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Originally Posted by Vadster,Apr 10 2008, 09:39 AM
Always ALWAYS douse your campfires out completely when you are not tending to them. How many times have you heard that? I heard it often ...and chose to ignore it on a fateful autumn weekend back in 1985. I used to live in Solon, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland home of the world's largest freezer - Stouffer's - is hq'ed there)
I used to go hiking camping all the time and loved it - I always went with friends and went about learning things in my own way as I never was in the boys scouts or anything. Until after high school - my trips had a kind of para-military flair about them. I sported primarily old military surplus. When I would go - I would just walk about the back door and BAM! I was in the woods. I spent a lot of time in those woods while living in Solon and am thankful they were there for me as a source of entertainment and a chance to get out of the house.
I set out on a Saturday with one of my Dad's Co-worker's son "Brian" we kinda got along - Brian was about 3 years younger than me - lived in a different county, attended a different school, etc., but he wanted to come. We had our camo on and our gear and made our way into the woods to find a spot to camp at. After about 30 minutes of hiking we found a good place on raised area and decided to clear an area for a fire. We did the usual collecting of rocks and gathered enough wood to get things going. The fire was started with success, but we soon realized that more wood would be needed and it was going to get dark soon. The fire had died out and we just decided to leave it. We set out looking for wood gathering what was closest and would bring it back - drop it off and then head out deeper. All this time - the fire had not been put out - we let it "die out" and it always looked the same as we came back with more limbs, etc. - it looked DEAD.
Finally we decided to just go exploring and to collect more wood and left the site all together - completely out of view. We must have been gone for about 1 hour or so and really didn't do much of anything except pretend we were being chased by monsters (I was in the 7th grade) It was time to head back as 3:00 was upon us and in another hour it would be dark. As we got closer to the site - the smell of burning wood was very prevalent in the air. We got closer - more burning wood smell & ...smoke. Finally I could see ...fire. We ran to the site and through the ring of fire and stood in the center of destruction in total shock for seemed like an eternity - just like the movies too - everything was slow motion - OHHHHHHH FUUUUUUUCCCKKKK!
Then panic set in as we frantically addressed the 30' ring of fire that was spreading - we were very fortunate that the area we picked had not been dense with too much foliage on the ground so as to spread quickly or we would have been on the news. We managed to put the ring of fire out with nothing but dirt and our feet. The suck part was the perfect ashen silhouette off all my stuff sitting there burned up. Brian had put his in a tree. I lost everything I owned at the time including my Dad's boy scout sleeping bag from the 50's - lesson learned.
04-10-2008, 06:06 AM
Daniel K.
