One campfire when I was five or so, my mom or dad finally cut off my consumption of roasted marshmallows. I asked whether I could keep making them but not eat them, and that is how I became the short order marshmallow cook, roasting them up for older relatives, for it wasn't so much the eating as the roasting that fed me.
Boy Scout camping meals, you threw some carrots and onions onto a sheet of aluminum foil and meat on top and then more vegetables, and it's not because you liked vegetables but because the vegetables kept the meat from burning, and you packed it all together with more foil and tossed it onto the coals. Later you forked out (better yet, knifed out) that primitive food like some wild hunter/gatherer caveman.
First time taking Lyla camping, age three, along with her friend Maia and Maia's dad, Dave, past the girls' bedtimes, both girls huddled in blankets on lawn chairs, mesmerized by the flames. Later the girls nestled in their sleeping bags, and Dave and I added logs to the fire and passed a flask of whiskey between us and wondered why we didn't do this more often. I'm wondering now why we haven't done it since.
In the flames of tonight's fire, they're all there, those memories flickering back to me, those and others, and promises of what's to come.
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