Campfire

Depending upon where you travel in the Sunshine State, you find different aspects of Florida. Let's hopscotch the state and look at offerings from various parts: Everyone, it seems, has a favorite beach area for coastal Florida. Among the most popular, certainly, are the beaches of Sanibel/Fort Myers. West Wind, a casual Gulf-front resort in Sanibel, is featuring through Dec. 20 a three-night Sunlovers' Special that includes a guest room with refrigerator for $423 or a kitchenette for $483.

We arrived in San Diego late Saturday evening, Oct. 20. The next morning, we were able to get to Mission Beach for a quick swim in the Pacific Ocean and enjoy a short trip up the highway to La Jolla, Calif., where we noted a strange odor, like a big campfire. The ride back to our resort in Escondido, Calif., was a smoke-filled adventure until we were about 10 miles from our destination and the skies returned to being blue and beautiful. We were advised the following day to stay in the resort, where all was safe with clean air and plenty to do. But Tuesday morning at 6:30, there was a pounding at our door.

When Jerry Wolf, an avid camper before his marriage, decided it was time to start camping again, he and his wife Cheryl had only two small matters to consider: Jason, 6, and Nicole, 2."Children make camping different," says Mr. Wolf, whose family lives in Overlea. "And most times it's more fun." He remembers, for example, Jason and Nicole's unmasked delight when a hike brought them within 10 feet of a deer. At other times, he adds realistically, "it's just like at home," because camping with children is not a vacation from the same supervision required of parents every day.Families who camp say outdoor vacationing has all the elements for a good time: Re-discovery of nature, of each other, the physical fitness that comes from hiking and swimming.

Dear Mr. President, It's too bad The Art of War wasn't on your summer reading list. If you'd read it, maybe we wouldn't be mired in Iraq. According to the author, Sun Tzu, esteemed for thousands of years as the Sage of Warfare, you're doing it all wrong. Exactly what military principles you've broken - and how many - I learned by chance. On the first day of classes at Washington College, the title on a shelf of paperbacks caught my eye. I opened at random and found this on Page 10: "In war, better take a state intact than destroy it."

I have never been a fan of Stephen King or the annual miniseries that he has helped adapt from his books for ABC every May the last five years.But I'm a fan of his new one, "Stephen King's Storm of the Century," a six-hour miniseries about an evil stranger who arrives on a tiny island off the coast of Maine along with a whopper of a winter storm.The film, which begins tomorrow night on ABC, is classic storytelling. It's Stephen King as spellbinder, gathering us around the prime-time campfire -- enthralling, dazzling and scaring our pants off before sending us to bed afraid to turn off the lights.

In suburban bars tonight, you can hoist a few farewell chuckles at "Seinfeld" parties. It says so on the signs on York Road. On radio station WWMX-FM (106.5), you could answer questions yesterday about "Bonanza, Tony Danza and George Costanza" with an Elaine-like "Yada yada" or a Kramerian "Giddyap." So naturally, this causes me to think of Dale Robertson.Robertson starred on a 1950s television show called "Tales of Wells Fargo," about which I remember nothing except the stunning revelation that I was not watching it alone.

There's a legend about the town of Silver Run that rivals any ghost story you'll tell around the campfire this summer. Union Mills author Lois Szymanski weaves the local legend into her children's book, "Silver Lining," published by Avon, Camelot Books.According to Szymanski's research, Silver Run residents' versions and old news accounts, the legend goes like this:Many years ago a German settler named Ahrwed and his beautiful daughter, Frieda, moved into the fertile valley known today as Silver Run.Ahrwed was a silversmith who befriended Indians living in the area.

A 17-year-old Clarksville girl enjoying the season's first snow with a group of friends Wednesday night was crushed to death by a 4-ton rock loosened by heat radiating from a small fire.Katie Hurley, a senior at River Hill High School, died at the scene, behind a new housing development in Highland, officials said. No one else was injured.Hurley and a group of 12 teen-age friends were riding 4x4 off-road vehicles in the snow Wednesday night, over ridges and doing peel-outs in suburban culs-de-sac.

NEW YORK -- There is not a deerskin-covered drum in sight. Nor any papier-mache animal masks to inspire visitors with their fierce primitive maleness.A half-dozen years after Robert Bly and his followers stomped into the light of the national campfire, urging "sensitive," "soft" males to get in touch with their inner wild man, it would seem the most visible legacy of the "men's movement" is the macho-lite persona of the television star Tim Allen on "Home Improvement."Bly, whose snow-white hair and best-selling book "Iron John" once made him an avuncular father figure to millions, was ensconced in a New York University residential high-rise, in boxy white rooms furnished like a graduate-student apartment.

It was a modern twist on summer day camp. By the time their children got home, parents could view photos and read descriptions of the day's activities online. At Wilde Lake Middle School, the people documenting camp life for the Internet were the campers themselves. This summer, the 12- to 15-year-olds who participated in the Triple T Productions Web design class published a daily online newspaper. The Summer Camp Gazette covered Aqua Havens, a marine and aquatic studies course for 8- to 12-year- olds, as well as their own progress in learning Web design.