Campfire Reflections

I’m writing this blog in advance of a camping trip I’m taking with two of my sons. I’ve really looked forward to this. When I was five-to-nine years old my dad took the family camping in the redwoods north of San Francisco where he spent time with relatives as a child himself. We drove an old Plymouth and pulled a trailer for all the camping gear. Of course, the drive was long, and I remember my parents once getting into an argument over something, probably whether we should be taking the trip at all. Dad liked to go because it gave him an opportunity to go deer hunting. Mom thought it only gave her a chance to do her regular housework without benefit of modern appliances.

I doubt that I enjoyed the trip itself, because it required hours of riding in the back seat with my sister. But I did love the camping. We stayed in an army surplus cabin-style, canvas tent. Once we set it up on top of a nest of yellow jackets, or wasps. One or two of them made their way up my pantleg. We had to move the tent, and I had to suffer the effect of their painful stings. We slept on the ground beneath heavy covers, and I still remember the exotic smell of the tent. Mom didn’t think it was so exotic. I don’t know what my sister thought about it.

In the mornings, my sister and I usually ate cornflakes covered in canned milk and served in a tin plate. I didn’t like the taste of the milk that way, and the plate made the meal somewhat tippy, but it was better than breakfasts of eggs and bacon. At that time, I didn’t like either eggs or bacon and it seemed to take hours of chewing before I managed to swallow the last required mouthful.

So, why did I love camping? It seemed almost magical. There was a fallen redwood tree nearby that provided a mammoth bridge to anywhere my imagination could conjure. Mom carved a tiny “truck” from a small branch, and I spent hours “driving” it along the mountain roads I formed along the rise of soft dirt at the bole of the fallen tree. And that tent smell! It reminded me of the gear my returning uncles from WWII brought with them to our home. Add to that the sounds of the sputtering of our Coleman lantern, the hiss of our gas camping stove, and the soughing of the wind in the branches far above us, and most of all, the voluminous quiet engulfing the entire campsite, and it was indeed magical.

After we moved to our farm in the foothills, I did very little camping until I was an adult living in Los Angeles. As a child in the hills, I pretty much lived outdoors. As an adult in the Los Angeles area I felt stifled by houses, traffic, and endless streets and highways. I needed to connect with something that seemed real and not man-made. Camping provided a means toward that end. Bobby Navarro, my series protagonist, feels this way too. Motorcycles and camping provide him with needed connections to his sense of the way life should be.

Although it might be different if I had to do it, cooking over a campfire or camp stove adds to the enjoyment of camping for me—as for Bobby. He honed his culinary skills working for a cook on a cattle ranch in New Mexico. And, while I won’t say everything I’ve prepared under primitive conditions has tasted wonderful, I’ve always maintained that another hour on the hiking trail, or another hundred miles on the back of a motorcycle will improve the taste of any campsite culinary creation.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that something always so magical would help me stay grounded in reality. Well, not any reality. The streets and highways of Los Angeles were real enough. But they didn’t give me any sense of being in touch with a world I loved, the outdoors. Compared to a birdsong or the fragrance of wood smoke, Los Angeles traffic didn’t make me feel grounded at all. Maybe that’s part of the lure of camping for me still. Looking up at the stars at night, I feel an appreciative awareness of the universe. What keeps you grounded in the things that matter most to you?

Campfire cooking