NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

THE CAMPFIRE, LECTURE, or council circle or ring, as it is variously called, is merely a foregathering place in the open around the community campfire, where the evening hours may be passed with song and story in the warmth of good comradeship and the friendly fire. Its location is therefore usually close by a development for overnight use, such as tent or cabin colony. It is almost a necessity in connection with an organized camp lay-out, serving as the hub of much of the activities program.

Some form of the lecture circle or its big brother, the outdoor theater, is a desirable adjunct to a park museum, particularly to a nature museum the activities of which include talks by naturalists and related programs. The sole physical essential of the unpretentious example is the campfire itself. Desirable features are a generally level terrain in the immediate vicinity of the fire and surroundings that suggest, if only to the highly imaginative, the glories of a Nature unmodified.

The campfire circle is generally given a fixity of location by arranging a ring of stones to mark and confine the site of the fire. It is often equipped with arcs or rings of seats, especially if conditions of climate or insect life make sitting on the ground unadvisable. Such seating may be merely logs or some more comfortable adaptation of them, or again may be boulders or a more sophisticated masonry construction where stone is the more abundant native material. But there are no fixed principles, no time-revered traditions to be pressed, beyond admonishing attention to the claims of immediate natural environment.

If it would not be construed as flippant, it would here be urged upon park planners who may be contemplating the building of a campfire circle to locate it in a virgin stand of redwoods. Surely nowhere in this world can there be wilderness settings more magnificently impressive and receptive to this particular park facility.

More realistically stated would be the exhortation to consider the campfire circle as it exists in many California State parks along the Redwoods Highway, and to go forth and do as likewise as possible. Attempts in other locations to achieve the glory of a campfire circle ringed by giant redwoods will perforce lack the illusion of a world within a world, the soaring height of these trees, and the lushness of moss and tracery of fern that are their accompaniment in their natural state. Yet in unmodified wilderness of other types there can still be had so many of the impressive attributes of a campfire circle amongst redwoods as to make the efforts to capture some of them well worth while.

All trees with pretentions to age will supply a leafy pattern filtering sunlight or moonlight overhead. Most forests not ravaged by excessive clean up or human overuse will maintain an undergrowth of greenery to serve as reredos for a chapel out-of-doors. Large trees, other than redwoods, will provide material for benches hewn from a single log. Especially does this type of seating, in reflecting the form and scale of the surrounding large trees, go far to bring to the construction of the campfire circle something of the touch of Nature.

The campfire circle is by no means always of the typical form here described. In fact on occasion it is not a circle at all. A popular variant is something very like an indoors fireplace with a chimney built free-standing out-of-doors, the chimney serving as a kind of votive column for the fire worshipers. The seating may be very like a formal classic exedra flanking both sides of the fireplace, or it may be some modification of natural rock outcropping or naturalized transplanted rocks in an informal approximation of a half-circle. This form of campfire grouping can serve effectively either as a memorial to an individual, or as a symbol of the contribution of some group to a park development. It is one of the few forms somewhat monumental in character yet not altogether ill at ease in a wilderness setting, and lends itself to commemorative tablets or inscriptions within appropriate limits. Being a combination of picnic fireplace and campfire circle, the examples shown will be found under "Picnic Fireplaces."

OUTDOOR THEATERS IN PARKS are points of open-air assembly and seating, ranging from the trivial—hardly more than expanded campfire circles to the pretentious, having many of the equipment features of the roofed theater. The more extensive developments are apt to be found only in the larger parks where interest is more than local in extent, or in parks within a metropolitan range where large population and civic interest are forceful factors.

Wherever possible the outdoor theater should be located in a natural half-bowl. Unless existing contours truly invite such development, a remolding of them to create a natural effect is likely to require an amount of work out of proportion to the benefits derived. If anything short of accomplishment of complete naturalness results from a remolding of topography in creation of an open-air theater, the park is long, perhaps forever, disfigured by a scar that should be rigidly avoided.

The principles applicable to the creation of amphitheaters or outdoor theaters are numerous. Probably paramount is the consideration of sight lines. Acoustics are here quite as important as for the enclosed auditorium. Many will at first thought regard acoustics as not of the problem, but they should not fail to appreciate that hills and mountains, water surfaces, and forests deflect and echo sound in accordance with their own laws, as do man-made surroundings, and call for just as much advance consideration and study.

It is important that the stage be to the east or north, so that the audience will not face the afternoon sun. A distant view as background for the stage platform is greatly to be desired, or better still a picturesque cliff as at Pine Mountain State Park, Kentucky. A dense stand of forest trees is suitable and impressive. It is well to have the amphitheater encircled by trees. These lend it privacy, provide all possible shade for the audience, and act as barrier against the disturbing noises of other park activities.

The outdoor stage is sometimes merely a platform, the distant view, or cliff, or stand of trees serving as a backdrop. If these are lacking, or some required use of the stage demands it, an artificial background of rustic construction or of planting, or a combination of the two, may be created. When the showing of motion pictures is anticipated, the size of the structural background will be dictated by the size of the picture screen. The screen should be removable in winter, recessed for some measure of protection, and supplemented with dark canvas curtains to be drawn over it when pictures are not being shown. Where dramatic entertainment is to be offered, some provision of dressing room space is necessary. The stage of the amphitheater and any artificial construction in the nature of background, constituting as these do the focal point, must be outstandingly representative of park character. No harshness of line is to be tolerated here, and all the devices of skillful planting and naturalizing of native rock are legitimate in creation of the desired effect.

The seating of the amphitheater in a park setting may be contrived of logs or of stone. It may be said of log seating that it is the more comfortable in use, but the adjusting of the long straight lengths to the segmental arrangement of seats results in angles that are rigid and in a measure inharmonious with the freehand lines of Nature. Although stone seating, on the other hand, offers less physical comfort, it permits flowing and graceful curves in the seating plan that please the eye and complement the surroundings.

The cutting of large trees existent within the limits of the seating of the amphitheater is generally to be avoided. It is usually better to interrupt the seating to accommodate the trees. The trees, if trimmed of the lower branches, will provide shade for the audience with negligible obstruction to view of the stage.

Usually a campfire is built in front of the stage platform, or to one or both sides of it. Sometimes this must serve to illuminate the stage at night in lieu of footlights or other lighting. Whether or not it must serve such purpose, it links the pretentious outdoor theater with the simple campfire ring from which it evolved and provides a temporary home fire for the wanderer.

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