The Patriot Post® · Campfires, Wet Dogs, and Old Stories

There’s no better place to tell old stories than around a campfire. The smell of a hickory wood campfire or a wet dog can sometimes take me back through so many memories that it is hard to select which one to relive once again. It is said when we reach the end of our days it is our memories that we will have.

Friends of my parents whose farm we frequently visited always had a sweet-smelling hickory fire going in the fireplace. I was probably four years old when we first started those visits, but I still remember that aroma as if it were yesterday.

When I was five years old, my mother took us to the October Plum Nelly Festival at Fannie Mennen’s property on the back of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. We kids were enthralled by the aromatic bonfire and the puppet shows. My mother loved the clothesline art exhibits. I still remember the wonder and smell of it all and looked forward to attending that fall event until the festival ended in 1972.

When I was 10 years old, my father took me on a squirrel hunting trip on an island located within Woods Reservoir in Middle Tennessee. My grandfather had lent me his 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun, and this was to be my first real hunting trip. While I remember most of the details of those three days, what I remember most was the hickory wood campfire each night and the men who had known and loved each other for decades sitting around it telling of their other hunts and adventures.

“My word but wasn’t that English Setter ‘Tick’ a good one!” “Do you remember that time up on the Cumberland when pointers ‘Thunder’ and ‘Ike’ could do no wrong and we hunted until dark and got caught in a snowstorm and the truck couldn’t make it out?” “Good thing old Vick always kept firewood in the back of that truck.” “We just built a big fire and made a night out of it.”

This was powerful stuff for a 10-year-old boy.

Decades later, I was fortunate to have a group of friends like this. On many occasions, we would camp on location prior to a duck hunt or a fly-fishing trip. And always there was the campfire and the Dutch oven meals, but mostly just the joy of old friends being together recounting past adventures and looking forward to the next.

“Remember that time Lab Retriever ‘Kate’ went through the ice in South Dakota and we nearly lost her?” “How about that time we were coming out of Richland Creek where it meets the Tennessee River? We hadn’t checked the weather forecast and when we came out of the high banks of the creek onto open water, we were nearly swamped by gale force winds and waves!”

No duck hunt and campfire is complete without Labrador Retrievers, and we all had good ones. All were treated as family and slept indoors, so naturally at the end of the hunt they would be with us drying themselves by the fire. Later they would crawl on top of our sleeping bags, sometimes still wet.

Hunting in the South over my Gordon Setter “Caena” with friend Bob, we would often be in damp places and have a bit of a chill at the end of the day. Bob, never one to rush anything, would say, “Well, recon we ought to have us a little fire now.” And “Caena,” who loved Bob, would curl at his feet with her back to the fire to dry herself.

None of this, of course is very unusual. People all over America enjoy firepits, outdoor fireplaces, and bonfires with family and friends and telling the old stories. Barely a weekend passes when my friend Mark Alexander does not have a roaring fire out back — in any season.

I hope families with young children are taking them on adventures and camping trips in the outdoors and at the end of the day are including a campfire to roast hotdogs and marshmallows and tell the stories and misadventures of the day. It’s a quite simple thing, really, but one they will remember for a lifetime.

Someday those adventures will become the old stories.

I believe with certainty that as soon as man discovered fire there were a group of friends sitting around it telling the old stories. As it should be.

It’s mystical and magic — and timeless.

I think now I’ll take the dogs down by the river and build ourselves a fire and speak the old stories to them. They won’t know what I’m talking about, but maybe they have their own memories of the countless fires we have shared. They will probably swim in the river while I’m getting the fire going and then will lay beside it to dry off.

Sometimes the simplest things can bring us great joy … like campfire smoke and wet dogs.