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ognisko

Conestee and Ognisko

Sunday 13 October 2024

This afternoon, we went to our favorite park — the first time since Helene. We knew a lot of the trails would be closed: those winding through the forest would have trees blocking the way, and those along the coast of the small lake were boardwalks and would likely be destroyed.

Most of the unpaved trails were closed; not all were. Most of the boardwalks were washed out; not all were.

In the evening, a party — the best parties are often the unplanned parties.

“We’re having our first ognisko tonight. You should come.”

“Okay — we’ll bring dessert.”

The evening flows, a bottle of vodka appears, the evening continues, the bottle is empty. A Sunday-night party that ends just a little later than it should.

Family Ognisko

Friday 29 July 2022

One of the things that must happen during a trip to Polska (from the point of view of our children anyway) is an ognisko in Spytkowice. We tried three times this visit — three weekends — and got rained out each time.

It looked like this time we’d get rained out as well, so we did the simple and obvious thing: moved the ognisko to Jablonka, where there’s a covered gazebo. Problem solved. Ognisko complete.

0% “beer” is all the rage now

Two Days in a Row

Sunday 3 October 2021

It’s gradually cooling off, which means we might be spending more time around our fire pit.

We cooked dinner over it two nights in a row now, and I’m already thinking about what to cook next weekend.

Ognisko

Saturday 23 April 2016

Spring in the South. Morning temperatures in the low fifties. Afternoon temperatures twenty to twenty-five degrees warmer. In other words, spring in the South is summer in Poland. And summer in Poland means one thing: bonfires.

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A home in the South with an enormous tree requires one thing: a tire swing.

Cooking over Fire

Saturday 24 October 2015

Except for organized, group events, I don’t remember really having any kind of bonfire growing up. It just wasn’t something we did. Part of it was likely where I grew up, for certainly kids who grew up in the country must have had bonfires. But for those of us who grew up in developments planned right down to the arrangement of identical-floor-plan houses, it probably never happened. At least it never happened in my universe.

For K, on the other hand, growing up in Poland, they were like baseball games or tailgating in the south: just something one did. Go for a walk in any of the woods that surround K’s home village and you’ll eventually find a spot where some group or other threw some rocks in a circle and lit a fire. And many houses have a fire pit somewhere on the property.

Since Nana and Papa gave us a fire ring that someone gave them — it’s Christmas all year round in our backyard — we’ve been having bonfires fairly reguarly as the weather permits, which means generally spring and fall. Open fires in 90 degree heat and pea-soup humidity are not very pleasant, but now that things have cooled down and the humidity has dropped to normal level, we try to have a little fire every now and then. The kids adore it, and we find it’s an almost magical family time. But there was always something missing: food. We roasted weenies on sticks sometimes and made s’mores every now and then, but that’s nothing compared to the feasts Poles prepare on their bonfires. This week, though, we bought a cheap kit to suspend a grill over the flames, and tonight, it was like being back in Lipnica again.

Pyzówka Ognisko

Friday 10 July 2015

The day started with a walk. The walk. The walk we go on several times while we’re here. The walk K and I took together countless times before moving to the States. That walk.

It starts in “town,” so to speak, with fairly common rural Polish views — the metal worker neighbor who also raises ducks and chickens in his yard. K’s parents used to have a similar little farm where they raised chickens, rabbits, the occasional pig. During the Communist period, there were so few goods in the shop that it really was the only way to have access to certain items on a reliable basis.

But within a few moments, the walk leads us into the fields, away from any house. Or at least it used to be that way. These days, the houses are moving further and further into the fields. People are converting beet or potato fields into lots.

But it’s still fairly rare to find single houses out in the middle of a field. They still tend to clump together near the two main roads that go through Jabłonka. We went out in search of mud, getting the kids dressed out in gum boots and jackets, and both kids were completely convinced that we’d find plenty of mud.

We walked among fields of potatoes and various grasses

but in the end, we could only find a few mud puddles. And when we did find puddles, the kids took turns in the small puddles.

In the end, we walked probably close to two and a half miles and had only a little mud on the gum boots to show for it.

In the evening, we headed back to Pyzówka to visit with K’s nearly-sister and a mutual friend from Warsaw whom they met more than twenty years ago at a summer camp and stayed in touch since. The last time the three couples got together, we were, more or less, just that. Three couples. One couple had become a family, but the rest of us were childless and thus, in a certain sense, without responsibility.

Ten years later and among the three couples, six kids are running around. Well, five kids running around and a beautiful nine-month-old taking turns in everyone’s arms.

There were some things that were fairly standard: there was a cook out over an open fire with plenty of meat.

The amount of meat in the average Pole’s diet always made me wonder about those Poles who were vegetarian. These days, that’s a much easier dietary choice. In the mid-90s, it seemed to me that for a rural Pole to be vegetarian, it meant essentially eating potatoes and cabbage and cheese.

Going into the average rural shop in the midst of winter seemed to confirm that suspicion, but perhaps it was just a linguistic issue: I really wouldn’t have been able to ask freely about winter vegetarian dietary options that first winter.

This time around, I’m not the one having linguistic difficulties. The Girl has blossomed into a fairly fluid speaker, but the Boy still struggles. When playing with children, he tends to keep fairly quiet, occasionally saying things like, “Watch this!” but mostly being a silent participant.

But L was the same way, if memory serves, so I’m not terribly worried about it, and K is not concerned at all.

The day ended with the promise of a beautiful sunset, but unfortunately, the cloud cover returned, and it was a typical gray affair.

But that’s okay too. I always grow a little nostalgic when I return to Poland, and the gray, cold days filled with the smell of coal smoke as people heat their houses in early July fits that nostalgia just fine.

Bonfires, Walks, and a Jet

Monday 22 June 2015

I make a pile of the junk found in the basement today as I cleaned: broken hoe handles, bird feeders that had seen their last winter so long ago that I can’t even remember using them, spare wood that I’ve been saving — triangles, short pieces, long half broken pieces, even two broken pool cues well over a year after we gave away our pool table on Craigslist, a pizza box a little over a week old that had been sitting in a refrigerator that entire time holding bits of Howie’s bread that I’ve been nibbling on here and there. A pile of trash collected through the day will soon be nothing bad nothing but ash.

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Ordinarily I would be a bit worried about starting a fire this late in a South Carolina June. Usually the grass is brutally brittle by now and brown, but back to back monsoons have thoroughly soaked the ground so that the grass looks like it’s early May, and there should be no danger. Still I keep the hose pipe next to me just in case a stray ember ignites a small patch of grass light or, perhaps worse, a concerned neighbor (read: worried; read: nosey?) calls the authorities. “Yes officer, I have a means to extinguish the fire immediately right beside me. No, officer I do not have a permit.”

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It’s probably appropriate that today of all days I have set a fire a bonfire in our backyard, for today Kinga and the kids went for a walk down to the small river that runs through Jablonka, near which teens for decades burned bonfires legally (possibly) and down vodka illegally. When we still lived in Poland, K and I took numerous walks to that same spot. I took my parents to that spot when they came in 2004 for our wedding. I took L to that spot several times when we spent the summer there together in 2013. It’s about a mile from her house, maybe more, but it always seems both shorter order and longer, a path through fields of potatoes, beets, cabbage, grass for livestock. It’s comfortably known, that walk, and it’s always one of the very first things we do when we go back

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Bonfire always makes you think all is well with the world. They’re so calming, so simple, so primitive, so hypnotic. Just sitting looking at the fire (and if you’re lucky enough to hear the crickets around you) seems to square everything in the world. Even if you’re an adult who never really experienced bonfires as a child, it still seems to bring about a rebirth of youth, If you’re with friends, conversation always leave early always meaningful and always nostalgic; if you’re alone, you feel as if you’re the only person on Earth. You can hear cars passing in the distance, your neighbors chatting on their back porch, but you’re still alone in the world.

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I sit in the backyard at our fire thinking of my family in Poland as I hear a jet fly overhead, approaching the regional airport some 15 miles away. I miss them terribly, and our daily Skype chat is a small little blessing. Yet I’m strangely content because because I know that, like the bonfire, the separation is only temporary. And that’s really the trick to getting on in the world contentedly: understanding that so much of it is temporary and making your peace with that simple fact.

Just Before Bedtime

Tuesday 31 March 2015

With the days growing longer, we tend to stay out until the last minute, until it’s absolutely bath time. The kids stay out, that is — the adults take turns. Some days we play; today we work, which means E plays, which means he works. Which means, potentially, he makes an enormous mess for me. Which is why I watch him, guide him, and probably say “No” more times than I should. We get ready a small bonfire for when our guests arrive. We’re planning an ognisko as part of our Easter celebrations — with Polish Mass at 3:00, things tend to stretch into the evening — but we might light it up a day or two earlier. No matter: E will gladly rebuild it.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday 8 February 2015

Sunday afternoons have some standard events, and right in the center of those events is afternoon exploring. Today, though, we threw a wheelbarrow into the mix, and spent a bit of time collecting wood.

The wood? For the first bonfire of the year.

Ognisko in Spytkowice

Friday 12 July 2013

“Don’t folks in America have summer homes?” The word Babcia used was the Polish version of да́ча (“dacha”), a Russian term for a seasonal home, often in the forest or at the lake.

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Family homes often serve that role here in Poland.

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Someone stays behind; everyone else marries and moves away. The result: a summer home.

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Then everyone — aunts, uncles, children, grandchildren — can spend the summer there. And if there’s enough room, one can even set up a soccer field.

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A few apple trees and you have the perfect place for a swing.

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And of course, there’s the obligatory fire pit.

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Ognisko

Sunday 16 June 2013

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A simple concept: some wood, some sausage, a match or two, a loaf of bread, something to drink, someone to share it all with. Put it all together, though, and it somehow becomes more than the sum of its parts. Add the laughter of children and it becomes positively magical. The conversation winds through topic after topic as the sausage begins to sizzle, and as the sun sets and everyone pats their bellies, literally or figuratively, one gets an almost divine feeling.

“And we looked out over the sausage and steaming tea, heard the laughter and watched the glowing embers and dimming sun, and lo, it was good.”