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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
August 15, 2025 at 9:43am August 15, 2025 at 9:43am
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Going Outside again, with another reason to avoid going outside:
The article is from almost nine years ago, and since then there have been several more wildfires and one pandemic that spread like wildfire. But I don't know what the current campfire policies are anywhere.
Will you be able to enjoy a fire on your next camping trip? For residents of California, Oregon, and Washington, the likely answer is already no. For much of this summer, most wilderness areas in those three states were under a total campfire ban. Outside of the metal fire rings in organized campgrounds, you could not have a fire on public land.
And I understand the reasons, but if I were otherwise inclined to go camping, and someone told me "no campfires," I'd be like "Hard pass." If they didn't tell me until we were up on the mountain, I'd hike right on out of there. In the dark.
But the risk and cost of wildfires is only one nail in the campfire’s coffin. And that means they could also be at risk in areas less prone to conflagration. Let’s look at the problems campfires cause.
If this were a newer article, I'd wonder if an LLM wrote it.
Pollution
Wood smoke contains fine particles of unburnt wood. That may not sound like pollution, but reduced in size to 2.5 microns or less, these microscopic particles become toxic.
Yes. We have cars, airplanes, trucks, ships, trains, coal-rolling rednecks, fossil fuel power plants, industrial manufacturing, and at least one perpetual underground coal fire. But you can do your part by... not having a campfire.
Health Problems
As nice as we all think wood smoke smells, inhaling all of the above isn’t good for you.
See above.
Litter
Campfires leave behind charred wood, piles of ash, and blackened rocks. People often use them to burn trash, which may only be partially destroyed, frequently leaving behind remnants of cans, bottles, plastic, and foil.
The author's assumption here seems to be that, in the absence of a campfire/incinerator, assholes wouldn't leave their thoroughly unburnt trash lying around in the wilderness. I reject that assumption.
Tree Damage
We all know we’re supposed to harvest only dead, fallen wood for our campfires. But in large volumes, removing even that stuff can cause problems.
One of the greatest epiphanies of my existence was when I realized that creation and destruction weren't opposites, or two sides of the same coin, but the exact same thing, indistinguishable except by the value we impose on the change. You're not destroying a tree; you're creating a fire.
Invasive Species
Firewood that you harvest or buy can be home to invasive species like the Asian long-horned beetle.
The irony of complaining about invasive species in an article promoting the roaming of an invasive species (H. sapiens) isn't lost on me.
Still. Spiders.
Injury
There’s no national tally of campfire-related injuries, but a study in Oklahoma found that 57 people were injured and one person was killed due to campfires in a ten-year period.
There's probably no national tally of campfire-related injuries because DOGE cut that departmentit happens so rarely that there's no need for one.
Also, one must balance any CRIs (I'm not typing that out again) with injuries resulting from flailing around a campsite in the pitch blackness, tripping over snakes and, as per the article from last week, getting eaten by bears.
I’m an odd person to be writing this article. To me, having a fire has always been a fundamental component of enjoying a night outdoors.
And also, your arguments are weak.
You might think I'm an odd person to be commenting on this article. It's true that this has no personal relevance to me. Still, in my younger days, I "enjoyed" the occasional wilderness trip, including a (sometimes-illicit) campfire. What, you didn't think I was ragging on a thing I'd never experienced, did you? But mostly, while the risk of wildfires is real, most of those other items don't stand up to much scrutiny.
And that got me thinking: perhaps the real lesson here is that the campfire has had its day.
So we have rules about them, and one can no longer escape to the wilderness to avoid human-made rules. |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Who knew I was just obeying the commands of some tiny bit of non-thinking protein? 
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