Campfires were always a big part of the Troop 161 evening program, scouts and adults both like to make fires and enjoy a good roaring fire at the end of a long day of Scouting.
Sometimes even in the rain if need be, I remember challenging the scouts to build a fire after a rain storm and several tried and failed, I harrassed them and they bet me I could not do it either. I was successful with my fire and they had to pay up, don’t even remember what the bet was about, but winning was the only important part for me. The people who challenged me quickly learned that collecting firewood does not have to be off the wet ground but most pine trees always have some dry dead branches on the bottom of the tree that work great in wet weather, cause most of the time, if the tree had good tops, the bottoms probably stayed dry.
Not sure if it was the same group or a different group that was on a high adventure trip that learned the value of dry pine. They proceeded to collect some dead pine trees that could be just pushed over and put in the fire. If you ever burned a dried-up Christmas Tree, you know they go up quickly, imagine if you had SEVERAL pine trees stacked in a pile, like a teepee. They would go REALLY fast. This group of older scouts built a rather large fire. I didn’t say much because we were on the property of one of the other adults and I assumed they cleared it with him, he assumed they cleared it with me. They finally lit it at dusk, and it went up quickly, the flames shot WAY over our heads. The fire got so hot, that it started to breathe. You could hear the bottom lacking air, it would get a puff of air, burn all the oxygen and it puffed like a steam engine. I have to admit it was the best fire I had ever seen. I believe the base was 8 trees they had uprooted, and they stacked them, till they named it the OCTOGON FIRE, those that were there, will never forget it. What made it more interesting, it was so hot, that spraying water on it had very little effect on it, because it just turned to steam. We tried to shovel up dirt to calm the fire down, and this fire pit was also the place where the property owner dumped some old diesel fuel, every time you threw dirt on the fire, it just added to the fire instead of hurting it. As the fire calmed down and reflected on how awesome that fire was it came to light that both Bill Lemsky (property owner) and I thought the other one permitted to make the fire that large. To be honest, we both thought it was cool and have talked about it often with lots of laughs. We were just glad the fire marshal who sat in a tower looking for forest fires never sent anyone to our fire. It could have been mistaken for a forest fire, it was large, as the pictures below show.
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