You typed words that didn't address the conversation.

I laboriously indicated that I recognize opinions are irrelevant when a federal law prohibits the activity.

So without being pissy little shits at each other, it remains factual that a significant component of what defines camping for all of human history was the focal point of a fire, the work put into tending it, the social aspects of assigning roles around it, letting children experience it to gain wisdom and respect its danger, accepting responsibility to extinguish it at night and terminate it when breaking camp... those are all activities that have played major roles in what defines camping for all time. Now that's ending, opinions or internet bickering aside it's coming to an end everywhere.

But the question remains, what replaces it? Like those stupid LED "candles" on the table at a restaurant, the inauthenticity of it - the explicit lie it embodies winds up just making it dumb, now you just have a deliberately handicapped light bulb. Why even bother?

Sitting in a circle around a nothing is awkward, it just is. So everyone leans up against a tree in solitude (that's actually not bad if you're through hiking something and camped alone anyway) or everyone retires to their tent when the sun goes down and reads a book. That's the thing that actually happens with no fire, like it or not.

Look we can be cocks at each other on the internet - we won't be the first people to do that I think you know - but it's a fact that no-campfire-camping deflates the social aspect of camping with others so I'm asking a sincere question, how do we really replace the fire with something that's actually going to function in its social role?

Or is social camping just over?