Something about a fire

As a young man when I was in Scouts I remember all of our summer camps were held in the High Uintahs in a basin known as the Granddaddy Basin. It was only a short drive from Duchesne where I grew up and wasn't a real bad hike to get into even though at the time my feelings about that were quite different. From the start of the trail it was less than 6 miles into the lakes where we camped. There were probably only two lakes that we liked apparently because every camp I went on seemed to be at those two, Palisades and Govenor. We would have a base camp and then go to different lakes during the day for the rest of the week. 

Well one year I remember our troop making this small fire shown above. It was probably only 4 feet tall but it was still taller than me. I took a picture of it because it was so big and now wish that I had a fellow scout standing beside it since it really doesn't look as big as I remember it being. It did start me on a life long love of campfires however that I have now photographed many times. The fun part about a campfire is the changing faces that it provides just like a sunset. From the initial huge flames (if you dare do them that high anymore considering the fire dangers) to the last embers burning well into the night before water is finally used to put it clear out. (I used to remember leaving it burning through the night but won't even think of it anymore since I now know the dangers that exist, especially around Boy Scouts. It is easier to make them start a new one than put out a forest that is on fire.) I guess the thing that I like to photograph the most though with a fire are the late stages that look like a city landscape at night from a plane. All the little glowing embers that sparkle like city lights. However the easiest to photograph are long before that when the main flames are almost gone but the light from the fire still produces light sufficient to take the photograph without having to use a tripod to steady the camera for a long exposure.  

Now I said that I like small fires now but when one happens in your backyard that involves an entire mountain then I will photograph it as well. However I didn't realize when doing it that I would see the Chief watching the fire as well. 


I have one more image to share from my youth in the mountains on scout camps. I didn't ever remember where I hikes very well t that time since I just followed the other scouts as we scouted out lakes to fish at during the day. However I always had my camera (Kodak Brownie Instamatic) with me even then. I saw this tree and it intrigued me so I took a picture of it. Well it always stuck with me in my mind and 27 years later as a Scout Master I took my own troop back into the Granddaddies for a camping trip to last 6 days. I wondered where that tree was and how it would look now since I knew thousands of campfires had been started in all those years and it appeared to have a lot of good firewood on it. I didn't know where it was but due to a lack of communication with an assistant scoutmaster on where we were to camp we ended up for the week at a lake I had never camped at as a scout. However after I secured maps of the entire basin I found it to be only a sort half mile hike through the forest from where I spent the camps of my youth. So one day in preparation of a hike I would do with the troop later in the week I followed the maps and went to the lake I knew so well, Palisades. I spent some peaceful time wandering around the lake, no scouts were with me, and then started to go back by following one of the trails that would bring me back to camp from the opposite direction of how we had hiked in the day before. (There were some strange tracks that I wanted to follow that I believed to be Llama so that was the main reason for my traveling the other direction.) Anyway I never did catch up to the animal that made the tracks but as I got to within a hundred or so yards of camp (I knew I was close, I could hear the scouts) I noticed that same tree that I had photographed all those years before still looking almost as it had when I took the first image of it. I took another picture and compared it when I got home and the only differences were in the fact that a lot of the smaller branches were gone and the trees in the back were totally different. I would have never guessed it would still be so close to the same as it was those 27 years earlier. I decided that it must take a long time for those trees to break down and rot away and wondered how long some of the real rotted ones must have been laying there.