Although the fat pine chunks took flame quickly, predictably the buckeye didn't. It took quite a long time and a lot of coaxing for the stuff to catch. Once it did, however, it produced a decent (albeit short-lived) bed of cherry-red coals.We broke out our trusty pie-iron (one of my favorite pieces of campfire cookware) and collected fixings for "hobo pies" -- a stick of margarine to grease the iron, slices of white bread for "crust" and a can of cherry pie filling. I made the first pie for our 15-year-old, another for my wife and, just as the coals were dying, one for myself.
Gathering wood on a bright winter morning, bathing in the glow of a fire on a cold evening, savoring a sweet dessert drawn from pantry staples -- these are the simplest of pleasures.
