Build up the campfire and tell me a story

Camping is my favorite way to connect with God’s world.

Even the small miseries remind me that we, and everything around us, are integral parts of an amazing whole.

Some of the best connections I’ve enjoyed came when someone opened a bottle, took a swallow and passed it around the campfire, the drink tightening our camaraderie.

I’m sorry to say that particular connection is rare since my boys joined Cub Scouts, an otherwise fine organization that would boot me if I so much as cracked a beer in my tent. But nature, abhorring a vacuum as she does, tossed me a replacement: Campfire stories.

Now when my friends and I are winding down in the woods and the kids have slipped from songs and skits to silence, someone will call a question across the campfire.

“Does anyone have a story?”

And then the adults start forging connections for the little ones. Sometimes they’re connections to the values we want them to grow up with, sometimes they’re connections to the magic or mystery in the world that might inspire their imagination.

“It’s not really a story,” I like to say, “but I was just thinking about…” And then I tell the kids about the last time Old Tar Pockets was seen around these parts or the worst part of a moose to find in a pie.

They wouldn’t sit still for a lecture about not stealing, but they love to hear how Mr. Pockets (“That wasn’t his real name, of course. I don’t think there’s anyone left who ever knew his real name.”) learned that lesson. They’d tune me out if I told them not to complain about anything they’re not willing to fix, but they try to memorize what happened when an angry cook baked an unappetizing surprise to get out of his job.

I have just one original tale, but the stories of others easily turn into local history or my own autobiography in the theater of the campfire. And then as we shuffle to our tents, I mention whose books to find at the library for the “real” versions. Hopefully, that helps the kids make a connection to a fun author or even to the wider world of literature.

I was asked not tell my one original tale when an adult at our campsite got wind of it. Too scary for the smallest ones, she said. She had a point, but in my defense, we were camping in a cemetery. (Near a cemetery is how the organizers billed it, but the kids played king of the hill on dirt that had been excavated for graves on same bank of the same small lake as our tents.)

So I held my tongue until morning and then took just my sons with me on a stroll toward the newest graves. “You know,” I told them, “it wasn’t always safe for Cub Scouts to camp in this cemetery.” And then they heard about a man who liked to sit by the lake after his wife passed, but always hated nightfall, when unquiet spirits would rise and chase children away. The man eventually was laid beside his beloved wife. He waited for the hauntings to begin and then worked an incantation over the vacant graves that kept the ghosts from slipping back in at sunup. Only after securing their promise to never again scare children did he sweep the spell aside and give them their rest.

“You can tell how clever he was, and how he loved to be surrounded by families,” I told the boys, slowing as we approached a grave I’d found the day before. “If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.” I pointed to a marker that told us the man buried there was a clever fellow who loved family.

It was a small reminder of the connection, I hope, that my sons have to their own ancestors, family who remain in our lives through the loves and values they instilled in their progeny.

What connections do you want to build? Tell me a story.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 8:07 PM with the headline "Build up the campfire and tell me a story."