While last year’s fires were
torching Western lives, homes and trees, their accompanying fire
bans were torching something else: the West’s camping plans.
“I don’t want to camp without a campfire,” my wife informed
me last season, while smoke from the Hayman Fire settled over
Denver.
Her feelings echoed those of thousands of Western
campers who took the summer off. And who could blame ‘em?
Camping without the late-night payoff of staring into the
soul-stirring flicker of a wood fire? It’s as pointless as
non-alcohol beer and fat-free ice cream.
But like a
phoenix rising from its ashes, this summer’s season is
getting new life, thanks to Howard Oliver. A Littleton, Colo.,
resident, Oliver has created the Porta Fire, a Forest
Service-approved, portable campfire that features molded concrete
“logs” stacked over a gas burner in a portable metal
basin.
“It’s basically a dressed-up barbecue grill,”
Oliver says of his creation.
Powered by propane, the Porta
Fire is a smokeless wonder that looks like a wood fire, but sends
up none of the ash and embers that start forest fires.
The
device was born back in 1997, when a fire ban in Colorado prevented
Oliver and his family from lighting their own campfire. A
bad-news-bearing ranger suggested Oliver bring a gas grill next
time, and the flicker of an idea took hold in Oliver’s
head.
After six years of securing patents, checking forest
regulations, consulting with state and federal foresters and
securing UL approvals, Oliver is now entering his first full season
as the West’s camping savior.
His timing
couldn’t be better.
The West has entered another
fiery season, and the Porta Fire is earning endorsements from KOA
operators, forestry groups and others who watch visitors vanish
with every fire ban. “You can’t sit around a Coleman lantern;
that just doesn’t make it,” Oliver says.
But you
can sit around a make-believe wood fire and ask yourself the big
questions of life: Why do RV campers run their generators all
night? Does man need smoke with his fire? Am I becoming less Lewis
& Clark and more Martha Stewart and KitchenAid?
“Man
is a relatively lazy being,” Oliver says. “If he can just turn
something on and off, that’s what he’s going to
do.”
I close my eyes and imagine the future that Oliver
sees: Porta Fires in every fire ring, me returning from the camp
host’s trailer with an LP tank instead of a bundle of logs. I
hear “Cumbaya” rising up around that over-sized Porta Bonfire
that’s bound to come.
I see Coloradans gathered
around a special “Terry Barton” Porta Fire, its molded logs
replaced with a burning visage of the hellion behind the Hayman. In
Los Alamos, locals ring a similar model with a bust of the genius
behind the “controlled” burn that didn’t toe the company line
there.
Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” survival
story will be as anachronistic as songs about people playing vinyl
records or making 10-cent phone calls. (He tried to build a fire
with wood, Uncle Marty?) Eagle Scouts will train on fittings and
valves instead of twirled sticks and tinder. “Kindling” will fade
from the lexicon and my wife will lose the joy behind her
campground handle of “Lady Pyro”. (“How tall can the Porta Fire
flames get?” she asks from the next room, yanking me back from my
Porta future.)
Years from now, the next generation’s
campers will never know the joy of moving their chairs about the
fire pit all night. (“Your campfires had smoke, Uncle
Marty?”)
Late at night, Jim Beam swirling in my
splatter-ware cup, I’ll be able to lean over to my beloved as
she gazes into Porta flames: “Babe,” I’ll whisper, “how
‘bout I put a few more PSIs of propane in the ol’
inferno?” We’ll get lost in a blaze that fades to black only
when the tank runs out. Before slipping into the tent, we’ll
lovingly splash each other’s necks with Liquid Smoke for
nostalgic effect.
Better still, this summer you and I
might get fired up about sleeping outside, and go camping. What a
gas.
Marty Jones is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, (hcn.org), a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. He writes in Denver.
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