Campfire

Ronnie Turner, 14, remembers the prank he pulled as a 10-year-old on his father, Michael. One night while camping at Susquehanna State Park near Havre de Grace, the Norfolk, Va., boy drifted off to sleep as his father wove a traditional spooky bedtime story. Just before dawn, Ronnie stuffed his sleeping bag, making it appear that he was still in it. He sneaked out of the tent and stretched fake spider web he had saved from Halloween across the tent's entrance. "I've watched a lot of camping movies and shows, and I know lots of good tricks, and I wanted to get my dad for scaring me," Ronnie said.

XAKANAXA, Botswana - The last time Molly Bruce Jacobs saw her son alive, she tucked him into bed, gave him a kiss and reminded him not to leave his tent during the night. It had been a full day, their second on safari in the Moremi Wildlife Reserve. With scrub-covered islands in 1,860 square miles of swamp, the park offers visitors some of the best game-viewing opportunities in southern Africa. It had drawn Jacobs and her son Mark Garrity Shea, known as Garrit, from Stevenson in Baltimore County, full of excitement and wonder.

You think some of your locavore friends are hardcore. They've got nothing on historical reenactors. Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine is hosting some 150 reeaactors from all over the country who wil be living the 1814 life on the fort's grounds as part of the annual Star-Spangled Banner Weekend . Your children will gape in awe at the sight of humans cooking over a campfire. The weekend's ativities at the fort include a Friday night parade and Saturday evening ship-to-shore pyrotechnic bombardment.

Chad Wells, the executive chef at Alewife Tavern, is at it again. Wells hosted a few endangered species dinners this past year, featuring Maryland's notorious snakehead. Coming up on Monday, January 9, Wells will present a Campfire Dinner at Joe Squared at Power Plant Live , the new home for the Food = Art series of monthly dining events. All of the food on Wells' campfire menu is food people can kill themselves, conceivably anyway, and all of it will be prepared backwoods style -- with limited ingredients, cast-iron pans, smoke and fire.

Creating the ambience of a campfire with a fire pit is one of the hottest trends in backyard recreation. Jim Jarvis of Weatherford, Texas, owner of an online fire-pit accessories company, says the trend was sparked by the clay chimeneas that started showing up in Mexican import stores a few years back. Alex Bandon, multimedia editor of This Old House magazine, helped show readers how to build a fire pit from cast-concrete stone for about $500 in the September issue. "People are turning their yards into outdoor rooms, and a fire pit is better than a barbecue because it's generally circular, which makes it very social."

The idea of "roughing it" has taken on a new meaning. The Coleman outdoors company sells air mattresses with built-in alarm clocks and night lights, and tents outfitted with "integrated lighting systems" and auto-roll windows. For those who can't bear to be unplugged for any length of time, DirecTV has a portable satellite and Kampgrounds of America offers wireless Internet at most of its camp sites. With fewer people participating in outdoor activities, retailers and park officials are doing everything they can to coax them into the great outdoors.

The American Girls Handy Book: Making the Most of Outdoor Fun, by Lina Beard and Adelia B. Beard (Derrydale Press, 474 pages, $11.95 paperback). The authors, along with their brother, Daniel Carter Beard, founded the Campfire Girls, and wrote this book first published in 1887 to match The American Boys Handy Book. I defy anyone to pick up this or Boys, for that matter and not be charmed into long musings. From First of April Party to Valentine Party, from Maple-wax Easter Eggs to How to Make a Butterfly Fan, there are endless entertainments, distractions and potential obsessions.

'Music + Travel,' Museyon Guides, $17.95: Graphics that pop, plenty of maps and a breezy tone make the new "Music + Travel" guidebook a handy reference and a rockin' good time. Twelve writers profile 12 countries, offering the inside scoop on the best music venues in, among other sites, Dublin, Ireland; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Paris; Berlin; and Chicago. Jessica Hundley's chapter on Southern California touches on such figures as Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons. She writes: "Calicountry, the dust-blown cowboy strut that began with the Okie folk songs of the Dust Bowl emigres, continues to hang over Los Angeles like campfire smoke."

By the end of summer, many of us are in a literal and figurative s'mores meltdown. How many gooey marshmallow, chocolate and graham cracker desserts cooked over an open flame can one person endure? Womp 'Em sticks offer an alternative. Just take a stick, form a shell out of supermarket biscuit dough - such as Pillsbury Grands - over the top and cook over a campfire. When it's nice and brown (it takes about 10 minutes), slide it off and fill the inside with strawberries and whipped cream or ice cream.

"The American Boy's Handy Book," by Daniel Carter Beard (The Derrydale Press, 391 pages, $11.95). At first glance, this republication of a more than 100-year-old book is simply an artifact of immense nostalgic charm. Daniel Carter Beard, in the late 1800s, was an indomitable enthusiast - first national commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America, president of the Campfire Girls, the precursor of the Girl Scouts, founder of the Sons of Daniel Boone, and more, more, more. The Handy Book was then -- and now again is -- a brim-full collection of guidance on an immensity of subjects, ranging from knot-tying to boat-making, to outdoor survival without appropriate gear.