WOG’s 2 Cents – Column by Brian D. King
Over my life, I have been to many campfires with families and kids of all ages. After roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, the fire would burn low and the activity around the fire would turn to elders telling stories of the past, as the kids would look into the dancing flames. These kids, who would normally fight going to bed, would quietly nod off.
I remember the same thing would happen to me as a child when listening to my grandparents, aunts, and uncles in front of the fireplace in my parent’s home. At some point, someone would carry my lifeless body off to bed. These are fond memories. The love of family, the quiet stories, the smell of popcorn and pipe tobacco, the warmth, and the dancing flames seemed to put me to sleep.
Now, we know that the wavelength of firelight triggers hormones to shift conversation from work to reminiscing. Up until the 1930s, the evening central fire gathered the extended family to sing, read the Bible, and talk of the past. Unfortunately, those real stories that should have been passed on to the next generations, were first pushed aside by the entertainment value of radio, and later by television programming. Sleep was also a casualty of this change in human behavior.
One hormone triggered by firelight is the sleep and healing hormone known as melatonin. I continue to witness this phenomena each night at our school’s campfires. This story says it all. During the drop-off of one of our month-long wilderness skills camps, the parents of a teen girl, who had grown up in our program, gave me instructions on the medications their daughter was now using. One medication was for anxiety (take as needed), and the other medication was meant to trigger sleep. The mother was concerned that there was just enough medication for the duration of the camp. When they came to collect their daughter at the end of the skills camp, the mother was now concerned with how much medication was left, and how late did her daughter stay up each night? I chuckled and replied, “She would fall asleep early each night around the campfire, and I thought it best not to wake her up to give her pills to put her to sleep, and there was rarely any anxiety displayed that would require taking the other meds.” They learned the true value of firelight and our health.
