Campfire Wonder

Ever looked into a campfire, firepit, or fireplace and just let your mind wander? Where did it wander to? Here and there, not worried about iPhones, posts, podcasts, or news, more lingering on what had been put aside, not yet tried, somehow forgotten, old friends and new, just being you. I have.

As winter weather fades here in Maine, we watch lake ice “turn black,” thinning in the midday sun, preparing to take its leave, no longer safe or hard, no more cracking, booms, or heaves.

Spring is on its way; after another snow or two, another plow or three, we will have crocuses, daffodils, and buds on trees. Seasons turn, bringing hope, elation, and sometimes contemplation.

Like the first snowflake, the first fireplace set in winter, a spring firepit pops and splinters. It brightens a circle, warming hands tipping a drink. Laughter lingers. People stop and think.

Spring is like that, thawing us after a cold winter, warming souls, no thought of growing old, just lots to do. All the same, that warm, transcendent, happy campfire is what I look forward to.

For me, the campfire or firepit is not hot but warm, a harbor in life’s relentless storm, each flame original and new, entertaining, captivating, some hills, others steep as Eiger, bite of the tiger.

This puts me in mind of Blake’s famous poem, “The Tyger,” where Blake compares that beast to fire. Rather than seeing a tiger in the firepit, he sees a fire in the tiger and wonders why.

Blake writes: “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What moral hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?” He closes with: “In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand does seize the fire?”

His point, in essence, is that God played with fire, creating the tiger. Funny in a way, but one must wonder, or at least one can, how Blake’s mind stumbled on tigers, God, and man. Maybe, in his distant time, the thing that made him a poet, made him wonder and aspire, was his campfire.

In any event, spring is here, and the lake ice about out, so banish the cold, banish the fear, think renewal, new life, and change of year. Soon enough, we will put birchbark under kindling, sticks of pine and oak on top, hoping not to face the smoke, but laugh a bit, happy to sit … at a spring firepit.

There, under the stars, surrounded by friends, pondering imponderables and making amends, we will put aside our travails, a world torn asunder, and kick back, look up, thin,k and wonder. 

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).