How to locate a spot for a roaring campfire?
Dammit, I just erased a long answer. Here is take two: Sitting outside and having a nice campfire is a really old tradition in the Northwest, and happily there are many places to do so. Don’t listen to the people saying “no way, you can’t do that,” because you have several million acres to chose from for your star-viewing and wood-burning pleasure. In the metro area, you are probably out of luck (lots of places to enjoy the stars, few places to light fires). However, you are surrounded by public land within a few hours of driving, including National Forests, BLM land, other Federal land, and various forms of State land, on much of which hiking, camping, and (assuming fire restrictions are not in effect) campfires are not only allowed by encouraged. (Traditionally, the big timber companies have allowed a lot of public access on their lands, but have restricted some of that access in recent years; this will vary by company.) A good resource to start with is a Delorme atlas for Oregon:
In my defense, lol, i’m not married to a cornfield…being an attorney for 33 years, i think i can conceptualize the liability concern; wouldn’t knock on a stranger’s door unless it was Halloween and i thought i could pull off acting as an 8 year old. Don’t want a campfire in an “organized” setting such as a park, local, state, national…just looking for a “spot” out in the country, under the stars, away from the city lights, and wondered if anyone had any magical ideas…
Make some friends who have a large field and make use of it. I know lots of people, but none anywhere near Oregon. Alternatively, you could do what the organizers of large events do, and pay some person with a field a sum of money to allow you to do it. That may require knocking on doors. You don’t want a corn field, though, you want a pasture.
Yes, definitely go to some of the public land. I’ve found that many national forest campgrounds will be completely unoccupied, if you find one that has no running water. They’re basically a few flat spots in the woods with fire pits and maybe a pit toilet. You can find them on forest service maps (or websites), and then you have the benefit of an existing fire ring in which to build your fire. If you decide to just build a fire somewhere out in the great wide open, call appropriate land management agency to make sure there are no fire restrictions in place. The agencies put restrictions in place to help prevent forest fires when the conditions are especially dangerous. Don’t ignore them – you definitely don’t want to be the guy who starts a forest fire. That said, I have a feeling this is the wetter part of the year for you, so hopefully you won’t run into any restrictions. If you end up building a fire outside a fire ring, please build a
