Evening at the Shark Hole

Chuck has blacksmithing dreams. He has drooled over forges and forge plans for a few years, took at beginners' course last year, has begun renovating a shed and mail-ordered himself an anvil. Without a retail source of coal anywhere near, he settled on charcoal as a fuel source for his forge-to-be. Charcoal can be made easily, by cooking it in an oxygen-depleted environment.

Last summer he was beginning work on a charcoal burner, using an old oil drum, digging a hole in the ground in which to situate it. Fiona asked what he was doing. "I want to be able to make my own charcoal." Fiona looked again with big eyes at the hole he was digging. She reported to the rest of us "Daddy's building a shark hole!"

Now she's four, and savvy and sophisticated, and she knows that we are not going to be keeping cartilaginous fish in a hole in the forest floor. But we still call the charcoal burner the Shark Hole.
And when it's a cool spring evening and there's a really hot burn going, with the thermometer on the drum is pushing 700 degrees, the Shark Hole is a nice place to be. There are sticks to dig with, pine cone collections to build, all sorts of things to discover under the canopy of the woods, and the fire keeps you warm.