Me Man, Me Make Fire

We love to camp, especially in the fall. Our favorite place to go is the Natural Bridge/Red River Gorge area in Kentucky. We've hiked all of the 'official' trails and are now venturing in to the less-known unofficial ones.

I love nature and this time of year, with the leaves on the trees turning gorgeous shades of gold, red, orange and brown, it can be quite breathtaking.

Hiking and sitting around a campfire are my favorite two things to do. Although the mornings, getting up when it's still chilly, grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting by the warmth of the fire while the fog makes everything seem a little unreal, are so peaceful that I find myself missing them during the hectic mornings when I'm rushing off to work.

While my main goal is to relax and eat myself into a stupor, (you wouldn't believe all the junk food I bring with us) hubby's goal is to make the biggest best campfire in the campground... because making a good-burning fire is apparently a test of one's manhood.



Anyone can make a fire in those stainless steel drums, but a campfire, especially if the wood happens to be damp, takes skills. Hubby still, to this day, talks about a trip we took two years ago, to the same area, and the family on the site next to us couldn't get a campfire burning.

This was their first camping trip. It was a married couple and their teenage son and his friend. They had gone all out. Everything was new and top-of-the-line, right down to their Airstream travel trailer.

They bought an armload of wood and laid a newspaper on the bottom of the fire pit and then proceeded to place three pieces of wood flat on top it. Then they lighted a corner of the paper. It didn't ignite the wood. They kept fiddling with it, but with no success. Finally the father came over and asked my husband if he would mind showing them how to get their fire going.

You would have thought they had told my husband that he was the most incredible, manly, man in the world. He immediately jumped up and strutted to their site. He adjusted the wood into a tee pee shape, adding some cardboard between the pieces, then grabbed a burning piece of wood from our already massive fire and took it and placed it in their fire pit. Within minutes they had a great fire - and my husbands ego was as big as their shiny Airstream.

That same weekend someone else needed help with their fire, he gladly assisted them too. Now, whenever we go camping he's on the lookout for helpless, fireless, campers and I, I get to hear, once again, the story of how he is so good at making fires that other people ask him to build theirs.

Here is hubby resting after building the fire to his liking.