Those of us who are drawn into the outdoors by some unrelenting force and who simply can’t stay inside because something might be happening outside, are keenly attuned to the ancient ritual known as the campfire. If we let our thoughts drift back and sift through the hours spent around campfires, it cheers us that the things we remember are good. Campfires have a way of making things better. Things that are done or thought or said or felt around campfires are often things that enrich us.

Anyone who has discovered upon setting up camp that a campfire was ruled out because of wet or absent firewood, knows true disappointment. Campers need a campfire. It is my position that it is better for cooking, heat and light than our recent convenient equipment. But a campfire is much, much more.

The creation of a campfire stimulates camp cooperation and those who take part in building it share themselves and feel a common stake in the camping experience. It is where camaraderie happens; it’s where the evening rest begins.

Ambience

What the campfire provides to a camp is atmosphere. Some of my most memorable campfires heightened my life experience in the formative years of Boy Scouting. There were campfires around which skills were taught and practiced, and insight into human relations was learned without my realizing it at the time. Ghost stories were poignant around dancing flames. Remember ghost stories? I miss them.

There were campfires for young people in church groups way back when. These were provided by wise counselors who knew about the campfire experience and cared about kids.

And how valuable are the memories of close friends with whom we spent time around campfires, distant now in time and space? Such campfires are often gathering points for our best feelings, some that we express verbally to each other and others that we share silently.

As a mature camper, I often wonder if a particular campfire will be the last one I share with my companion on that trip. A campfire becomes a microcosm of the reality in life that we never know which day is our last one. That realization adds even more to the significance and meaning of a campfire. I once wrote about this aspect of campfires and a friend used my words to comfort the widow of another friend who died before the two could be together again around another campfire in Africa. Campfires spawn heavy stuff.

It is quite often that the scene of a campfire I once shared with a special friend passes across my mind’s eye. Though it was many years ago my memory takes me there in seemingly real time. My friend and I are there hovering close to the light and warmth and subtle crackling of our campfire, a tiny spark consumed by the vast darkness of a Smoky Mountain night. Not much is being said, but a lot is being experienced.

Ally against the cold

Another friend and I built a special, flesh thawing fire far away from our base camp in frozen deer woods many years ago. I call it a campfire because it had that inexplicable quality of being the center of a significant happening. We had let our quest for a whitetail buck keep us far too long in the bitter blizzard.

When my friend happened upon me and we looked at each other’s blue faces, we both knew we were in for trouble if we didn’t get warm soon. As the flames brought us back from the edge of frostbite, our talk was light but our feelings were heavy. The great respect we had for each other as hunters and as persons somehow heightened that day as we shared our urgency and together rescued each other from the icy claws of hypothermia.

That friend died many years ago as he was much my senior. But I still share that warm campfire with him in my memory.

With these few lines I have praised the campfire, but I have fallen short in several attempts to define it. Yet if some uninitiated adventurer heeds the praise and is influenced to seek the campfire experience, he or she will become involved in its meaning for themselves, which is where the real definition lies. In that case my efforts will have been worthwhile.