I've seen fire, and I've seen rain.

The aroma of burning pine logs is a distinct and pleasant one, and the smell of that smoke conjurs up images of campfires past, of camping trips taken with the family or with Boy Scouts. A very pleasant trip down Memory Lane – until you realize that you’re smelling that pine smoke while inside your house, and you don’t have a fire going in the fireplace.

It was about ten days ago, when a line of powerful thunderstorms moved through the area, bringing the first measurable rainfall in months. Lots of lightning strikes nearby – almost enough to read by inside. Then one of them knocked out the power. Only for three seconds or so, but that was long enough to reset all the electrical appliances in the house. (Most notably, it reset the DVD player, and I’d gotten through almost all of the interminably long – 13 minutes and 20 seconds – end credits to the latest Harry Potter movie. Over 13 minutes! Of end credits! Gah! But that’s a rant for another day.) I wandered towards the office to check on my computer, when I started thinking about campfires of yore.

When I snapped out of my reverie, I realized that I was smelling the smoke while in my basement; with no doors or windows open. That got me moving. I quickly checked around inside to see if I could find the source of the smoke, and when I couldn’t, I went outside to look for flames. Glowing embers, at least. A quick check of my house and my neighbor’s didn’t reveal anything, so I went back inside for a raincoat. (It was still raining pretty hard, of course, but the need to quickly find the fire overrode any desire to stay perfectly dry.)

The smell of the smoke was very strong by my basement door, so that’s where I started my search. In a couple of minutes, I was 75 yards from my house, still looking without finding anything. I ran into some folks from around the corner and down a ways, who were searching from the other direction. They hadn’t seen anything, either, but had called the fire department. Indeed, we could hear the sirens, on the other side of a small woods. “I bet those sirens are from my call,” the neighbor said. “This street has two parts, and they’re not directly connected. They’ll have to go on a three-mile route to get from that part of this street to this one.” Sure enough, about six minutes later, the fire engines roared up. (You know, I’d be concerned about that response time and the fire trucks getting lost, if I lived on that street.)

The neighbors confirmed that they’d made the call, and everyone looked around for the source of the smoke. The firemen told us they’d gotten a lot of phone calls from the area, but no one calling in had actually seen the fire. Another report on the radio revealed that other firemen had now seen the fire, about 3 blocks away from us, across the woods. And with that, these fire trucks turned their sirens on and zoomed away.

By now, the smoke had dissipated, so I went back inside.