Saturday I helped a couple friends of mine retrieve their car that had hit a deer, down near Birch Run. It turned into a bit of an ordeal and by the time I got back I was feeling pretty rough. What I wanted was to lay down and sleep for a couple hours, and what I needed was to set next to a campfire and watch it.
When I got back to the campsite, I figured I’d start a fire first so there’d be some coals for dinner that night, and then lay down for a while. I loaded the firepit up with some dry maple and picked up my box of kindleing and lit it. My “Box of kindleing” is a small tank of propane attached to a torch nozzle. There are two 20th Century items every camper should have with them; a propane torch and a battery operated air pump. I get some strange looks from campers when they see me out there with a torch and a blower, but I have heat before they do. Anyway, once I got that fire going I started feeling better so I added some more wood and had a seat.
This was the first time in a number of years that I’ve had to re-start a campfire. Usually, once I get it going, it stays going until I douse it with copious amounts of water just before I leave. Whenever I look for wood when I’m camping, I definetly get some dry hardwoods for cooking, and then I look for some nice knarly pieces that can’t be split. After that, I find a couple green pieces to add at night. Just before I give up for the night, I’ll add one large chunk alongside a green one. My dad told me once “Like love, no log can burn by itself”. By morning, the green one has turned into a bed of coals that’ll start the breakfast fire. This time though, I was using one of those steel cylanders that are in the State Campgrounds, and it didn’t survive the overnight downpours. In the U.P. the rains are ten times as bad, but the fire’s on the ground and the water can get away. This time the coals where almost soup.
Once I got that fire going again though, I felt much better but fell sound asleep and missed the whole thing. I’ll bet it was a beauty.
