What Makes a Great Campfire?

One of the highlights of scout camping is a great campfire. Kids look forward to it all day long, and as well they should. It’s fun, funny, and exciting. It’s one of the highlights of any camping experience, and a great way to wrap up a fun day in the woods.

In these days cell phones, reality TV, and video-on-demand, campfires are a connection to an earlier era. It’s the closest thing to Vaudeville that most kids these days will ever see. None of these kids have likely even seen a variety show. So the concept is brand new to them. There’s an excitement in a live performance that you don’t get from watching television or going to the movies.

That, and as humans, we’re naturally fascinated by fire. The way it dances and flickers in the darkness. It can tend to focus the mind, and it provides a great backdrop for an evening of entertainment for your scouts that they won’t soon forget.

Planning the Program

Make sure you’ve got a good idea of what the program is going to be before you get started. Know what songs and skits the scouts are going to do before they actually do them. From past experience, you’ll also want to know what the adults are going to do. Try to navigate away from the gray areas. Have them describe the skit or song for you in detail, or better yet, have them show you a dress rehearsal.

Remember that even the pros rehearse, so your groups should rehearse their acts a few times before they “go on stage.”

As to the tone of your campfire, you want your program to mirror the fire itself. It should start with anticipation, gets bigger and louder and more exciting as the flames on the campfire rage… and then gets softer and quieter as the campfire works its way down to embers. So try to organize the acts accordingly. Big, flashy, and loud first, quiet and reserved later on.

The BSA’s Campfire Program Planner is a pretty free good resource for organization. Keep in mind that you want to limit your program to no more than an hour, and even that might be too long for younger audiences.

If you can give each group a copy of the program, you’re that much better off, otherwise, let them know when they’re skit is being held. Tell them which song or skit they’re following.

If you need ideas for songs or skits you can go here for camp songs, and here for camp skits.

You can also pick up a used copy of the Boy Scout Songbook on Amazon on the cheap.

 

Speak Up!

An otherwise great campfire can be derailed when the audience can’t hear the performers. Most adults can be trained to project their voices, but if you’ve got little Cub Scouts, with little voices and natural shyness, you may run into troubles with the audience hearing what they’ve got to say. And you really don’t want the older kids, or worse, a parent yelling, “Speak Up” at an already nervous child who’s doing their best.

If you’ve got a small group, you should be okay. If you’ve got any more than 20-30 people, you might want to consider getting a microphone and speaker set like the one below.

Building your Great Campfire

If you’re putting on a show for people, you don’t want to be consistently building your fire during the program. This needs to be done in advance. You also don’t want to be stuck in front of the group with a lighter trying to get it going for 10 minutes. It’s embarrassing for you, and frustrating for everyone watching you.

So you want to build your fire in a way that accomplishes two things.

1. It’s going to light easily
2. It’s going to stay lit for your entire program

So you’re going to want a top-lighter. This is essentially a teepee fire-lay on top of a log cabin. It will light easily, and burn down nicely during your program. (From an article I contributed to Men’s Health Magazine years ago, which I’m pretty certain will be the only thing I will ever contribute to Men’s Health Magazine.)

First, make sure you’ve cleared the area of loose burnable items. Get brush and leaves out of the way. Then build a simple log cabin fire lay. Finally, fill the interior of the cabin with kindling.

Next, build your teepee on top. Fill the interior of your teepee with tinder.

The key is to make sure you’ve got dry wood and plenty of kindling and tinder. You can almost never have enough tinder (the wood, not the app.)

Since you want to take no chances that your great campfire won’t start right away, feel free to bring your dryer lint or have a couple of fire starters in with your tinder.

Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to get your fire built, and when you’re done, cover it with a tarp to protect it from the weather.

And lastly, make sure you’ve got water buckets or some other way of extinguishing your fire present before you start your fire.

Lighting the Fire

Now that you’ve constructed a one-match fire, you want to start it in a cool way. This can be as part of your program. My old favorite of lighting the fire with “Flint and Steel” is a takeoff on the old Saturday Night Live “Hans and Franz” skits. While it’s very unlikely that your youthful audience will have any idea who they are, the concept is still funny, and it still works.

Your emcee tells the audience that he’ll be lighting the fire with Flint and Steel. Then two people come out, one introduces himself as “Flint”, the other introduces himself as “Steel”, and in unison, “We are here to light YOUR fire!”

They then proceed to light the campfire with an ordinary lighter.

The key is to be a little bit theatrical.

If you’ve got a smaller group, you can actually show your scouts some creative fire-starting techniques. You can pick up the below flint and steel kit on the cheap. But again, this only really works if you’ve got a group of 5-10 scouts, not an audience of 30+.

During the Campfire

While the fire is going on, you’ve got a lot to do. You need to keep the flow going. The biggest enemy of a great campfire is dead air. You want the next act to be ready to go as soon as the previous one concludes.

You’ve got to manage your program from start to finish. Be ready with a song or skit of your own in case of an unforeseen delay. Stay near the front of your stage area, and manage it.

Closing Your Campfire

As your great campfire program nears its end, hopefully, your audience’s energy is starting to fade with it. Now is the time in your campfire for quieter reflection. Now is the time for storytelling – for stories with meaning. It’s a great time for a Scoutmaster or Cubmaster’s minute like this one.

Remember that the end goal after the campfire is to send the scouts to bed. You want to give them something to think about, but you also want to start winding them down.

After the spoken word, I generally like to end with a song. This time it’s not a loud or raucous one, but something more reserved and introspective.

Something along the lines of Scout Vespers. Here are the lyrics. Most groups only sing the first verse and hum the second, but it’s up to you.

And then, as your fire dies down, you send the kids to bed; and congratulate yourself and your fellow leaders on a job well done.

Photo by Sam Howzit