What's your favorite campfire memory? Or, what do you love about campfires?

My favorite memory is you with your beautiful green-eyed lady looking at a star-filled sky, listening to the waves and feeling the breeze…oh, wait! That’s YOUR memory…enjoy yourselves. Happy Memorial Day. Have fun.

I love the smell of wood smoke and I love the smell of it on my clothes. I always stand downwind so that the smoke smell gets into my clothes, unless it also gets into my eyes, then I stand upwind :). And the fire is cool too.

I was thirteen. She was sixteen. Her father didn’t have a freakin’ clue… until the s’mores were ready with no one around to eat them.

I can hear him still, calling from the distance for us to “come and get it!”

We got it.

I had a summer bf one year, we were both 15 and his family invited me on a weeklong trip with them to visit friends of theirs on the Russian River in NorCal. We had the most marvelous cookouts and nightly campfires with people dropping by the house we were staying in. It was a gathering of biker gang members and their kids but it was peaceful, delicious and fun with dancing, drinking and story telling. My bf’s parents even let us have our sleeping bags in the same room together which meant an all nighter of making out. Wee hee!

I had a campfire in the back yard last night.
The stars, the fire, the roasted marshmallows.
Good company.
@jjmah welcome to my Michigan. :-)

Actually, I can remember it as if it were yesterday…

It was the summer of 1969,,,it was an overcast night on the edge of rain…not really a campfire. Not really a camp. I wanted to BBQ. I was young, carefree, not yet a teenager, and I almost set the house on fire using the grill on a wooden porch.

I love fire…...it’s so pretty….burning….bright….glowing….hot…......

My favorite campfire memory is when I was new to Fluther and someone invited me to the campfire room and I ended up getting to know some of the best people I’ve ever talked to.
And to this day, we continue to hang out by the watering hole and tell tales.
Edit: Oh, and the sound effects were nifty to have, too.

Pictures to come. =)

My Aunt and Uncle were the first to move away from the neighborhood where the entire extended family of five brothers lived. They bought a farm in the mountains, and one July, we all went up there and stayed for a whole week. We got to pet their tame deer, and jump in the hay, and on the Fourth everybody went outside for a giant bonfire, with homemade fireworks, using gunpowder and chemicals, and hot dogs and marshmallows. It was so fun.

Oddly enough I enjoy the memory of creating them.

In Girl Scout Camp they meticulously taught us various shaped techniques and I was always volunteering to make the fire. I guess I was a nascent pyromaniac from childhood.

It’s just so nifty to create a huge rip roaring fire with just one little match (and proper kindling carefully placed). Followed by gradual feeding with increasingly thicker wood.

Camp Fire Girls camp: singing and storytelling.

Marshmallows.

The cozy and slightly scary feeling of sitting close and snug within the circle of light and warmth, seeing known friendly faces look strange in the flickering glow, watching the sparks fly up and hearing the roar and crackle of the blaze, protected by the fire and yet also exposed by it, when you don’t know what might be lurking in the woods close by, cloaked by the darkness and yet able to see you while the firelight blinds your eyes. And knowing that your primitive ancestors from before time had the same experience.

Except for the marshmallows.

I have two series of great camp fire memories, both from my teen years. There was a deserted farm on a back country road where many teenagers gathered on summer weekends for bonfires and booze. What a great time we had there! Being with friends, kissing a boy, city kids looking at a country night sky, being slightly afraid we’d be caught the whole time. Fairly innocent yet illicit fun. :)

We also had family friends who owned a vacation cabin way up in the mountains. One fall, we visited them there on several weekends. The cabin was in a heavily wooded area, and the leaves were gorgeous! The crisp nights were spent around a campfire, with many of their mountain friends in attendance. Nearly everyone played an instrument, whether it be guitar, banjo, harmonica, mouth harp, or just their own voice. That was the year I was first exposed to, and fell in love with, bluegrass music.

I have a lot of them. It’s great fun to sit around a campfire listening to people play guitar drinking warm drinks.

A Boy Scout memory that i have tried to forget for many years. we set up our tents and a safe location for our campfire. the first night came and passed without any incidents. so did the second and third nights. BUT, the fourth night tricks began. tents were let down, food was thrown everywhere…...it was fun night at my Boy Scout Camp. innocent fun was had by all, up to the time “lights out” was called by our ScoutMaster.

We finally settled down around midnight. all was quite in our camp. then, suddenly it happened. the worst smell i have ever smelled in my life came wavering through my tent.

Someone had peed on all the campfires!! the wind was blowing that smell right into our tents and it stayed there. everyone came running out gagging and throwing up.

I can still smell that burning-hot urine smell today. it just “lingers” in my mind.

@john65pennington What an aromatic nightmare! Ewwww.

You have not lived, until you smell the aroma of someone peeing on a fire. there are no words to describe it.

The best one so far happened many years ago. We were deep in the woods camping, there was another group of campers not far form us. They had a raging campfire burning and a raging party going on around it. Suddenly a chainsaw started, terrified screams, awful noises of murder and mayhem then, nothing. That huge campfire was just gone in the blink of an eye and it as so quiet you could hear the crickets. It had that wonderful blend of terror and hysterical laughter. Never did find out how they put that fire out so quickly and completely. Some funny people out there. You know they were laughing their butts of at us.

@John

Well all I can say is, if that’s your favorite campfire memory, I’d hate to be around for your LEAST favorite.

:D

@john65pennington Really, John. You described it well enough for me. No need for me to experience it at all.

Maxin’ and relaxin’ by the campfire

That’s a good looking fire!

@jjmah Is it normal to find the fire erotic?