Girls with Fire

Newsletter 2025-06-30

My daughters got back from summer camp Saturday. They returned with wonderful memories I was glad they had and frightening new skills I wished they didn’t. Girls just want to have fun, but “fun” is swinging hatchets and starting fires. If my insurance company reads this, they’re definitely going to drop me. There’s no way my house makes it through the year.

My thirteen-year-old, Mae, and eleven-year-old, Lucy were supposed to be back Saturday morning. I didn’t hear from either one of them until close to noon. I started to get concerned—and slightly hopeful. Maybe the kids decided to stick around at camp for another week. The house had been unusually quiet while they were gone. Normally, when one kid is away, the other three girls get louder to make up for their absence. This time, the overall volume actually went down. With the middle two children away, there was a huge gap between my fifteen-year-old and nine-year-old. They still yelled at each other when they accidentally found themselves in the same room, but for the most part, they were in separate wings of the house doing separate things all week. Obviously that peace and quiet had to end. Yet, I didn’t receive any updates from either Mae or Lucy to say that they were on their way home. In fact, I didn’t get any updates all week.

Summer camp is different than it was when I was a kid. When I went, we didn’t have cool inventions like fire and the wheel. We had to walk the entire distance to camp and then shivered all night once we got there. Mae and Lucy had those technologies plus cell phones. They could have reached out to me anytime they wanted. Well, half the time. Their scoutmaster made a rule that they were supposed to leave their phones in their tents and only use them at night. During those hours of darkness, they had better things to do than give Lola and me updates. Those YouTube reels weren’t going to watch themselves. Or maybe they weren’t on their phones at all and instead chose to live in the moment having fun with their friends. I don’t understand modern kids at all.

Lacking updates from afar, Lola I could have gone to see the girls in the middle of the week. Wednesday night was parents night. Unfortunately, summer camp was an hour and a half away. We couldn’t justify a three-hour round trip to see the kids when they’d be home a few days later. We’re not that exciting, and neither are they. We could do without each other for a bit longer, especially if it saved us gas money. We told Mae and Lucy beforehand that we wouldn’t be there. I prefer to pre-disappoint my children. The key to managing expectations is to make sure my children don’t have any.

In the previous two years, Mae called us because she was terrified of the huge storms ravaging the campgrounds. This year, there wasn’t a drop of rain. Instead, the scouts were greeted by a scorching heatwave. All three times my daughters have been at summer camp, the forecast has been a biblical disaster. This year was the one where God held up a giant magnifying glass to light people on fire. Mae must have thought her mom and I could protect her from storms but not from the heat. As the temperature soared, she didn’t bother calling us for reassurance. We’d have to wait for whatever she had to say until she got back. Late Saturday morning, I started to wonder when that would be.

I checked Lucy and Mae’s locations on my phone. They were scattered all over the woods. The app noted that might not be accurate. Cell reception is spotty in the middle of the wilderness. They should cut down more trees and build more cell towers. It’s what Smokey Bear would have wanted. Finally, Lucy responded to one of Lola’s texts to say they’d be home at 11:30 a.m.. I made my way to the local church parking lot that serves as their departure and arrival point. Lucy beat me there. Mae did not.

I was briefly concerned that BSA was only returning half as many children as I sent out. If so, I expected a partial refund. Mae showed up ten minutes later. She and Lucy had ridden in different cars. Mae’s was the good one. Her driver stopped at a gas station to get everybody a drink and a snack. That’s an unimaginable luxury in this house. We would never pay gas station prices. We buy all our road trip junk food at the dollar store beforehand like the financially responsible adults we are. Those $1.25 bags of gummy bears add up.

When Lucy saw me, she gave me a huge hug. She hadn’t forgotten me completely. That was a good start. When Mae got there, She only gave me a brief sideways hug. She had outgrown the need for a father. The difference in appearance between the two girls couldn’t have been starker. Mae was covered in bug bites. Lucy looked like she’d been inside for the last week. Apparently Lucy used bug spray the entire time while Mae stopped after her first bug bite. She figured, if one mosquito found her, there was no point in using the spray any more. The point would have been to prevent the next nine hundred bites. In case you were wondering, science works. The bug spray wasn’t the only reason Mae had more bites. She also had a secret mission in the woods.

The first thing Mae told me when she got back—after talking about the gas station snacks, which were the highlight of the week—was to tell me that she was a Firecrafter. I’ve heard that term used at her scout meetings before, but I didn’t fully understand what it was. It’s a service organization similar to Order of the Arrow. The difference is that, instead of being voted there by a group of your peers, you gain entry on your own by achieving technical proficiency. That seems like a misstep. Everyone knows popularity contests are the best way to judge outdoor survival skills. Mae earned entry into the organization by building a fire with a bow drill, which is the absolute hardest way to make one. It’s a task I saw demonstrated at scout camp decades ago. The camp counselor showed us and then said don’t bother doing it yourself because you can’t. It takes time, dedication, and working your arm until it feels like it’s going to fall off. My children aren’t exactly blessed with great upper body strength. I cursed them with my genetics. Mae overcame those challenges and stuck with it until she had a roaring fire. She now has an actual survival skill, which is one more than I have. If I ever need to light something on fire in the slowest and most cumbersome way possible, she’s the first person I’ll call.

If you’re a new BSA Scout, stop reading now if you don’t like spoilers. I’m about to reveal some secret society info that will probably get me killed. The scout illuminati are everywhere. As part of my induction into Order of the Arrow in 2000 B.C., I had to spend a night outside. We were at summer camp, where we were already ostensibly outside. This was a more outside-y outside. I had to sleep on the ground without a tent. My main memory is of a single mosquito flying around my ear for the entire night. It was a million degrees, but I stayed inside my sleeping bag to protect the rest of my body from that lone insect. He’s been my arch nemesis ever since. I assume he’s been waiting for me all these years in case I ever again make the mistake of going outside.

Mae had a similar experience for Firecrafters, but with a much more productive objective. She wasn’t merely supposed to stay outside all night for the sake of staying outside. She and the other Firecrafter candidates had to tend to a fire all night. They built it using their difficult, manual method and then had to keep a vigil maintaining it. They were allowed to sleep in shifts. Mae said she slept for an hour and a half. Her friend slept for six hours. That girl has management potential.

In the morning, the girls had to use their fire to cook a meal. They made scrambled eggs without any pots or pans. They poked a hole in the top of the eggs and put the eggs in the ashes to the sides of the fire. When the eggs were almost done, they began to sweat. That’s the point when the kids should have pulled them out. They left them in. The eggs exploded. That was the right call. To finish the requirement, they just had to cook the eggs, not eat them. They might as well go out with a bang. Regardless, they had achieved technical mastery of all things fire related. That’s an impressive skill. Mae is the dad of this family now.

Lucy is following in Mae’s footsteps. Someday, she’ll get to stay up all night maintaining a fire without a tent. That’s something I’d be dreading rather than looking forward to, but we’re all built differently. Mae was guarded when describing to me what happened because she didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Lucy, even though the surprise had been spoiled for her. Shockingly, kids talk. I’ll have to be careful when narrating this part of the newsletter so Lucy doesn’t overhear. Like all my children, she’s great at ignoring me, so I don’t imagine she’ll notice a word I say. Even without building a fire by hand, she had her own challenges at camp. She mastered basket weaving and woodworking. She came home with two wicker baskets and a woven stool. I was warned that the stool wasn’t load bearing, which seems like a design flaw. It’s suitable for use only by ghosts. She also carved what she said was supposed to be an Enderman trap, modeled after something in Minecraft. For all I know, it looks exactly like what it’s supposed to be. She knows more about both topics than I ever will. I’m not sure when my kids became smarter than their dad, but I’m not a fan. Please use small words around me.

When I finally got them home, both girls were exhausted. Mae laid down after lunch and slept till dinner. We made her unpack first. She and Lucy both had a week’s worth of sweaty clothes that needed to be washed—or burned. If we needed a nice, sanitizing fire, I knew who to ask. Despite being at camp for a full week, the kids can’t wait to go back again. Not that their other sisters were eager for them to leave. Waffle, who usually has the aloofness of a house cat, was practically hanging on Mae and Lucy when they came back. It won’t be long until Mae leaves again. She has a special campout in August to finish her Firecrafter initiation. Lucy wants to follow in her footsteps someday. So does Waffle. She finished her own stint at Cub Scout day camp earlier this month. In a few more years, she can hang out at overnight summer camp with the big girls. Then the house truly will be quiet. I’ll have to play a soundtrack of volcanoes and jet engines to make up for it.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James