Last time I went out on a trip with the extended family (we’re roughly 20 people, give or take), it was in a rented big structure with a sleeping area, a dining area, and a kitchen, and a yard outside with a place to make a fire. We started a fire, but come dinner time they all wanted to leave the fire going and eat at the table.
I absolutely refused. No way in the world in leaving a fire unattended like that. I said we either stop the fire altogether (and restart it later), or I’ll stay watching it until someone comes to replace me.
In the end I took a plate of food and ate it by the fire alone, until someone indeed came to replace me and I went to finish the meal at the table. It turned out fine, but it really annoyed me how no one in my family saw sense. They kept trying to convince me to just come and eat dinner… as if the social togetherness somehow makes the risk of starting a forest fire unimportant?! There’s some smart people in my family, but some days I don’t understand how they can all be so blind to the obvious reality.
Every time I go camping I think about all the knowledge we have lost now that this is further and further from our every day experiences and even just being a less common recreational activity.
I recently learned that the outdoor recreation curriculum was being cut from the school board I attended 30 years ago and that’s a big loss. I lived in a big city with > 50% of the population being born elsewhere and programs like these are sometimes the first opportunities these kids get to learn outdoor skills relevant to their new home.
Why would anyone make a fire, and then make food that can’t be eaten at the fire?
What’s with the trend of mentioning that people are white and connecting it with things they do? I also see live streamers do this a lot (including in reference to themselves) and it’s strange to me
Non-whites get characterized for the things they do; this is just pushback against that historic trend.
This comedy bit explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/dw_mRaIHb-M
By acknowledging your privilege you don’t have to do anything to change it.
Your privilege to poke a fire with a stick?
Sometimes I don’t even vaguely get the drive-by downvoters. Like… what? Did I upset the Lemmy white supremacists this time?
To be fair, I didn’t down vote.
What’s skin colour got to do with it?
Idk it’s probably cultural. Most non white people in the US have very little experience with stuff like camping and bonfires(there will of course always be exceptions). So usually if you are at a fire and there’s a mixed race group hanging out, 90% of the time the guy fiddling with the fire will be white.
You’re right. It’s a known issue. It’s predominantly white people going out and enjoying nature, for multiple reasons.
Public forests offer a variety of outdoor recreation activities that enhance participants’ well-being, yet participation remains low among ethnic minorities in the United States. These groups face multiple barriers, including limited information, transportation and financial constraints, safety concerns, fear of discrimination, and wildlife-related anxieties, which are often shaped by broader structural and cultural contexts.
Thanks for sharing. I think it’s funny that anecdotes of my lived experience as a brown person gets downvotes, but you sharing an academic paper supporting my lived experience gets up votes.
Your comment didn’t read like own experience fyi, it reads like some random claim
Not that comments explicit about experiences don’t get downvoted still
I wonder if we’re primed to be less likely to interpret statements about people of colour to be personal experiences, because most of the voices we hear are white.
That’s a good idea for a psychology experiment…
That’s actually a great question. Here I was thinking I made a mistake not announcing myself as a brown man, but why do we assume all speakers are white unless otherwise specified?
I think the Americans who know most about campfires should be Native Americans. It’s not fair that white people are getting to spend more time with the land they stole.
Use of campfires should be solely informed by personal interest and cultural ties to use of fire. If there were no systemic barriers, it would be down to cultural factors.
It should be like with tacos. Tacos are cheap and easy to make, so nearly everyone can enjoy tacos. With the barriers removed, tacos are most eaten by Mexican people, because tacos are Mexican culture. That’s fair.
n a t i v e a m e r i c a n s … o. O
Couldn’t you light a fire in a garden, park or beach? Even those shitty disposable BBQs are a form of fire, though I would recommend using almost anything else if possible.
Nothing.
The black men who do this know they are the white guys of their family.
What’s skin colour got to do with it?
We northern ethnics relied on fire probably a bit more due to colder climate, shorter days in winter.
Americans…
I am that white guy. You’re welcome.
It makes me feel weird about people that barely start a fire, and don’t tend to it. Like I’m holding someone else’s baby. Then feeding it. Then sending it to school. It’s my baby now, but it still has your name. Ugh.
It makes me feel weird about people that barely see babies as property, the name attached is the value not the person who didn’t ask to be born and needs help.
(To be clear I’m not saying you do this specifically, it’s more a cultural thing where people will see other people as unworthy unless their name is on it)
Look in to my eyes. I am the baby captain now.
No, I mean… Captain of the baby. Not a tiny captain the poops in a diaper.
Its our fire now
Man I fuck wit fire. Well, used to; my old, crippled ass can’t fuck wit much any more.
Point is that being the fire tender isn’t exactly a no skill job, and it comes with some serious benefits.
You gotta have at least a basic understanding of how fire works if you want to keep it going, and learn how to keep it controlled. That’s why fucks-wit-fire is such a coveted, but demanding, position. See, you gotta keep an eyeball on it. Stacking in fresh fuel in the right way. Keeping adequate air flow. Moving unburned fuel into the center. It’s a dance.
And for that effort, you not only get the delightful scent of wood smoke in your beard, and the glow of warmth across your flesh, you get to see the ever shifting beauty of the fire and the embers. A constant flux of colors and lights that seems alive. I’d hypnotic, meditative, and can be a spiritual experience if one leans that way.
Ash, drifting on breeze settles into your hair as sleep looms and you bank the fire, setting things up for the chilly morning to come, you look down at your friend glowing beneath ashes that only reluctantly settle in for the night.
You go to your rest warm, fulfilled, and at peace.
Do you write?
Here and there, yeah.
Mate i like your romantic narration and all but I have to break it to you, that delightful scent of wood smoke in your beard is actually a stink. That campfire smell gets everywhere and sometimes you have to wash your clothes twice just to get that stank out. Its still fun though.
I dunno, back in my younger days camping with my family I was always up in the smoke and my clothes were fine. Had long hair, and it was never a bad smell. As I got older and did have a beard, I can’t recall it ever smelling unpleasant the next day, and I’m known for catching even faint smells after years of taking care of patients where faint smells can be a sign of something important.
Maybe it depends on the wood? I know a pure deadfall fire can be stronger smelling, and you can get some strange odors indeed if you buy firewood that’s been sitting, though I can’t think of any that stank.
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If you insist on being the person to play with the fire, please, for fuck’s sake, know what you’re doing.
Understand that the 2ft wide wet uncured stump you found in the woods will not burn no matter how hard you try. Smoke is not a sign of success.
Trick question people used to ask, after a heavy rain where can you find dry wood? Split the wet wood and in the middle will be dry wood!
You didn’t really campfire if you don’t smell like campfire
I had a BBQ going one time and one of my friends was going through a rough patch and didn’t really feel very sociable but would disappear into the woods, come back with a log, chop it into firewood and then poke the fire a bit while adding fuel.
He didn’t say much that day and spent at least 12 hours just tending the fire and one of my friends who didn’t know him said “Man theres always gotta be the fire guy”
It’s like yea… Before we had much technology we had the fire and if we were fortunate enough we had a guy who really liked doing that. People have probably been saying something like this for a million years.
Not a guy. Fire, good. Burn everything.
Just look it that thing. It need to be poked with a stick.
o/
One fire guy is ok. Two fire guys is a disaster.
If you have two fire guys, one fire and one girl, you better bring the guitar before you join them. You don’t even need to play it, it just has to be there to pacify the fire guys.
I’m the fire wingman. I will not touch the fire if someone else wants to manage it.
ah yes, one fire and one girl
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