They call it hillbilly incense.

The putrid, toxic plastic smell of the rural burn barrel. The trash fire that consumes most of the waste of the rural household and the farm, allowing them to only haul their unburnable waste to the landfill, trash pit or recycling center once a year or so.

It’s become rare in New York except for the most outlying places due to the burn ban – most people now haul their trash to the transfer station, get a big old dumpster or get weekly service. Some trash gets recycled but in many cases recycling is fairly impractical in rural areas.

But I smelled some burning while I was driving up to camp and thought it might be my brakes dragging as they’ve been a bit noisy from the glaze I got on them the other day. But it was just another trash fire. Yuck.