Smelly Smoke (à la Campfires)

There are few pleasures in life greater than sitting with friends around a campfire. Making s’mores. Drinking beers. Listening to music.

All is well with the world when you’re tipsy, singing at the top of your lungs, and stuffing you mouth with chocolatey-melted-marshmallow-graham-cracker deliciousness.

That is, of course, until you wake up in the morning REEKING of fire (with a side of headache from the booze and tummy ache from eating fifteen s’mores).
Why does enjoying a nice campfire go hand in hand with stinking like smoke for a week? I’ve had the exceedingly grand opportunity to be present at not one, but TWO campfires in the past few weeks.

One on the rooftop of an apartment on the Lower East Side (ridiculously amazing), and one at my country home.

I don’t know what was up with the flames from the first fire but boy oh boy. Tried washing the stench out of my hair day after day and it JUST WOULDN’T GO AWAY!

Luckily the fire aromas in the country didn’t stick to me like Velcro. Perhaps the wood was different. Or all that open air made the smoke disperse more evenly.

Whatever the case, it is a FACT that bonfires leave ya stinking. It’s so unfortunate! Your hair smells offensive for a least a week – no matter how many bottles of coconut shampoo you go through. Your clothes need to be washed immediately or face ruination. Even your sheets absorb the unbearable, foul, fetid smoke! And that’s just from sleeping on them!


Ugh.

Why can’t there be a better way to enjoy a fire? Why do the vaporous fumes have to be inherent?
Smoke burns your eyes, makes them tear up. It makes you choke and cough (which isn’t good for the ole vocal cords when you’re belting out Kumbaya!) But most importantly, it makes you smell. And it’s not a nice smell!

Can someone please invent smokeless campfires? They would be oh-so-convenient. Life changing, I daresay!

Alas, I suppose that's highly improbable.

At least, at least there is a teense bit of redemption. For friends that frolic around fires together, stink of smoke together.