The Simple Things

Years and years ago, I worked in a place where, once the time change hit, it was a ghost town. One day it would be a beautiful autumn day, people walking with dogs, parents playing with kids in the golden sun, and then BAM. The time change hit and in the blink of an eye it was dark, cold, and all the excited people who had been there just the day before were gone, onto better, more exciting things.

And me and my co-workers were left behind, a long winter ahead of us.

One day after the time change, my co-worker and I were at work, trying to get used to the fact we were in for it for the next several months. Out of the three roads that let us leave our little town for the outside world, one or more of them would be closed at any given time because of weather, rockfall, flooding, or a vehicle crash. The light had left us.

I sat at a desk, staring at nothing, when my co-worker said, "I brought us something."

Through my impending seasonal depression, I managed to be slightly curious. He produced a cloth tote bag and began to methodically take things out of it.

First: Tinfoil. Followed by two wooden forks. Then several pads of butter. A salt shaker. A pepper shaker. Two leather gloves. And finally, two potatoes.

"You brought us some raw potatoes?" I said.

"We're going to cook them on a burn pile," he said.

At this time of year, the local fire crews were burning as much slash as possible because we all knew, next summer would be the worst fire season of time (in perpetuity).

"Let's go," he said.

We jumped in the car and drove to one of the giant burn piles. When we arrived, it was indeed on fire. The fire crews had stacked the dead and down so high, they'd needed heavy machinery to do it. While most of the land had a blanket of snow, there was no snow for many feet surrounding the burn pile.

We carefully wrapped our potatoes in foil and approached the roaring bonfire. Eventually, we found a spot at ground level which had smoldering logs and lots of coals.

My friend put on the gloves and buried our potatoes. We kicked a final few glowing coals over the potatoes, and for the first time since the time change, I felt excited. By potatoes, which then made me sad because I felt like maybe my life was really off track. But I decided to roll with it and revel in the foreign sensation being excited.

"Let's come back in an hour and check on them," he said.

I was game.

So we left, did whatever we did, which probably wasn't very much that time of year, and finally returned to our potatoes. By now, I was bursting with glee at the fact our potatoes might be done.

We dug the tin-wrapped tubers out of the fire using the leather gloves, cracked the foil, and found, they were done.

We located a picnic table and my friend once again solemnly set out the butter, salt, and pepper. We decorated our potatoes with seasonings and ate them while ravens yelled at us from trees.

I hate potatoes, but those were the best baked potatoes I've ever had in my life. It sounds silly, that cooking some potatoes on a burn pile during the some of the darkest months of the year would be so invigorating, but it was. To this day, I remember it fondly. My friend wasn't excited about the winter. I wasn't excited about the winter. But for a few hours on a dark day, we hung out and had the simmering potential of a hot potato for lunch.

And it was everything.