fire

CAMP

I SUPPOSE I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND people who think they have visited the West when they fly into a major city such as Phoenix and, after a few days or a week or two, fly back home. It's not that I don't like big cities; I have lived in them and around city folk all my life. But cities are deceiving. They give you light at the flick of a switch, you'll see them . . . campfires of all sizes and colors and smells all huddled with their creators . . . each fire beckoning a circle of family or friends to come closer to it and to one another.

Most of us, though, don't give this suitability angle a second thought. While we have abandoned canvas tents and leather packs for nylon, cotton jackets for Gortex, and down-filled sleeping bags for holofil, we refuse to high-tech our campfires. Why? Something else is at work here. Something that technology will only confuse because campfires

At first glance, you may wonder why

THE ENDURING ENCHANTMENT

or worse, automatically along streets when the sun goes down. Cities keep you from the night.

people still build campfires at all. If you look at just the practical uses, they don't make much sense. If, for instance, you're looking for warmth, the average fire will provide just enough heat to keep one side of your body toasty while the other side frosts. Frankly, a down jacket would serve you better. Looking for light? You can at least take your flashlight into your tent. And unless you want to live on hot dogs on a stick, a modern butane-driven stove will give you soup and a steak with a lot less hassle.

Campfires are not for heat, or light, or cooking. Campfires are for gathering.

They start with gathering. You send someone from your group to look for kindling, small sticks no bigger than your thumb that will burn long enough to ignite the logs. A good scout knows that you'll need more of these volume-wise than the fuel logs to maintain the fire through the evening. Careful placement of the tinder (paper, grass, dry leaves) and some attention to air flow should result in a one-match fire after a little practice.

Friend, I'm sorry but you haven't seen Arizona unless you've seen her through the light of a campfire. You don't understand the meaning of the word "douse" if you haven't used it on a fire in the West in the final driftings of the evening.

Leave the city and drive along the Mogollon Rim some late summer evening. Or, in winter, visit the Superstition Mountains, Picacho Peak, or the Santa Catalinas, and

FIRES

TEXT BY KENNETH TRAVOUS PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID ELMS JR.

10 April 1998

CAMPFIRES

Oddly, this same circle is large enough, I think made for, all of the yearnings and hopes you can muster as long as you are hungering for the right kinds of things making memories of friends and family, for instance.

This is where another gathering begins. It is time to share the light with people you want to be close to.

I learned that lesson as a youngster, but must admit that the value of it didn't dawn on me until much later. Having gathered some wood for a fire at a family outing, we pulled up chairs, logs, and maybe a rock, and found ourselves literally close to one another. We didn't have much choice. Either you were shoulder to shoulder with your sister, or you were alone in the dark. Given those circumstances, your sister can actually look fairly friendly. There were no televisions or radios to bring the unwanted outside world into our clan. There was nothing to distract us from the fire and each other.

I suppose today you also would have to worry about cellular phones, beepers, and laptop computers. It makes you wonder how people communicated at all before the technical revolution. The answer, I suppose, is "thoughtfully."

Back to our family campfire. My sister and I had finally quit pinching each other, and my father, with a bit of prodding, began to tell us stories of his childhood. Not long composed stories, mind you, that you would be able to memorize and relay to future generations, but disconnected snippets of a man as a child in another time in another part of the world.

He must have talked for an hour, which was about all you could get out of him if you ran all of his sentences together from the previous 10 years. It was the campfire that made him talk. He was gathering us, and we were gathering him. The fire had slowed time and frozen everything even me.

It's funny, but I can hardly tell you a thing he said, but I can tell you, nearly 30 years later, exactly what he looked like that evening. His light-green jacket over a brown plaid shirt, baggy brown pants, and scuffed shoes were lit by a fire revealing a man just beginning to show some age. His shoulders were just a bit stooped, and he kept his hands in his pockets as he shifted his weight back and forth, taking them out only to stoke the fire with a new branch and the evening with a new story.

I have taken that moment and worked it into my own family campfires with an added twist. On a trip a few years ago, my wife had sent me out to gather some wood while she prepared the fire ring for the evening. After some cooking, eating, and more traditional storytelling, I brought out a three-foot stick and began dubbing the family with names from events of the day. One daughter became "Trailwalker" while the other became "Cookiestealer."

Much to my delight, other members wanted their turn at the handling of the dubber. We were, then, each named by one another. Since that time, we have shared wonderful insights about each other.

You need to do that at the end of your day, at the end of your campfire, which brings me to the final gathering that only it can bring. You need to be the last one up in camp to take advantage of it.

Send the children to their sleeping bags and begin collecting their whispers. You'll probably also get a giggle or two. If you've been avoiding the smoke all night, go stand in it for a minute and soak up enough in your clothes that it won't come out for at least two washings. Let the fire slowly die as you garner your memories of the day and thoughts about those around you. Notice as the fire flick-ers through its last embers that the night is gathering you. Step upwind, and as you douse the dwindling coals, listen to the hissing of the sweet steam-smoke. Let the night blanket of Orion tuck in around you and consider that all of the faces you have seen in your firelight are family. The rest, somehow, are just acquaintances.