We start thinking about cold weather this time of year. It’s nice right now but the niceties can change in the course of a few hours. That being said we take every opportunity to collect wood from various sources. This past weekend Ringo and I went up with some friends to the mountains to gather wood. We all pitched in together and came home with several loads of lodge pole pine firewood. I have trailer envy. Look at that nice big trailer compared to Grey Beards ski-doo trailer. Ringo is a good worker. He turned ten years old on this day. I asked him if it could get any better than being in the mountains collecting wood with his dad and he kind of grunted. He reminded me he had a birthday party that afternoon and we needed to work fast to make it in time. Here’s our load. Not quite as big as the big trailer. We had to take off to make it to Ringo’s shin dig but I was told they filled up this trailer another time along with another couple of small trailers. It’s quite a bit of work to drag out these poles but the wood is great and it’s fun to work with a bunch of guys instead of doing it all by yourself. We made it back to the birthday party (late of course as we didn’t stop working in time) and filled up the back of the truck with a different kind of lodge pole pines. Ringo wanted to head down to the river and have a hot dog roast for his party. The sun came out and all the kids jumped in the water although they didn’t last that long as it is mid October here and the water is quite cold this time of year. But the kids are tough as nails as you can see by this guy. It’s nice to have a bunch of kids around on days like this because if one goes in the water they all have to so they are not out done. After about an hour a wind storm came through and all the kids huddled around the fire. We though we may be stuck down there the rest of the winter. But after fifteen minutes the weather turned decent again and we were able to haul everyone back home wrinkled, sandy, but unscathed. I’m pretty sure Ringo like the river portion of the day better than collecting wood in the mountains but I enjoyed the whole day tremendously. I think we’ll head up for another load soon before the snow flies. You can’t have too much wood in our part of the world. You never know when you’ll feel like heading down to swim in the river and need a nice big fire to warm everyone up.