Campfire Reflections

Campfire Reflections


I have had the fortune to sit around a lot of campfires in my life. I have stirred the coals with southern gentlemen and western cowboys, from Yankees to Texans. I have been fortunate enough to sit with men far my senior and boys starring wide-eyed into their first fire. From the deserts of south Texas to the edge of the Arctic Circle, from the swamps of South Carolina to the heart of the Rocky Mountains, there is a commonality around a campfire.

There is something that happens to people when gathered around a campfire. It is a great equalizer of us all; there is something mesmerizing about staring into flames that leap into the night sky. There is a yearning that brings out stories from days long gone, a desire to start philosophizing about the nuances of life. From the wealthiest to the more common, from the most educated to the illiterate, from the best outdoorsmen to the novice, the campfire is a place we all can gather and be one. It is a place where levels of education and economic chasms are whisked away with the smoke. It is a place where vices are ignored, guards are let down, and vulnerability is experienced.

The campfire is also a great confession booth. I would venture to say there has been more confession shared around a campfire than in many churches. People tend to open up and share experiences with feeling like at no other place. There is emotion in their recollections, stories of appreciation as well as fear. And it goes without saying that what is shared in the glow of a campfire remains forever trapped by the coals and embers. I have experienced them all. With a poke stick in hand, staring into the flames watching as this energy source consumes another soul, and listened to confessions that caused chills to race through my body in spite of the warmth of the flames. Stories of lost loves and lost hope, I have heard men share stories of unfaithful wives, lost business ventures, and heart wrenching stories of disease ridden children and the funeral that followed. I have watched as a windless night captured the smoke as if it were trapped by the guilt and pain of people gathered at this common place, seeming to cleanse the soul, as if the confessions are cast into the flames and consumed with the fuel and forgotten. I have experienced the cleansing of confession at the campfire. It is while sitting around the fire that not only burdens left, but treasurers are found.

When I sat with friends, watching a star filled sky, and glancing into the mounting pile of coals. Sharing portions of my soul that I thought were forever suppressed, and I hoped would never rise to the surface again. I likened them in that place of safety, that place of forgetfulness. Yet as we sat there in the silence listening to the crackling of the fire, and watching as spiders were drawn to the warmth, mesmerized into the reality that the very thing they sought for survival, would consume them if their greed overcame better judgment. It was here that I was able to share my soul like at no other place. It was here that I was able to look at these friends and know what I said, would forever be kept in their vault of friendship. Just as theirs was in mine, listening not with condemnation or sympathy, just listening.

For me, that is what it is all about. That is why I continue to sleep in tents, in freezing temperatures, why I walk miles in thin air, and go weeks on end with out a real bath. Why I eat eggs full of ashes and bugs, why I survive on Spam sandwiches and water with the distinct taste of purification tablets. It is to see different country, and be with friends. To catch up on their lives in ways that telephone conversations just cannot do. It is an opportunity to hear the same old jokes, and new stories, to argue over deer calibers, knife brands and sharpening techniques. To hear passionate pleas for small gauges when wing shooting, and then see the same person un-sheath a .300 magnum when after a whitetail, or a 10 gauge for Turkeys.

It is all about the experience. Telling your story with conviction and with the understanding that there may be some who disagree but that is all right. It really does not matter to me if you shoot doves with a 10 gauge and I use a 28. I don’t care if you shoot .300 magnum, and I like a bow. It really does not matter. As long as it is within the law and you enjoy it.

As the fire began to dwindle and the stars got brighter, I looked across the flickering flames, and saw the outline of distant mountains. Glowing in a pale blue hue as the moon reflected on the snow that crested her top. And I thought of what treasurers and what pain that mountain would leave here. I listened and heard the cackling of ptarmigan and the slap of a beaver’s tail and I wondered about their treasures and their pain. The bald eagle resting on her nest, the jack rabbit hiding under a cactus, the distant coyote; is that howl a proclamation of treasure or is it a sharing of pain? Would he come to his cleansing place and cast his sorrows on the woodpile of pain, or stack them with the protected treasurers?

Somehow I believe we all do a little of both. There are things we gladly throw into the fire, things we do not care that others know about. Scars we want removed at any expense, and pain we want transformed from the woodpile to drifting smoke that rises into the night air carrying with it all the sorrow and heartache. Then there are other things we will never share, things that come to our mind and brings a smile to our faces just at the recollection, things that the fire transforms just as it changes cold wet wood into hot dry fuel. Things that stir our soul and cause us to treasurer even more, those times well spent.