I volunteered the use of my stove, but no, he had to have a fire, and I wasn’t going to build one. There is a person in the Sierra Club (who shall remain nameless) who is still not speaking to me because I would not let him build a fire on an overnight trip, and he had not brought a stove. Why did we want to destroy old wood and leave an unholy mess? We didn’t, everyone decided. And then, to let them build a fire anywhere. I became notorious for my refusal to let my companions build an illegal fire at the bottom of Grand Canyon. “No one would mind, would they,” I asked my fellow backpackers, “if we didn’t have a fire tonight?” No one would, and that was the beginning of the end of my fascination with campfires. I pictured myself dragging the weathered wood into a ring, starting a fire, killing the fragile plants underneath, and then, in the morning, dealing with the debris and blackened soil. It was a lovely meadow with delicate alpine flowers–a verdant hanging valley.
One day, I found myself hiking in the mountains right at tree level. Note: Even survival experts admit that the value of a survival fire is mostly psychological.
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