Firewood for Sale

We have come to accept our fate with campfires on weekends when campgrounds tend to be the most crowded. We do our best to choose a good site upwind and downhill, close our windows at the first whiff of smoke, and wait it out. We look forward to Sundays.

Recently, though, Sundays have not brought the relief we long for, and sometimes things get worse. It happened in Abiquiu, and it happened again at Leasburg Dam State Park in Las Cruces.

Through the weekend a fire was started somewhere in the campground each night. For the most part we were upwind and spared most of the smoke.

We were in a nonelectric site and had a fair amount of space between us and the next campsite. Luckily, that site stayed empty all weekend. Then late Sunday afternoon, as we looked forward to a smoke-free night, a group drove up and began to set up at that campsite. They had a tent. Pat predicted a campfire was in our future. I stayed optimistic - until the camp host delivered two big bundles of firewood to the new arrivals.

When we arrived at the campground on Friday, we had noticed that below the sign marking the location of the camp host was another sign that read “firewood for sale,” which didn’t bode well.

And as Pat predicted, soon our new neighbors had a roaring fire going. Then it was out, and we thought we were free for the night. We opened our windows. Then they started it up again, and we closed our windows. After all, they had two bundles of wood to burn.

The next morning they left. Pat reminded me he had mentioned to the host during the weekend that we try to avoid campfires and wood smoke. He wondered if the camp host had even thought about that when he delivered the firewood to our neighbors.

“I doubt it,” I said. “First, it’s legal per the rules, and second, it’s a money source for the host. We didn’t stand a chance.”