Upside Down

I made an upside-down fire the other day -- logs on the bottom, paper and kindling on top. It went against every natural instinct to form it this way. Forty years of building a traditional log cabin or teepee style. I'd seen this upside-down method done successfully, so kept going despite it feeling so wrong. I lit the paper and kindling on top, and it went up in a flare, as if the cake icing was infused with alcohol. And then it slowly and beautifully burned down through the middle of the logs. It's a unique and stunning burn, holding the fire within the solid foundation. And it lasts for hours -- it's resilient and independent. I'm converted -- something out of my view, and against the grain of tradition, now my new normal. How often we delete ways of doing things that don't match the way we've always done it.

*And found this great blog post from Tim Ferris on Upside Down Fires: 
https://tim.blog/2009/02/02/how-to-build-an-upside-down-fire/