We didn't start the fire

Ok, so... I have an embarrassing story to tell.

Last month APO went to the gorgeous Saylorville Lake for our chapter retreat. We were going to have a bonfire and make s'mores and have fun and all that good stuff.

Personally, few things in the world make me happier than a bonfire. I love the smell. I love being outside. I love getting dirt on my shoes. I love eating melty marshmallows on sticks... I love it all.

So I was pretty jazzed about this. Before I left my apartment, I went to the wooded area near my parking lot to get twigs and stuff for kindling. It hadn't rained in a while so everything was pretty dry and I was all excited.

I brought matches, too, just so you know that's not where the story is going.

Anyway, we get to the fire pit and I'm going to start this fire.

First of all, it should be said that all fire starting experience I've had has been in Colorado where if you breathe warmly on a pine needle it will ignite. We have had lightly smoldering cigarette butts that have started the entire state on fire. That's how dry things are.

In Iowa, there's a little something-something called humidity that, even though you can't always cut it with a knife like you can in July and August, is kind of always there anyway which makes the supposedly dry wood not all that dry.

So imagine my shock when we lit match after match after match and our lovely twigs weren't catching hardly at all. And when they did, the burned out pretty much immediately.

That's not to mention the fact that in Colorado, it isn't hard to find firewood. I'm pretty sure I remember walking around and just picking up branches and bigger pieces of wood along those lines and using it in the fire.

They don't do things like that at Saylorville and we, in fact, had to buy firewood from a massive trailer-looking thing that turned out to be a vending machine.

45 minutes and most of our supply of paper plates later, with no lighter fluid (I was far too confident in my ability to start a fire to use lighter fluid), we had a small but growing fire started.

And hour later, almost everybody got bored and left. So there you have it. But I was still proud of myself. And embarrassed. :P