The Summer We Were Sixteen: Part IV - Ozz

In Australia, summer is Dec-Feb, so my 16th birthday was right before the end of the school year. I remember it clearly because as a 10th grade Elective PE student I had the opportunity to be part of the 7th grade swimming lessons program which lasted a week. Being one of the top swimmers I was assigned with the advanced class which had my sister in it. Bad idea, we get along WAY too well. All week we goofed off during the lessons.
The last day of the lessons was a pool party and my birthday. One of my best friends at the time gave me a stuffed toy sheep with a bib which read: Best Friends. It was possibly the coolest gift ever because I have a weird sheep fetish.
The whole day was a blast, and I ended up sun burnt. So my sixteenth birthday party that night I was as red as a lobster. But a few weeks later I had a nice bronze tan and my hair was sun-bleached.
Like most summers, I spent it at the pool or beach, but that year we had really bad fires around and after Christmas. We lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and that area is a tinderbox. When fire season kicks in, the smell of smoke lingers for weeks. But that year was really bad. Before Christmas almost an entire neighborhood was lost, leaving them stranded for Christmas.
By mid-January, a 30km front was heading straight for the line of towns in which we lived. So a burn off was set into place in the bush which our home fronted. I remember we had to take the dogs inside and lock them up because they freaked out, and wildlife slithered and scampered up into the streets as we watch the firefighters set our bush on fire.
It did the trick though. The fire had nothing to burn, so when it met with the burn off, it went out or changed course away from all the homes. I remember at night going to a lookout and seeing the orange glow crawling down the mountainside like a slow lava flow. It felt so eerie.
A few days later, Dad decided he wanted to go take a look at "our" bush. So we hiked down to a small creek with the dogs. On the way back, I slipped on some ash, and underneath embers still smoldered. It stung like crazy, and I obviously cried and the dogs rushed over to lick my face in their dog-sympathy kind of way.
We rushed home to hose my leg off and found a nice burn from my knee down my shin. To this day I still have a small amount of ash trapped under my skin on my knee.
So, that was my summer when I was sixteen.

~Ozz