Campfires

Beginner's Guide to Backpacking

Campfires
Campfires and the outdoor life have been connected in a deep and visceral way ever since the days when there was no "outdoors" because there was no "indoors" with which to contrast it. Unfortunately, campfires are now like pine-bough beds, lakeside campsites and four-wheeled brontosaurs that get 10 miles to the gallon: a luxury that we can no longer afford. First, fire rings are an ugly and extremely long-lived reminder that people have passed that way before. Blackened rocks remain discolored for hundreds, if not thousands of years. That same soot will blacken your pots, which will, in turn, stain everything they touch. Often, mistakenly, people believe their fire will burn almost anything, including food scraps and their trash with its plastic and aluminum foil components. When the fire fails to consume those items, they're often simply left behind, which converts the fire ring into a trash pit for rodents and birds to scavenge. Wood smoke will penetrate your clothes and give them a lingering odor, which may make you feel like Daniel Boone in the backcountry, but will make you smell like a Neanderthal in the city.

In addition, wood smoke is a health hazard. Evidence is growing that inhaling wood smoke leads to reductions in lung function and increased susceptibility to lower respiratory diseases. Other research has linked compounds in smoke to cancer, heart disease and central nervous system disorders. One study in the late 1980s showed that 25 percent of Denver's infamous brown cloud was caused by wood smoke. Many mountain towns have enacted restrictions on wood burning to preserve air quality. Murphy's first law of fire-building states that no matter where you sit in relation to your fire, the wind will always shift and blow the smoke in your face. Why expose yourself to the risk? Why contribute, in even a small way, to degrading the quality of wilderness air? Traveling to the wilderness, only to build a fire, reminds me of the billboard I saw outside Santiago, Chile, a city choking on filthy air caused by millions of automobiles. The billboard, erected by the local Chevy dealer alongside a major highway leading from Santiago to the Andes, showed two children in a car driven by their father. The sign read, "Thank you, Daddy, for taking us to breathe clean air."

Fire-building causes other problems. Pyromanic backpackers camping night after night in the same popular spots soon scour the ground of all burnable dead and downed wood – which should, in any case, be left to decay, thereby enriching and renewing the soil. In a mindless quest for their nightly fire fix, many campers turn to breaking dead limbs off standing trees, then to chopping limbs off live trees, scarring what should have been a pristine forest. A fire's intense, concentrated heat sterilizes the soil beneath it and in its immediate vicinity. Even if the rocks of the fire ring are removed and the ashes scattered, the ground will remain lifeless for years, if not decades. Careless fire-builders have also caused numerous forest fires. Too many people have broken camp and left behind a fire that they were sure was out – when it wasn't. Hours or days later, the smoldering embers sprang to life and ignited an inferno. In Shenandoah, Grand Canyon and Mount Rainier national parks, among others, fires are simply banned in the backcountry. In Yosemite, they're strongly discouraged. In Rocky Mountain National Park, fires are permitted at only a dwindling number of backcountry sites. After campers burn everything flammable within a half-mile radius, the site is closed to fires and the fire ring is removed. In all places where fires are permitted, only dead, downed wood may be burned. One of the lightweight backpacking stoves described in the stove chapter provides a far more convenient alternative for cooking than a wood fire: faster to light, easier to regulate and useful in any weather. And you save yourself the weight of a hatchet, saw and guilty conscience.

An argument is sometimes made that a fire on a beach that is well-supplied with driftwood, constructed below the high-tide mark where all evidence will soon wash away, is acceptable. Or that in really remote country, where very few people go, a small fire can be condoned if all traces are erased. Frankly, I don't buy it. I remember picking over the remnants of a fire on a Grand Canyon beach, striving to locate and pick up every ash for removal. It was impossible. Even after my best efforts, the sand was still peppered with charcoal flakes. What is today remote country, hardly ever visited, is likely to be heavily traveled all too soon. Even if it's not, what right do we have to remake every part of the world to our own fancy? Let's make it our goal to leave untouched, forever, that last, tiny, dwindling fragment of the earth that has somehow miraculously escaped human encroachment until now.

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