Thank you for saying this - I’m treated like the Antichrist when I refuse to have a campfire. When your clothing and hair reek of smoke, you carry it back into your bed and that smells, too. This may be tolerable for a weekend, but not long term. You can wash your bedding, but the smell gets into your vehicle’s interior, which isn’t so easy to deodorize.
An alternative, assuming open fires are allowed, is one of the “campfire in a can” products. It’s essentially a big candle that smells good, is easy to extinguish, and compact to transport. The only drawback is the price, but you’d likely spend a fair amount to purchase locally sourced firewood.
Oh yeah, I'm happy backing you up on this. I know most here wouldn't dare, but we've all seen dispersed camp sites where nearby trees are desecrated for 'green' firewood. Total BS and begs for area camp or access bans. Fire pits also invite folks to toss their bottles, cans, other garbage, leaving litter and unsightly messes behind. I've seen so many close calls in arid areas, where maybe there's no camp ban but embers are flying into dry leaves and grass, leaving it to luck to not start a wildfire.
My sleeping bag is my nice $600 backpacking bag. I do not crawl into it dirty, or wreaking of campfire. I don't want my tent or truck interior permeated with campfire either. Or my dog!
Packing for fires requires a lot of footprint for just one night of firewood. Once burning, you're a bit of a slave to it until bedtime, and it has a way of taking away that decision for you since you don't want to 'waste' it, dump perhaps precious water supply to extinguish it. Folks don't admit it is a chore, adds weight and space to our rigs. Folks then bring chainsaws to 'harvest' areas that - lets face it - are most often established camp sites where many have done the same. More tools and questionable leave no trace practices.
Honestly, I like a campfire now and then, and we will on occasion have one. Its just not a foregone conclusion for our camping styles anymore. We spend so much money and mental energy honing our fuss-less camp setups. Prepping and maintaining campfires goes against that. I'm not a militant against campfires, this is purely a sharing of my evolution towards de-coupling the idea of camp and fire. Its a really nice experience, with no or absolute minimum mood light somewhere at camp, letting your night vision come to full fruition, no campfire noises but just the sounds of your environment filling your senses. It is not a bad thing, I promise. Folks should try it.
Now, I am militant against loud camp music, especially anything that can be heard 100 yards away, and 'turn night into day' camp lights lighting the grounds like a prison yard. Don't do that, for gods sake.
