“My wife says I am eccentric. My friends say so too. And I suppose they are all quite right. But what if I am? I like being eccentric at times.

One of my habits, even to this day, when I get disgusted with the sight of too many people and the awful noise they make, is to jump into my car and drive away to some nearby jungle. There I will leave the car, wander off into the forest, make myself a nice large campfire as night approaches, and spend the hours of darkness just seated by the blaze. I throw fresh wood on the fire as occasion demands, having already gathered it before darkness fell. Eventually the supply of wood will give out, or I might feel sleepy. In either case there is only one thing to do. That is to go to sleep beside the fire. The embers will keep me warm when the chill and dewfall of early morning might otherwise prove uncomfortable. They will also protect me from elephants and snakes, the only creatures to be feared when no man-eaters are around. With daybreak I will go back to the car and come home and wonder why I did such a foolish and eccentric thing, and what I got out of it.

But I have done it, and will do it, again and again.

Other forms of this madness are to go out to the jungle on moonlit nights, and also on dark nights, and sit behind some tree, or on a rock, or beside a water hole, and just watch and listen.

Those who have had the good luck at any time to sit beside a camp fire, out in the wide open spaces, even where there was no danger from lurking animals or poisonous snakes, might be able to understand my fondness for this pastime. There is a pleasure that comes to one at such times that words cannot describe. It touches some hidden inner chord and sets one’s soul afire!

Perhaps it is on such occasions, and in such solitudes, that a man’s inner self comes into closest touch with the infinite. I feel very near indeed then to God, far closer than I can feel in any church where the padre, either on the basis of a monthly salary or other means of renumeration, automatically repeats words for the uplift of my erring and sinful self.

There is no place quite so suitable for a friendly talk as a camp fire. The red embers, the crackle of the flames, the occasional shower of sparks as a fresh piece of wood is thrown into the blaze, the acrid smell of smoke that curls upward in a spiral to the sky above – all these help to give one the feeling of being at home with oneself, with Nature, and with God.”

Kenneth Anderson