Having a fire to sit around is an integral part of the camping experience. Fires are awesome. If you think about, we humans have been staring at fire for almost as long as we have been staring at the stars… or each other… If you think about it, fire is like TV… for cavemen…
There, that is you average, normal campfire. Mollie was playing with the camera. I usually use the auto setting, and let the camera do all the thinking. Mollie actually plays with the f-stop… whatever the heck that is… and the shutter speed. That is why she took all these pictures and not me.
So yeah, a fire is endlessly captivating to watch. It dances and writhes while warming you against the chill. But remember that big swap meet in the desert in Quartzsite, Arizona that I told you about? Yes, the one that we were camping close to… and that I will be getting to soon in this series of posts… because that is where I broke my ‘most dogs petted in a single day’ record….
When we were at the swap meet on the first day, we found this stuff called: Funky Fire… or Funky Flames… something like that…
They are little packets full of chemicals and metal flakes that you throw in your fire…
They change the colors of the flames, adding blues and greens and purples…
I wish we had these back in the day when I used to… well… never mind… this is a family friendly blog, and not the place for stories of my impetuous youth… but man… colored fire is awesome!
Sure, breathing smoke from burning chemicals and heavy metals is probably a stupid idea… but you should really try this at least once.
Pouring My Art Out 
I remember getting colors in the fire by burning certain types of plastics. I don’t remember which ones, though.
that might even be worse to breathe
Come to think of it, maybe it’s the fumes that were making me see colors.
now you are on to something
Your know what? I own 100 acres of farmland and woodland, (mostly forest) in Kentucky …we go there and have bonfires all the time, we’ve never even though about doing something like that…well except their is one slight difference…our bonfires were usually to burn old stumps out of the ground where the trees had fallen or been cut and hauled. Every ten years or so we let loggers come in and do a certain amount of thinning, we don’t let them take whole swathes of trees, they have to be hand picked throughout, marked and then we have to approve them then they cut them and haul them out, it’s healthy for the forest because it let’s light get down below the canopy hat’s how I can live in Texas and still keep up the property taxes and expenses for the farm. One log haul every ten to 15 yrs pays everything for the farm for that whole time…that and we share crop out to others…but I digress. Those fires are HUGE and it would take a ship load of chemicals to make it turn colours, but even so. Sitting around the fire at night in the woods is the best thing in the world. People have lost touch with nature and there will be children today who will spend their whole lives never having been in the woods. Sad.
I spent some time cutting and hanging tobacco in Kentucky back in the day…
I did some posts about it…
Of course, our very distant relatives would have been staring beyond the furthest reaches of the fires goal, hoping not to see eyes staring back, wit only a glance back to see if the fuel will last til dawn. . Sorry, was listening to 2001 by Deodato 1972 CTI and flashed to the movie.
There is something very deep inside is reached sitting in the outdoor outdoors, nothing but the fire and stars for light, takes me back 20 thousand years.
Love the pics, warmed up a chilly day up North..
YAY!
Pretty awesome shots, though yea chemicals and fjres aren’t generally a great match. Still, nothing beats a good campfire. It’s the essential ingredient in all our camping trips.
There is no better place to share stories.
Couldn’t agree more.
yay… and I will be posting the next chapter of my book tomorrow or the next day… and it has princess Miri in it…
Ooh, very exciting, look forward to reading it.
yay