...really are the best. After not having an electricity-free night for a couple of weeks (has it really been that long?), we decided to have a winter night out - in the backyard. It was a beautifully still night, a couple of possums swung by to say hello (we have a possum-box in the tree next to the house after evicting them from the inside of our roof a few months ago) and we even lit a fire.
I know what you're thinking, because I'm thinking it too: burning wood = carbon in the atmosphere = high impact. But we had to dispose of some wood (and old chairs, without sending them to landfill) so we lit a fire. It's one of the things I most enjoyed about having a backyard, before the No Impact project. And there's the rub. How to do things you enjoy, and have a no-impact ethos at the same time.
I'm not sure if having a small fire in the backyard emits more or less CO2 than having all the lights on in the house, and I'm going to look into that, but in the meantime, sitting on a couple of rickety cane chairs (which were spared the flames), with beeswax candles burning nearby and the possums, and cooking veggie burgers on the gas barbecue, felt simple and good. Like something I would have done with my family as a kid. And apart from the fire, it was a low-impact evening.
It's all about balance, and transparency. I'm not as close to living a no-impact live as I'd like to be, but while I'm on this mission I'd like to be as honest as I can about what I'm doing (and not doing). How about you? It's confession time. What high-impact things would you rather not live without?
I reckon the fire last nite contributed a mere hardly measurable amount of carbon compared to the hazard reduction burn we all tasted in Sydney the next morning -Craig
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