OM, please don't read this as an attack on you. It's not. Your opinion is common and the following rant in response is really offered in a very general way.

IMHO that's a very Western States attitude that really should stay out west. There is no good reason, no matter how delicately put, to admonish people here about having campfires.

The thing that sticks in my craw about this opinion when it's preached beyond your (westerners) area is that it feels very much like we're being told campfires are irresponsible and reckless and akin to dumping toxic waste in the pristine wilderness. And it's constantly preached beyond the Western States.

I've watched it move beyond necessity to a self declared more refined lifestyle that's now presented as if the unlearned destroy the Feng shui for the more cultured and refined backpacker because we haven't reached that higher plateau where the truly enlightened backpacker has learned to become one with the forest nights.

The truth is still the truth. You don't have campfires out there because you can't. The reason you can't is because too many reckless people out there burn the forests up. But to leap from that truth to believing not having them anywhere is a higher state of being is nothing more than an exaggerated sense of one's self.

The flip side to the lack of enlightenment admonishment so often doled out to us less refined is that the Western Backpacker has lost touch with the simple pleasure one can experience by letting themselves become mesmerized in our deep human connection with sitting by a fire at night, and how sad it is for this to have happened to them.

The difference is that this is not constantly preached at those out west. We actually understand the reasons why you can't have campfires and we don't have them when we go out there backpacking.

Y'all never come here. For the most part westerners think there's no place here worth backpacking. Most every backpacker I know here has backpacked out west, and most all of them say they like backpacking here better, and having campfires is always one of the top reasons.

My observations are somewhat validated by the time I've spent living in both regions, but my conclusions are still just a general critique of the western backpacker's views on campfires and should not be taken as a personal attack on anyone. I'll add that one does not have to live out west to qualify my lumping them in there either. We have self proclaimed "Enlightened" backpackers here too that think hiking off trail is a desecration of the forests. Opinions are funny that way. Trails look just like giant scars on the forest to me.

One might stretch that into "I'd only use a trail in an emergency and part of the skills needed for backpacking include learning to avoid such emergencies". But I won't.