A crackling campfire brings to mind crisp mountain air, smelly pines, and sizzling wieners. Yes, summer isn’t summer until you’ve spent some time burning marshmallows around a campfire. Sadly, Jason and I have not made it to the mountains for any camping or roasting yet this season. Although we plan on remedying that insufficiency soon, last week instead of going to the campfire we brought the campfire to us.

Jason’s family is peopled with July birthdayers, too many for individual recognition I’m afraid, so this year their specialness was celebrated in bulk. In way of birthday festivities we ate a yummy Dutch oven meal and then took the party to the pit.

Keith and Sue own a rather large plot of land and they’ve added a fire pit to its topography. While this pit doesn’t have the accompanying scenic splendor you’ll find when lighting a glow on any of Utah’s majestic peaks, it does provide more than enough smoke and flames to give you that signature mountaintop reek.

That evening our group formed a large circle around those flaming logs and ineffectively played musical chairs with the blaze’s persistent billows until the scorched mallows and smoke inhalation left us a little buzzed. You always suspected that most of the Sabins were headed for a fiery inferno, right?

I have to admit that those suburban fire rings are pretty snazzy. You can just pop into the backyard with your bag of marshmallows, roasting stick, and camp chair and voila! You’ve got yourself an instant nearly-authentic campfire experience right down to the stinky hair.

It was a nice and odorous way to celebrate our bunch of July birthdays. Who says that pits have to be full of despair?