As we have for the past decade or two, Wendy and I celebrated Easter this year by attending the Grace Church Sunrise Service. Actually, I only attended the service; Wendy, along with fellow Gracie Beulah Downing, organized the service. As in past years, I had only one real responsibility: I was in charge of starting a fire in the metal fire pit that sits in front of Grace’s outdoor baptismal font.
Now, as you know, Easter is a big day for Christians. It’s sort of like the non-secular equivalent of having St. Patrick’s Day, the Fourth of July and the NCAA March Madness championship game all fall on the same Sunday morning. And while the Bible doesn’t make any direct reference to it, I am sure that a large bonfire played some part in that first Easter morning more than two millennia ago. Accordingly, I take my role as official firestarter for the Grace Sunrise Service very seriously.
As in past years, I selected and gathered my firewood for this Easter’s fire several weeks in advance and placed it under a clear shower curtain I found in the garage to be sure it remained dry. For this year’s fire, I selected a large armful of bone-dry alder kindling, some choice pieces of beech I salvaged from a wind-downed tree, lots of fir harvested from my own backyard to provide crackle and pop as well as a little aroma, and miscellaneous pieces of madrone, spruce and what might have been applewood.
The Sunrise Service starts around 5:30 a.m., so I like to have a large roaring fire going by no later than about 5:00 a.m. To be sure I’d be in a position to deliver such a blaze at such an hour, I took my wood and kindling up to Grace the afternoon before Easter and stacked it near the fire ring under the shower curtain. I also cleaned out the fire pit to ensure proper air circulation for optimal combustion and minimal smokage. I arranged the kindling in a pyramid and layered on some of the larger logs and then returned home, returning around 4:45 a.m. on Easter morning with matches in hand and resurrection on my mind.
This year, Easter morning was clear and calm and I had no trouble getting a lovely fire going. In years past, I’ve had to battle drizzle and early morning wind that blew smoke into the faces of the assembled crowd and made me feel like a fire-starting failure. This year’s Sunrise Service came off without a hitch. Before leaving Grace, I stoked the fire and made sure there was plenty of firewood to keep a fire going through the later Grace Easter Sunday Services, which cater more to families, night owls and general slackers.
In addition to my fire-starting duties on Easter morning, the other thing I always associate with Spring is the beginning of baseball season in Seattle. In that spirit, I attended my first Mariner game of the year the week before Easter with my old friend Ty, who was up from San Luis Obispo visiting his daughter in Seattle.
It was a good game, and not just because the Mariners won. It was a good game because I was warm and comfortable even when the Arctic chill that routinely settles on the stadium in early-season night games set teeth chattering and legs shaking through our little group. I was toasty warm because I was wearing a battery-powered heated down vest that Wendy gave me for Christmas. I’m pretty sure I could have sold the thing for any price I asked to the poor frozen fans shivering around me. I did offer to let Ty and his family take turns putting their hands in my heated pockets for short periods of time for a very modest and reasonable ‘friends and family’ fee. Oddly, I got no takers.
Based on the results of that game, as well as the play of the Mariners over the past couple of weeks, I think I can now officially forecast that the Mariners will throw off their misadventures and missed opportunities of past years and bring playoff baseball back to Seattle. And when they do, there will be a celebratory and fragrant bon fire lighting up the south end of the island in their honor, assuming I can remember where I left my matches and shower curtain.
Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.
