complicated. Mostly, we just sit and talk a little, falling silent from time to time. Sometimes we put on a movie or enjoy a treat. We listen to the wood popping and the wind skimming the tops of the fence posts.

It’s the easiest form of magic in the world — two humans remembering they're alive and possess the ability to chase away the cold when it all becomes a little too much.

The Smoke That Stays With You

One of my favorite things about fire pit night is coming back inside smelling like a forest witch who successfully bartered with a chimney, because something about woodsmoke in winter hits differently. It's sharper, almost sweet, as if it picks up notes of frost and nighttime on the way up.

It clings to my hair, the shawls I love to wear (because nothing beats a good shawl), and even my mood in the best possible way. I can still smell it in the morning.

Because winter has a real knack for turning small comforts into genuinely sacred things. Fire pits becomes a ritual cauldrons, and take-out pizza becomes an offering of the most profound kind. A quiet night with a partner becomes the heartbeat of the colder months. Sol invictus.

Casual Habits Become Tradition

At this point, I have many personal rituals and traditions, but none of them started that way — as deliberate attempts to establish something that matters.

Instead, they creep in. You do something once because it sounds nice. Then you do it again because it was nice. One day, you look back at a pattern you've created, and only then do you speak of it as a tradition.

We weren't trying to create anything meaningful the first time we lit the fire pit. We just needed a way to stay warm one night that was a little too chilly. Now it's woven into the season itself, as naturally as the way the sky turns a deeper blue this time of year or how the air smells faintly metallic after dark.

Winter is harsh, but it also leaves much room for softness, if you're open to the possibility. The world opens up outside. Cold air is blunt but honest, fire is generous, and between the two is a perfect potential pocket of clarity. At this point, I’ve probably solved more life problems staring into those flames than I could have with any amount of scrolling.

Carrying the Glow Back Indoors

When we’ve eventually had all we can take of the chill, we bank the embers and head back inside.

Cold cheeks, warm rooms, and golden indoor lights glowing softly. We put away what's left of the pizza or whatever else we might have eaten. We do the dishes before retiring to our room to chip away at our never-ending holiday movie queue.

The fire pit is behind us at that point, but the feeling of it lingers with the kind of internal glow that follows you long into the rest of the winter night.

For me, it's a reminder of what winter is truly for — remembering how to manufacture your own light. Our fire pit doesn’t chase away the darkness, but it gives us something warm to gather around until the days start waxing brighter and longer again.

In that way, life can become deceptively simple this time of year.

All I really need to make it through in one piece is a cold night, a crackling fire, and the right person sitting beside me — the kind who knows exactly when to poke the logs and when to sit quietly and let the sparks rise into the dark.