Ranger Dave Heads a Stellar Cast : Live Theater Thrives Nightly Around the Ol’ Campfire

As a reviewer, I see as many as five or six plays a week. So when I go on vacation, theater is not high on my list of things to do. Instead, give me the roar of the waterfall and the smell of the pines.

Still, several weeks ago, when I made my first trip as an adult to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in Central California, I found myself asking: What do you do after dark in a national park?

And I ended up going to the theater. That is, I went to the only show in town: the ranger-led campfire programs. These rustic entertainments are held every night at the major campgrounds. The amphitheaters themselves very loosely recall the ancient Greek theaters, but no one will confuse Ranger Dave’s program with “Oedipus Rex.” Still, it is a form of theater.

Ranger Dave is this 60ish sort of gentleman who’s been around the parks for years. He’s also the Casey Kasem of campfire music. Except that he doesn’t just announce the songs--he sings them too, in a big, booming baritone.

He began the evening with group singing, lyrics projected on a screen. First up was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” complete with the “Dinah Blow Your Horn,” “Someone’s in the Kitchen With Dinah” and “Fee Fi Fiddley I-O” codas. Then: “On Top of L’il Baldy” (a localized version of “On Top of Old Smoky”), “Ja Da,” “California, Here I Come,” “Edelweiss,” “God Bless America” and--well, the hits just kept coming.

And, yes, they took me back.

When I was a kid, my family would head for the parks during my father’s two-week vacation each summer. Every night, we went to the campfire. Sitting on crude benches or weathered logs, as the stars slowly took over the sky, we gazed at the flames, sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” (all the way through “Fiddley I-O”), listened to the rangers and watched slide shows. It was all so simple.

The amazing thing is that despite the proliferation of portable TVs and VCRs and the updates in vans and trailers, the campfires are still there. Technology doesn’t seem to have affected attendance at Sequoia and Kings Canyon as a healthy crowd showed up at the amphitheaters every night.

Ranger Dave’s slide show was a report--no, an impression--of how he spent his summer vacation, one summer many years ago. He and his boys hiked into the High Country, the vast three-quarters of Sequoia Park where most visitors never go, and here were the slides, splendid slides, to prove it. A natural storyteller, Ranger Dave carefully modulated his stories for dramatic effect and displayed flashes of wry humor.

On another night, the ranger in charge began her program with a rousing game of trivia--Sequoia style. My half of the audience was dubbed the Cones; the other half, across the aisle, became the Saps. The ranger tossed out questions about local lore--questions like, “Name the pioneer rancher who lived in a hollowed-out fallen sequoia.” (Answer: Hale Tharp). The Cones thoroughly drubbed the Saps, I’m proud to say.

The rest of the show was all downhill. (Sorry, but the critic just can’t take a vacation.) The ranger’s topic was the various types of rangers who work at Sequoia. Studying the distinctions within the Park Service bureaucracy is not my idea of a good time, even with visual aids. We left early--when you’re on vacation, you can do that and not feel guilty.

Another ranger who conducted the final night’s program appeared rather stiff and nervous during the obligatory where-are-you-from chatter and the usual questions and answers about the bears (in the Sierra, bear stories are the equivalent to the ghost stories told around less professional campfires). But he was just getting warmed up.

As his subjects became more sophisticated, he became more assured. He joked about his own job market (“McDonnell Douglas doesn’t hire many rangers”), took some sly little digs at the rival Forest Service, showed slides of wildlife that occupied the area until the creatures were wiped out by the early settlers, remarked how city-bred air pollution affects the forests of the Sierra.

Our 3-year-old didn’t pay much attention. She spent the hour climbing up and down the log benches and playing with her flashlight. But I was gratified to see that campfires aren’t just for kids.

Still, despite the grown-up talk, the fundamental appeal of campfires remains their simplicity. No special effects here. No revolving stages. No strobes or synthesizers.

Here is old-fashioned, live, communal theater. Here are people singing songs together.

Around the campfire, it doesn’t take long to remember that there are more stars in heaven than there ever were at MGM.