The way is dark and winding and lined with trees. Snow falls softly on the road, through the headlights, in the woods, and onto Puget Sound. We park our car and approach the bonfire, unsure of the company surrounding it.

"You'll have slept with half the people here before you go," Jeff informs us as we shift our way into the gathering. We laugh awkwardly.

It is colder than Dick Cheney's all-seeing cyborg eyes, and we can't stand close enough to the fire. The circle of people, spanning what appears to be three generations, seems to be in high spirits. Light conversation skitters around from topic to topic and is occasionally deadened by a freight train passing in the dark. Somewhere out in the tide flats below, a lone person slowly walks away from the water and toward our warmth. Jeff pulls a brown Christmas tree from the night surrounding the fire, and somebody presciently remarks that "this will be a thermonuclear event." He chucks the dead festive fir straight into the inferno, and a few seconds later a 10-foot-high flame bursts into the sky. A woman standing to our left says, in a wavering voice, "I'm worried about the small children." Little kids are pulled away from the blaze.

We slip into the night, leaving the smell of marshmallows and sausages behind us, stumbling against park benches and feeling the prick of freezing mist on our faces. It has been a good long day and it is ending well.

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