FROM THE LOWER LEFT CORNER
To Build A Fire...Or Not
Victoria Stoppiello
LUMIE JOHNSOM
REAL ROTATE.
Sunday morning, August 16th A day for a daydream.
Cerulean blue skies, light airs, a whisper o f fall in the alder
trees, a pending road trip culminating in a concert pairing
two hero-legends o f the folk-stnng style, the Doc and the
"Dawg." A convocation o f the usual desperates, the
Brothers Logan, Uncle Dean Bonde and your Professor
gathered together for our long anticipated pilgrimage to see
the good doctor from North Carolina and his mandolin-
frenzied crony, the "Dawg," David Gnsman. Lots o f doctors
practice; few heal. Arthel "Doc" Watson possesses the
musical prophylaxis and curative power necessaiy for curing
the human spirit. The very air hummed electrically in
4,1 T lw io y s and I had parlayed together and decided by
mutual consent, to follow a route that wound lazily through
secondary roads to the French Praine area near Newburg
where the concert would be held. We eschewed the
freeways. Dashing to a Doc Watson concert on the jangle of
freeways seemed sacrilege. In our minds we wanted to travel
up the lazy river in the noonday sun. My mates were pnmed
and ready. Someone brought a six-pack o f our favorite
bailey-pop, a few road sodas for the pilgrimage. Chief
Bonde had blessed the journey with his special shamanic
offerings to the powers. The sun was in the heavens and all
was right with the world.
We traipsed and lolled our way slowly through the Coast
Range, noting the latest toll on the forests o f the Tillamook
Bum, indulging in tales o f what once was, revelling in good
company and comradeship. Our path toward Newburg
glanced off Highway 26 at Manning and meandered through
farms and foothills, hawks in the air, sleepy thickets o f
willow in the bottomland, fall com assembled like armies at
attention, deserted ball diamonds in little towns like Banks
and Carlton, an old dog shambling down a clover meadow.
Our destination, specifically, was Champoeg State Park
One hundred and fifty years ago, Champoeg was the site o f
events important to Oregon and regional history. In the
region called "French Prairie" (an area burned over by the
Indians to keep down brush and shrub) on May 2,1843, Joe
Meek, the infamous "Mountain Man," and a gathering o f
rough and ready settlers, trappers, and French Canadian
voyageurs gathered to decide if the region should remain
allied with Great Britain and the Hudson Bay Co. or align
itself with the United States as a territory, the "Oregon
Country," that would include Oregon, Washington, Idaho
and parts o f Montana and Wyoming. In accounts that have
become somewhat apocryphal at this late date, 102 settlers
gathered at Champoeg to decide the fate o f the region. By
some accounts, a line was drawn on the ground. 50 settlers
stood on the British side o f the line; 50 stood on the
American. Two French-Canadians, Stephen Matthieu and
Etienne Lucier, strode to the American side after some
politicking by Meek. Oregon became a territory o f the
United States.
Travelling to this place o f legend to watch and listen to
two legendary musical heroes seemed particularly meet and
proper.
Attending a concert featuring artists like Doc Watson and
David Grisman is like visiting the Louvre. You've seen
paintings in books, Titians, Turners, Rubens, Monets, but
y n n 'v e never really seen them. It catches your breath. The
magic transports you. "So that's it," you say to yourself.
Watching and listening to Doc Watson and Grisman is that
kind o f experience.
The first time I listened to Doc Watson perform years ago,
I was struck dumb. As a teenager, I just figured he must
have had a much better guitar than anyone else had. Whew!
When those fingers flew across the neck o f the guitar, I was
mesmerized like a jackrabbit fixed by the headlights o f a car.
After all these years, for both o f us, he still has that string
magic par excellence. I have heard legions o f guitarists drag
their Martins and Gibsons out o f the case and pick, but in my
mind he has no peer.
For those o f you who know me, few things bring me to
tears. A good poem does it, a song certainly can. On this
Sunday at Champoeg, when Doc, David Grisman and his
quintet worked through the Kentucky Waltz, The Beaumount
Rag, and Shady Grove, my eyes were more wet than dry. It's
the best o f what we can be. Like Tiresias, Doc Watson is
blind but can "see." I'm sorry if you missed it. His like only
comes down this road once.
’ 7ll'
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What’s the use of a house if one doesn’t have a
tolerable planet to put it on.
Henry Thoreau
At Yuba Lake in the dry hills of southeastern Utah,
sheep bleat in the background and a grebe's hoarse call
nses from the water. Two boats have gone by, runabouts
with fishermen. The campful of young people nearby is
still quiet. They had a bonfire last night and therefore were
seduced into slaying up late.
My interest in campfires has steadily waned. I
remember camping in Tuolumne meadows in \ oscmilc
National Park 30 years ago. Being among the first few
campers that early spring night, I was so afraid of bears
that I insisted on having a fire all night. Of course, my
fear wasn’t totally unfounded. A year or so later, a friend
was snow camping in the Sierras and awoke in the middle
of the night to see a bear literally walking over him in
search of a late w inter snack.
Thirteen years ago, however, my views had begun to
shift. I irritated fellow backpackers when I resisted
building a lire to fiy fresh trout. In the middle of an 85
degree day in the Steens Mountains of southeastern
Oregon, already hot and irritable, I had a poorly
articulated, multipurpose policy about camp tires: They
should be employed only when needed to produce warmth
and light, as well as a means of cooking.
On that hot afternoon, we had plenty of heat and light
without a campfire. We had a backpacker s stove with us,
so we had a cooking alternative. We were camping in an
arid region without abundant firewood. (ottonwixxl, aspen
and sagebrush don’t bum well, and the chokechcrry and
other hardwoods that grow there are sparse and slow
growing. It would take the environment a very long time
to reproduce the wood that we burned. I felt a fire was
therefore a waste of fuel and an unjustified taking from our
immediate environment.
Nowadays, I’ve learned more and added even more
reasons to my rationale. Dead and downed wood is the
only wood truly cured enough to burn, but left on the
forest floor it will slowly compost to provide nutrients to
the plant community. Then there’s the problem ol global
warming: All the combustion of fossil fuels from our
vehicles, the emissions from coal-fired electricity
generation, the slash and burn approach to rain forest
agriculture—these are all contributing to the greenhouse
gas layer that enhances global warming, then climate
change, triggering larger and more powerf ul El Ninos. Ha!
you say, my little lire is just a puff of emission compared
with these global, industrial forces.
However, am I any better than the person running the
coal-fired plant at Hour Comers, the plant whose plume
can be seen from space as a murky blotch? Am 1 not part
of the same consciousness or unconsciousness? Who am I
to criticize a big industrial polluter if I behave the same
way in my own puny undertakings. I don t believe I have
the moral right to criticize if I haven’t examined my own
behavior and corrected it. Then there s the issue ol
incremental impact. IÍ a great mass of individuals change
their behavior, won’t that change be felt? And best of all,
once in a while an individual who has developed
conscientious habits moves into a decision-making
position and can determine how one of the big
organizations will do business.
This perspective is pretty far afield from a simple
campfire, but I’ve found that I get reinforcement in a more
down-to-earth fashion. Anyone who has sat around a
campf ire late into the night knows the syndrome: Your
front stays toasty while your backside gets cooler, then
cold. Occasionally you have to stand with your back to
the fire to warm up.
Meanwhile, stars twinkle in a black velvet sky, but
blinded by firelight you miss them. Dew is forming on
the grass and the day’s warmth is radiating from the earth
to the black hole of the night. The warm microclimate
around the fire lulls you to the fact of the deepening avid
and the freezing sleeping bag waiting in your tent. Oh!
those minutes shuffling amund inside it, trying to warm
its now frigid interior, your body heat warming the bag
instead of vice versa.
The seduction of the campfirc-and now it’s time to
pay. If I’d only gone to bed a few hours earlier, my
sleeping bag would be that much warmer. Just one more
reason not to build a fire.
THE
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