Getting my campfire fix

I’ve been going into some kind of hunting camp every fall since I was a kid.

Dad and cousin Carlton used to hunt rabbits and quail at a relative’s farm in Illinois for a few days each November. I started tagging along before I was old enough to carry a gun. We’d stay in a tiny, unheated trailer behind the barn, cooking all of our meals there except Sunday dinner, which we always ate at the farmhouse.

It was an old place and it sat in a fertile creek bottom bordered by hardwoods. The country there was as wild as I’d ever seen. You could say it was my gateway drug and I’ve been ho...