A dense fog swept down and across our Columbia-Pacific outpost like a heron with broad wings. The fog fluttered and swooped while night sounds crowded through the lighter spaces between the thick dark evergreen. It was my birthday, and friends had invited Laurie and me out for a barbecue. I was feeling happy.

Two new friends from Seattle, Rolande Chesebro and Glenn Leichman, purchased a few acres of wooded paradise on the south end of Willapa Bay, built a second home and an open-walled cook shack where they gather and cook, sharing wine and food with friends. The whole structure was homemade from timber gathered on the property inexpensively, sensitively and offered as an open invitation for happy gatherings amid the outdoors of the great Pacific Northwest, no matter what the weather.

Glenn fired up the wood barbecue and started a warming fire in an open clay stove. Flames leaped into the night air, roiling like free spirits. Rolande had marinated spot-prawns, cod and scallops on wooden skewers. I contributed by opening a bottle of Oregon Pinot Gris. Close to nature close to home we pondered the equation of lush environment and our choice to live where we do. Why we chose our homeland with Douglas fir and western cedar and ocean and river. Why such a place speaks to us. How it shapes and pleases. But, how sometimes, with busy work schedules and obligations to family and community, we simply forget how lucky we are.

Flames from kindling and tree bark danced in the dank air and we drew closer, talked lower, as if the night branded us with a certain intimacy. When the firewood had transformed to coals, we seared the seafood. Rolande crafted a salad from their abundant garden and soon we ate the simple beautiful food from bay and ocean with relish and gusto. Oh, how good it all tasted under open air, the bonfire crackling, the night air clinging, and our laughter erupting.

Of course, one could light a campfire in one’s own backyard, or on one of our stunning beaches that define both sides of the Columbia River Estuary. Laurie and I have a fire pit of our own, in our cozy backyard. However and this is the human predicament I’m sorry to say we haven’t lit it in some time. Our two friends, fully accustomed to the challenges of city living, reminded us that such easy communion can happen frequently.

That night, under the blanket of fog, something in or on the silky wind seemed to tell us, remind us, that this should not be an uncommon experience. Even in winter, dressed appropriately, Rolande and Glen’s simple cook shack with wooden frame and a tin roof brings people together and baptizes them with fundamental joy.

We left the rough-hewed cedar plank table and walked out to the bay, a parting ritual. The moon was trapped in the fog, but a rich luminescence danced through, touching, at low-water, the bars and sand spits and pools of still water that define this bay once called the Shoalwater. The stillness played out a song of its own. Like attentive schoolchildren, we took it in.

The campfire and dear friends closed a gap like the circling of Conestoga wagons of our ancestors, those high-plains pioneers. And aren’t we enriched by these simple experiences, by fire, flame, conversation and simple shelter to warm us?