Campfires And Their Importance--The Wasteful Wrong Way They Are
Usually Made, And The Right Way To Make Them
HARDLY second in importance to a warm, dry camp, is the campfire. In
point of fact, the warmth, dryness and healthfulness of a forest camp
are mainly dependent on the way the fire is managed and kept up. No
asthmatic or consumptive patient ever regained health by dwelling in a
close, damp tent. I once camped for a week in a wall tent, with a
Philadelphia party, and in cold weather. We had a little sheet iron
fiend, called a camp-stove. When well fed with bark, knots and chips,
it would get red hot and, heaven knows, give out heat enough. By the
time we were sound asleep, it would subside; and we would presently
awake with chattering teeth to kindle her up again, take a smoke and a
nip, turn in for another nap--to awaken again half frozen. It was a
poor substitute for the open camp and bright fire. An experience of
fifty years convinces me that a large percentage of the benefit
obtained by invalids from camp life is attributable to the open camp
and well-managed campfire. And the latter is usually handled in a way
that is too sad, too wasteful; in short, badly botched. For instance:
It happened in the summer of '81 that I was making a canoe trip in the
Northern Wilderness, and as Raquette Lake is the largest and about the
most interesting lake in the North Woods, I spent about a week
paddling, fishing, etc. I made my headquarters at Ed Bennett's woodland
hostelry, "Under the Hemlocks." As the hotel was filled with men, women
and crying children, bitten to agony by punkies and mosquitoes, I chose
to spread my blanket in a well-made bark shanty, which a signboard in
black and white said was the "Guides' Camp."
And this camp was a very popular institution. Here it was that every
evening, when night had settled down on forest and lake, the guests of
the hotel would gather to lounge on the bed of fresh balsam browse,
chat, sing and enjoy the huge campfire.
No woodland hotel will long remain popular that does not keep up a
bright, cheery, out o'door fire. And the fun of it--to an old
woodsman--is in noting how like a lot of school children they all act
about the fire. Ed Bennett had a man, a North Woods trapper, in his
employ, whose chief business was to furnish plenty of wood for the
guides' camp and start a good fire every evening by sundown. As it grew
dark and the blaze shone high and bright, the guests would begin to
straggle in; and every man, woman and child seemed to view it as a
religious duty to pause by the fire and add a stick or two, before
passing into camp. The wood was thrown on endwise, crosswise, or any
way, so that it would burn, precisely as a crowd of boys make a bonfire
on the village green. The object being, apparently, to get rid of the
wood in the shortest possible time.
When the fire burnt low, toward midnight, the guests would saunter off
to the hotel; and the guides, who had been waiting impatiently, would
organize what was left of the fire, roll themselves in their blankets
and turn in. I suggested to the trapper that he and I make one fire as
it should be and maybe they would follow suit--which would save half
the fuel, with a better fire. But he said, "No; they like to build
bonfires and Ed can stand the wood, because it is best to let them have
their own way. Time seems to hang heavy on their hands--and they pay
well." Summer boarders, tourists and sportsmen, are not the only men
who know how to build a campfire all wrong.
When I first came to Northern Pennsylvania, thirty-five years ago, I
found game fairly abundant; and, as I wanted to learn the country where
deer most abounded, I naturally cottoned to the local hunters. Good
fellows enough, and conceited, as all local hunters and anglers are apt
to be. Strong, good hunters and axe-men, to the manner born and prone
to look on any outsider as a tenderfoot. Their mode of building
campfires was a constant vexation to me. They made it a point to always
have a heavy sharp axe in camp, and toward night some sturdy chopper
would cut eight or ten logs as heavy as the whole party could lug to
camp with hand-spikes. The size of the logs was proportioned to the
muscular force in camp. If there was a party of six or eight, the logs
would be twice as heavy as when we were three or four. Just at dark,
there would be a log heap built in front of the camp, well chinked with
bark, knots and small sticks; and, for the next two hours, one could
hardly get at the fire to light a pipe. But the fire was sure though
slow. By 10 or 11 P.M. it would work its way to the front and the camp
would be warm and light. The party would turn in and deep sleep would
fall on a lot of tired hunters--for two or three hours. By which time
some fellow near the middle was sure to throw his blanket off with a
spiteful jerk and dash out of camp with, "Holly Moses! I can't stand
this; it's an oven."
Another Snorer (partially waking).--"N-r-r-rm, gu-r-r, ugh. Can't
you--deaden--fire--a little?"
First Speaker.--"Deaden hell. If you want the fire deadened, get up
and help throw off some of these logs."
Another (in coldest corner of shanty)--"What's 'er matter with a-you
fellows? Better dig out--an' cool off in the snow. Shanty's comfor'ble
enough."
His minority report goes unheeded. The camp is roasted out. Strong
hands and hand-spikes pry a couple of glowing logs from the front and
replace them with two cold, green logs; the camp cools off and the
party takes to blankets once more--to turn out again at 5 A.M. and
inaugurate breakfast.
The fire is not in favorable shape for culinary operations, the heat
is mainly on the back side, just where it isn't wanted. The few places
level enough to set a pot or pan are too hot; and, in short, where
there is any fire, there is too much. One man sees, with intense
disgust, the nozzle of his coffeepot drop into the fire. He makes a
rash grab to save his coffee and gets away--with the handle, which
hangs on just enough to upset the pot.
"Old Al," who is frying a slice of pork over a bed of coals that would
melt a gun barrel, starts a hoarse laugh, that is cut short by a blue
flash and an explosion of pork fat, which nearly blinds him. And the
writer, taking in these mishaps in the very spirit of fun and frolic,
is suddenly sobered and silenced by seeing his venison steak drop from
the end of the "frizzling stick," and disappear between two glowing
logs. The party manages, however, to get off on the hunt at daylight,
with full stomachs; and perhaps the hearty fun and laughter more than
compensate for these little mishaps.
This is a digression. But I am led to it by the recollection of many
nights spent in camps and around campfires, pretty much as described
above. I can smile today at the remembrance of the calm, superior way
in which the old hunters of that day would look down on me, as from the
upper branches of a tall hemlock, when I ventured to suggest that a
better fire could be made with half the fuel and less than half the
labor. They would kindly remark, "Oh, you are a Boston boy. You are
used to paying $8.00 a cord for wood. We have no call to save wood
here. We can afford to burn it by the acre." Which was more true than
logical. Most of these men had commenced life with a stern declaration
of war against the forest; and, although the men usually won at last,
the battle was a long and hard one. Small wonder that they came to look
upon a forest tree as a natural enemy. The campfire question came to a
crisis, however, with two or three of these old settlers. And, as the
story well illustrates my point, I will venture to tell it.
It was in the "dark days before Christmas" that a party of four
started from W., bound for a camp on Second Fork, in the deepest part
of the wilderness that lies between Wellsboro and the Block House. The
party consisted of Sile J., Old Al, Eli J. and the writer. The two
first were gray-haired men, the others past thirty; all the same, they
called us "the boys." The weather was not inviting and there was small
danger of our camp being invaded by summer outers or tenderfeet. It
cost twelve miles of hard travel to reach that camp; and, though we
started at daylight, it was past noon when we arrived. The first seven
miles could be made on wheels, the balance by hard tramping. The road
was execrable; no one cared to ride; but it was necessary to have our
loads carried as far as possible. The clearings looked dreary enough
and the woods forbidding to a degree, but our old camp was the picture
of desolation. There was six inches of damp snow on the leafless brush
roof, the blackened brands of our last fire were sticking their charred
ends out of the snow, the hemlocks were bending sadly under their loads
of wet snow and the entire surroundings had a cold, cheerless, slushy
look, very little like the ideal hunter's camp. We placed our knapsacks
in the shanty, Eli got out his nail hatchet, I drew my little pocket-axe
and we proceeded to start a fire, while the two older men went up
stream a few rods to unearth a full-grown axe and a bottle of old rye,
which they had cached under a log three months before. They never
fooled with pocket-axes. They were gone so long that we sauntered up
the band, thinking it might be the rye that detained them. We found
them with their coats off, working like beavers, each with a stout,
sharpened stick. There had been an October freshet and a flood-jam at
the bend had sent the mad stream over its banks, washing the log out of
position and piling a gravel bar two feet deep over the spot where the
axe and flask should have been. About the only thing left to do was to
cut a couple of stout sticks, organize a mining company, limited and go
in; which they did. Sile was drifting into the side of the sandbar
savagely, trying to strike the axe-helve and Old Al was sinking
numberless miniature shafts from the surface in a vain attempt to
strike whisky. The company failed in about half an hour. Sile resumed
his coat and sat down on a log--which was one of his best holds, by the
way. He looked at Al; Al looked at him; then both looked at us and Sile
remarked that, if one of the boys wanted to go out to the clearings and
"borry" an axe and come back in the morning, he thought the others
could pick up wood enough to tough it out one night. Of course nobody
could stay in an open winter camp without an axe.
It was my time to come to the front. I said: "You two just go at the
camp; clean the snow off and slick up the inside. Put my shelter-cloth
with Eli's and cover the roof with them; and if you don't have just as
good a fire tonight as you ever had, you can tie me to a beech and
leave me here. Come on, Eli." And Eli did come on. And this is how we
did it: We first felled a thrifty butternut tree ten inches in
diameter, cut off three lengths at five feet each and carried them to
camp. These were the back logs. Two stout stakes were driven at the
back of the fire and the logs, on top of each other, were laid firmly
against the stakes. The latter were slanted a little back and the
largest log placed at bottom, the smallest on top, to prevent tipping
forward. A couple of short, thick sticks were laid with the ends
against the bottom log by way of fire dogs; a fore stick, five feet
long and five inches in diameter; a well built pyramid of bark, knots
and small logs completed the campfire, which sent a pleasant glow of
warmth and heat to the furthest corner of the shanty. For "night-wood,"
we cut a dozen birch and ash poles from four to six inches across,
trimmed them to the tips and dragged them to camp. Then we denuded a
dry hemlock of its bark; and, by the aid of ten foot poles, flattened
at one end, packed the bark to camp. We had a bright, cheery fire from
the early evening until morning, and four tired hunters never slept
more soundly.
We stayed in that camp a week; and, though the weather was rough and
cold, the little pocket-axes kept us well in firewood. We selected
butternut for backlogs, because, when green, it burns very slowly and
lasts a long time. And we dragged our smaller wood to camp in lengths
of twenty to thirty feet, because it was easier to lay them on the fire
and burn them in two than to cut them shorter with light hatchets. With
a heavy axe, we should have cut them to lengths of five or six feet.
Our luck, I may mention, was good--as good as we desired. Not that
four smallish deer are anything to brag about for a week's hunt by four
men and two dogs. I have known a pot-hunter to kill nine in a single
day. But we had enough.
As it was, we were obliged to "double trip it" in order to get our
deer and duffle down to "Babb's." And we gave away more than half our
venison. For the rest, the illustration shows the campfire--all but the
fire--as it should be made.