There’s something unique and wonderfully therapeutic about a campfire. Don’t ask me why it happens or how to explain it but no one I know of can sit around a campfire for long and not feel its effect. The world gets both larger and smaller at the same time; and you can feel its presence, not just sense its passage. There’s a certain harmony in the crackling wood; a kind of symbiosis between the occasional splash of a fish, the call of some waterfowl, and the silence of the night that is its own song.
No matter what happened during the day you just naturally seem to relax next to a campfire. Somehow you’re inexorably drawn to watching the flames dance around the logs or the shadows they cut in a weaving pattern over the surrounding landscape. No cup of coffee ever tasted so good as one freshly brewed over a campfire; and I don’t care who you are, what your background is, or how or why you came to be sitting around a campfire to begin with; there’s a place around it for everybody. Some gather there to laugh and joke at the day’s events. Others look to cuddle with a companion. Sometimes you just want to sit and listen to what the night has to say about things. Whatever it is, it draws everyone to its side in equanimity. Peace talks should take place around a campfire instead of a conference table.
Unfortunately, campfires also draw bugs and critters and it is a well-known fact that the volume of smoke from a campfire increases exponentially based on the number of human beings in close proximity to it. Lucky for me I’m not human; or so I was told by the cute dishwater-blonde sitting next to me around just such a campfire in the middle of Minnesota’s renowned million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area in 1977. Specifically, her complaint was that my shoulders were hard as rocks. I suggested a back-rub as a means of loosening the rubble a bit but she’d already refocused her interest on a guy sitting on the other side of her and so was spared the revelation that not all of me was made of stone.
Relegated to yet another night of amorous carousing with the local field mice, I turned my attention elsewhere. Set off a few yards from the campfire was a large tent nestled in among some pines. The interior of the tent glowed brightly from the light of a Coleman lantern; outlining the silhouettes of three familiar figures: Chuck Cosgrove-the male half of our co-ed counselor team; my brother Andrew, and my dearest friend of those growing-up years; Todd Norton. All three had apparently decided to turn in early-Andrew, because his desire for female interaction ran somewhere just below saving toenail clippings; Todd, because he wanted to get an early start at fishing the next morning; and Chuck, because he knew his duties as a troubleshooter would be required more so in the tent preventing Todd and Andrew from killing each other than they would be among six teenage couples left to their own devices in the middle of nowhere.
In keeping with that philosophy, Chuck had wisely positioned his sleeping bag between the two of them. By watching the shadows on the tent walls and listening to the conversation, I could tell he was even then orchestrating the latest peace accord:
Todd: “Pond-scum!”
Andrew: “Navel-lint!”
Chuck: “Both of you shut up before I slap the sap out of you! I don’t wanna hear another… Andrew, what are you rubbing all over your face?”
“It’s a cleaning pad. I’m cleaning myself.”
“YOU JUST GOT DONE TAKING A BATH!”
“Yeah, but that was in the lake. Now I’m washing it off.”
“You’re not gonna wipe your whole body down with those, are you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Andrew, that’s crazy! First of all, it’d take about a million of those little wipes to wash your whole body with…”
“That’s okay. I brought plenty.”
“…second, it’d take forever and I’m not gonna lay here all night with the lantern on watching you wash your cute little bod, and third; you are NOT gonna bury us under six million Handy-Wipes! YOU GOT THAT!?”
“Oh, all right!”
“Good. Now are you ready for me to shut the lantern off orrrrrOW! Todd! What was that I just sat on!?”
“I dunno, Chuck. Looks like either an Ugly Bug or a Crazy Crawler.”
“Does it have something to do with fishing?”
“Yeah.”
“THEN WHY IS IT IN MY BUTT INSTEAD OF THE LAKE!?”
“I gotta sort out my lures for tomorrow.”
“You’re gonna be sorting them out from the bottom of the lake tomorrow if you don’t get them outta my hide!”
“Here, Chuck. Let me help you with that…”
“Andrew, don’t mess with…AAUUGGHH!!! What’s that all over your face!”
“Noxzema.”
“Noxzema! What for!?”
“It helps me keep my complexion.”
“Well, take it off! You look like a dead Kabuki dancer. I almost had a heart attack!”
“I can’t yet. I have to give it time to soak in.”
“Tough. Your pubescent pores will just have to suffer. You are not going to be smearing that pine-scented mayonnaise all over this tent. Put those Handy-Wipes to work and get that gunk off your face before you turn this place into a grease pit.”
“Tsk. You just do not understand about skin care. How does Debbie put up with it!?”
“That’s easy. It’s called The $9.95 Do-It-Yourself Divorce Kit.”
“You are such a cad!”
“That may be, but at least I’m not a…suitcase? You brought a suitcase on a canoe trip!? WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU!?”
“I had to have something to carry my cosmetics in! All the bottles would break inside one of those packs so I just put my whole case in there.”
“BOTTLES OF WHAT!? Scratch that. I don’t even want to know.”
“Lemme get this straight,” Todd interjected. “You mean to tell me we’ve been lugging your war paint all over these lakes and portages for the past three days? You do know this is a canoe trip and not a Prom dance, don’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t have to take care of myself! It’s better than being all smelly and grimy like you! Just look at all that stinky fishing gear! Old fish scales and salmon eggs and heaven knows what else all over the place…”
“Those aren’t fish scales, it’s glitter from one of your bottles you sissy!”
“You are so uncouth!”
“And you are so asking for it!”
“All right, that’s enough!” Chuck broke in. “Both of you knock it off and lets just get some shut-eye. Andrew, put that talcum powder down. We’re not even going to go there. You dust this tent with that stuff and you’re sleeping on the latrine tonight.”
“You tell ‘em, Boss.”
“Todd, I thought I told you to stow that fishing gear.”
“I did.”
“Then what’s one of your lures doing hanging on the tent wall? What’s the matter with you! Now the tent’s gonna leak if it rains!”
“I didn’t hang any lures on the tent.”
“Wait a minute… You hear a buzzing noise?”
“That’s just one of those Fly-In fishing planes going over.”
“Good grief! It’s a mosquito!”
“Wow, man! Look at the size of that thing! It’s huge!”
“Eewww! Yuckness!”
Ssssssssssssnnnnnnnnick!
“It can’t be. It must be some kind of moth or something. Mosquitoes don’t hang like vampire bats and…TODD! What’re you doing!? Put that Pocket Fisherman down before you poke someone’s eye out!”
“Don’t worry, Chuck. I’ll fend him off while you and ‘Twiggy’ there make a break for it.”
“Are you nuts!? You can’t hit that thing with a fishing rod!
“As big as that thing is? How can I miss?”
“Andrew! put down that hair spray! You are NOT going to fumigate us all! Todd, just kill that thing and be done with it.”
“I dunno… It looks kind of pissed off to me. I ain’t gettin’ my hand anywhere near it.”
“Well, I am not going to sleep in this tent with that filthy creature!” Andrew sniffed.
“For once I’m with you kid,” Chuck agreed, “That thing’ll suck us dry by morning. Todd, we need something else to kill it with.”
“A howitzer comes to mind…”
“Very funny. We need something that won’t punch a hole in the tent.”
“I got it! How about a canoe paddle?”
“Eeeewww!! Then it’ll splatter all over the place! Yuck! Here, why don’t you just let me spray it with some Aqua Net…”
“No!”
“It’s all right, this is Super Extra Hold. Even if it doesn’t kill it right away it’ll still be petrified in place so ‘Conan’ over there can just kill it at his leisure!”
“I’m gonna kill you at my leisure…”
“All right, knock it off! Andrew, no hair spray!”
“Oh, all right then! We’ll use Nair…”
“NO!”
“NO!”
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Chuck interjected. “Todd, you’re gonna swat that thing with the canoe paddle. Andrew, you…”
“Only one problem with that plan, Kemo Sabe.” Todd interrupted, “The only canoe paddles we have in here are helping to hold up the tent.”
“Let me finish. Andrew, you told me once you wanted to be a model some day so strike a pose and hold up the rear of the tent while I remove the paddle. Todd’ll kill that thing; we’ll put the paddle back; AND THEN WE CAN ALL GET SOME SLEEP!”
Chuckles of laughter rippled around the campfire as we watched the tent walls balloon over the shadow of what appeared to be a gargoyle trying to perform Swan Lake. Chuck’s silhouette handed the canoe paddle to Todd:
“Kill, Todd! Kill!”
“This is just disgusting! You two are simply swimming in testosterone!”
SSSWACK!
“My God! You missed!”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
“Hit the deck! He’s diving on us!”
Ssssssssssssnnnnnnnnick!
The rear of the tent collapsed as Andrew and Chuck dove for their sleeping bags while the right side shot up like a piston and Todd struck his own pose—reminiscent of Errol Flynn in Captain Blood.
“Todd! No! Not the fishing rod!”
SwishSwishSwackSwishSwack!!!!
“Die, you hideous bloodsucker of the nether-regions! I’ll…”
“Ow! You idiot! That was my…”
The left side of the tent popped back up with the silhouette of Andrew holding two big canisters like twin six-guns:
PPSSSSSSSSHHHSSSSHHHHSHSHSHIIIPPPP!!!!!
The light inside the tent dimmed instantly as Andrew let loose with a double dose of Mary Kay Mace. Billows of fragrant fog enveloped the three of them while Chuck frantically scrabbled at the tent zipper. Gales of laughter exploded around the campfire as he finally managed to get the tent flap undone and flopped halfway out the door. Waves of diaphanous mist rolling past his artificially petrified hair—which was already beginning to fall out—while behind him the tent walls ballooned and snapped to the headline bought of Martha Stewart vs. Ron Popeal. “You wanna knock it off with the shoulder rub, girl?” my friend snarled at the blonde sitting next to me, “We got the game on! Hey, Mitch! Pass me the popcorn, will ya?” The girl sat back with a ‘humph!’ and folded her arms as I passed the bowl over to my compatriot.
Ahhh…Campfire Therapy!
One Walker.
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)