Why a campfire reboot? For one, it solved a problem. Everybody was staring at their phones and nobody was coming out to the campfire talks at Campfire Park. Cowboy gets it: Campfire Park is remote, You have to drive through a stream, there's a puzzling fork in the road, the list goes on. But that doesn't mean the campfire tradition doesn't carry on. That's when Cowboy had the bright idea to drop a campfire kit of logs and kindling to peoples driveways at dusk, just like they do with the newspaper in the morning. After thinking it over more around the campfire, Cowboy had the idea of delivering the campfire talks directly by phone. And thus was born the "campfire reboot."
The great thing about the reboot, it's just not Cowboy. He has a whole team of hosts, or sometimes its just him, or other times a stranger stops by.
Welcome to Book 3 and what critics are raving “the stunning conclusion” to the Centennial Campfire Trilogy. At the end of the first two books of the trilogy — The Legend of Campfire Charlie and Last Stand at Boulder Ridge — our fearless protagonist, Ranger Rusty, finds himself simultaneously trying to man the Sweetwater Visitor Center in the heart of the Big Cypress Swamp while also slipping back in time to distant childhood memories of an old backcountry camp and deeper still to a first-hand historical account of adventures at a Seminole War era fort and a haunted archeological dig for dinosaur bones as he tries to conjure the energy to hold court at a campfire talk in a remote campground at the end of a very (emphasis on very) long day. As exquisite an ending you’ll ever find in a “large canvas” epic work, Final Campfire is a full-body experience that no respectable book reader, plumber or campfire enthusiast (including the inner s’mores roaster in all of us) will want to miss.
Welcome to Book 2 of the Centennial Campfire Trilogy. The saga continues! This time Ranger Rusty and his cohorts are off on a new adventure that leads them back and forth seamlessly in time and space to faraway places that include a Seminole War fort, the sands of the Middle East, the mountains of the Great Southwest, an archaeological expedition on the Mighty Joola River and airboat rides across the Everglades. Or is it all unfolding around the campfire glow in a remote nature reserve? We’ll let you be the judge.
Do you have a fear of being squeezed to death by a giant Burmese Python? Or does being followed around all day by a Florida Panther rattle your nerves? If so, join Rusty, a well meaning but – how shall we say – “often distracted” park ranger who is scheduled to give an evening talk in a swamp preserve on a topic he doesn’t much like. Not to worry (or maybe worry a lot) as the unwitting ranger meets a mysterious stranger who catapults him on a breathtaking journey to confront and maybe finally answer the deepest and most confounding question of his life. That is assuming he can ever get done (or to) his campfire talk …