I grew up in California, which means I spent my childhood learning to put fires out. Any campfires I encountered鈥攚hen conditions were just right, after our once-yearly week of drizzle鈥攚ere anxious affairs, requiring a constant inventory of grass and wind and access to water. My family mostly stayed inside, put a Duraflame in the fireplace, and called it a day.
Then I moved to the Arctic, and suddenly everything depended on starting fires and keeping them burning. I saw ten-year-olds build them in snowbanks like they were tying their shoes, and there I was puffing my cheeks at crumpled newspaper, willing damp twigs to catch. The dance of heat, the layers of kindling, the precise line between too much and too little air鈥攏one of it was intuitive. I practiced every day, in private, until fire started to feel like a friend.
Since then I鈥檝e slept by fires to avoid predators; I鈥檝e watched a campfire save a life. But what I remember most are the ordinary things. Telling ghost stories and jumping when a log cracks. Holding hands in the dark. The smell of smoke in your fleece the next day. That鈥檚 the thing about sitting around a campfire: it makes even the smallest moments matter.
A barefoot hiker told me once that the reason we鈥檙e drawn to screens is that we鈥檙e looking for fire, and now whenever I鈥檓 in a bar or an airport, anyplace with a TV flickering in the background, I think of that. It feels true. I can鈥檛 take my eyes off CNN because I鈥檓 meant to be sitting by a fire instead, I remind myself. Somehow that鈥檚 comforting, that even in the most civilized places, we鈥檙e steered by our relationship to nature. We look for fire because we need it, and when we sit together around a campfire, leaning into the glow, we鈥檙e acknowledging that need together. It鈥檚 humbling in the way all desire is humbling. You can鈥檛 pretend you鈥檙e not a body, drawn to warmth. You can鈥檛 pretend you鈥檙e alone.
The tricks to building a campfire, I鈥檝e learned, are to gather way more tinder and kindling than you expect to use, tend the flames closely until you get coals, and turn the burning sides of logs toward each other, bouncing and focusing the heat. If you don鈥檛 have a lighter or matches, the secret to using a bow drill is to work with someone else, a person at each end, sharing your strength until you form a red coal. Small sticks make light; big sticks make heat. Keep piles of each nearby in case you need to rebuild the fire in darkness.
The flames require fuel and so do you. Slice off the top of an orange and eat the fruit with a spoon, then fill the peel with vanilla cake batter. A boxed mix with water works just fine; don鈥檛 worry about the eggs. Put the orange top back on like a lid, wrap the whole thing in tinfoil, and bake in the campfire for ten minutes. Enjoy.