Around the Campfire

Humanity began with firelight.

Edward O. Wilson

I have many happy memories of camping with my family as a young child. Hiking was my favorite activity, of course, and our daily campfires were a close second.

We always had a Coleman stove for cooking if we needed it, and it routinely sat at the end of the picnic table, rarely used. My mother preferred to cook over the fire, and the fine meals she prepared over those flames are yet another fond memory of camping days. I learned how to cook over a campfire, and it was not until I got married in my early twenties that I figured out how to make the same thing happen on a stove.

My father spent hours hauling and chopping firewood. There were far fewer people in the campgrounds in those days, and it was legal and acceptable to take down a dead tree for firewood. He had an old saw that had been a part of our logging family for generations. My brother stood at one end and my father at the other. Together they brought down the dead tree, and rolled it down the hillside to camp. That wood provided the fuel for the fires that turned batter into pancakes, fresh trout into crisply fried dinners, and evenings into warmth and song.

My parents were both musicians. My mother was an operatic soprano, so these were not ordinary nights of singing around the campfire. We had a wide repertoire of campfire songs, which included the usual ones like Kum By Ya as well as swing tunes, lonesome cowboy songs, and arias. I imagined my mother’s beautiful voice soaring high above us, circling the trees and rising to the starry sky above. As the flames turned to coals, we would grab our marshmallow sticks and toast those confections to a gooey golden brown.

I am not oblivious to the environmental consequences of scouring the forest for camp wood. Popular campsites where fires are still allowed have been swept clean of every twig and branch and look barren and unnatural, as if they have been paved. Wildfires are now a regular feature of the forested landscape, and most summers a fire ban extends from June to October.

It has been many years since I built a campfire in the woods, longer still since I sang those familiar tunes. I miss the warmth, the light, the magic of flames forming in the bundles of kindling, rising and crackling and popping.

I still build a fire in my wood stove every morning. That means carrying wood daily from the wood shed to the front porch. I do not saw trees down to obtain wood. Instead I buy it from my neighbor, stack it in the wood shed, and buy kindling from another neighbor. The stove burns efficiently and warms the house up nicely. I still hear the satisfying pop and crackle, and I still love it. That much has not changed.

I miss my mother’s beautiful voice and the songs we used to sing. I miss a world that seemed simpler and innocent. I am not sure that was an accurate perception, but I nevertheless savor a time without cell phones, without hiking apps, without hordes of people on the trail and camping together, barely room to pitch a tent. Hikers talk about gear and how many miles they covered that day as they boil water over a small backpacking stove that only weighs a few ounces.

The fire still burns in my wood stove every morning and warms me in body and soul. Sometimes I can still hear my mother’s beautiful voice. More often I can see it rising above the trees, shining down upon me from the stars.