Campfires And Their ImportanceThe 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.