Stealing Firewood

Recently, my wife, Cathy, and her sister Bonnie spent three weeks touring the wilderness and National Parks in Wyoming and Montana in a camper van. I’ll talk a little about that. What I really want to talk about is the people who stole their firewood at a couple of campgrounds. 

 For almost three weeks, Bonnie and Cathy travelled through Utah, Wyoming and Montana in a rented Sprinter camper van.  I’m not sure how many miles they drove, but they had a great time.  I called it a a sort of Thelma and Louise trip, only with a better ending ;-). They visited Jackson Hole, the Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park among other locations. They spent a few nights in hotels or a Bed and Breakfast, but most of the time was in the camper, sometimes in campgrounds, and sometimes off the grid at isolated locations. The van had solar panels, which made it perfect for off the grid camping. 

 When not camping off the grid, they stayed in different campgrounds, which also offered showers and toilets.  Because the camper van isn’t a full on RV, they mostly stayed at tent camping sites, and only once at an RV location. At one of the campgrounds, they were even able to wash their clothes in a coin operated laundry. 

 The tent campgrounds are pretty nice, and they offer you a bit more seclusion than the RV ones. In addition to a place for your vehicle at your site, they generally have a fire ring, and some kind of grill, maybe over the fire ring, or a separate standalone grill. It’s a pretty sweet set up in the middle of Mother Nature.

 As you might imagine, it’s nearly impossible to find firewood at the campgrounds. The surrounding land has been picked over for years by campers, and obviously, no one is going to chop down a tree. To solve this problem, the campgrounds sell firewood in bundles. Cath and Bonnie bought wood a few times, and even cooked their dinner over it as well. 

 At Yellowstone, they started a fire and made dinner, and then sat around the fire talking. Eventually, after the fire died down, they went to bed.  The next morning they woke up and noticed something strange.  The leftover firewood and kindling they hadn’t burned was gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Missing. AWOL. They checked all around their vehicle and the site and it was nowhere to be found. They went to the campground manager and complained, and it turns out stealing firewood happens with some frequency. Seriously. As a side note, none of the subsequent campgrounds sold kindling bundles, so this also caused them issues at future campgrounds when they were going to start their fire.

 The same thing happened at an RV camp outside of Glacier National Park. Bonnie raised the specter of little evil elves roaming the campground at night stealing bits and pieces.

 I’ve been thinking about this.  How low do you have to be to steal firewood from your camping neighbors?  I mean, who actually does this?  You can’t afford the $8 to buy some more wood? It’s late at night and you want to sit around YOUR campfire longer, so you raid other campers? You are young kids and decide to prank your neighbors?

 If it happened at only one campground, OK, maybe just a one-off. But to have it happen twice?

At one level, a couple of sticks of stolen firewood is no big thing, but I’m not so sure. Maybe this is where we are now in America. Our moral compass seems to be slipping as a country and I guess this is just one more example. 

I realize the majority of people at campgrounds are good. My cousin Dawn points out that she has had many experiences camping, or on the trail, when people have shown generosity. We have as well in the past. Cathy and I talk about getting back into “camping” and I believe we will. This obviously won’t deter us, but it is still a sad thing. I’d be happy to give people firewood, if they are that desparate.

Addendum:

Just to be clear, Bonnie and Cathy had a WONDERFUL trip. It was an absolutely great time, and the stolen firewood was a tiny blip on the whole vacation.