Søren Kierkegaard’s observation that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards” is as true about pipe smoking as it is about most other aspects of life. When examined in the rear-view mirror there are lessons that only experience can teach.

These elusive insights are often counter-intuitive, striking me as things that could not possibly be true. Because I couldn’t imagine how they could have been true, I summarly ruled them out as explanations for things I couldn’t understand. Looking back, I wonder how much or how often I have ruled out the truth because I couldn’t understand what was going on. A particular example concerns the relationship between tamping tobacco in the bowl and keeping a pipe lit and flavorful throughout the bowl.

Like many younger pipe smokers I struggled for years to learn how to keep my pipe from going out. When I would hear about slow-smoking contests wherein some pipe smokers kept their pipe bowls smoldering for hours at a time, I marveled at the feat. “How?” I wondered, “were they able to nurse that smoldering cherry slowly downwards from crest to dottle?”