Camping Genius: Building a Fire Pit/Campfire Site

A good fire pit helps prevent out of control fires.

The highlight of my days at Lone Star MV Camp were the campfires. If you work with youth groups at all, the campfire is a useful tool for working with young people. The link I just gave you is to a blog post I wrote on the subject of campfires as a witnessing tool, just in case you've never witnessed the power of a nice fire for helping focus a group of kids.

Safety is a huge issue in constructing a proper campfire. More than one youth leader has overbuilt a fire or made one that was a danger to those sitting around it. Bonfire and campfire building is an art.  We start today with the Fire Pit.  This article on building a fire pit was published in "The Art of Manliness" weblog. It gives you a lot of great tips for building a safe and useful fire pit. It even includes a design for benches.  I've also written an article on how to build a simple sturdy campfire area bench that works for campfires or outdoor chapels.

You can have even more fun learning to cook over a campfire with simple homemade equipment like the tin can billy.  If you've got a spot in your backyard and it's legal, a ready made fire pit is really handy to have along with some canvas folding chairs, a guitar, a can of Vege-links, bag of marshmallows and some pointy sticks. If mosquitoes are a problem the smoke will help and you can set up a homemade mosquito repellant to drive away the ones the smoke doesn't get.

Nothing better on a crisp autumn evening.

Have fun and save me a vege hot dog.

Tom King © 2013