campfire tea

Back in mid-winter a co-worker of mine was called that her thirteen year old son had thrown up in school and was sent home sick. He took himself home on his sno-go. When she got home after work she walked in to find her son jumping back onto the couch. And there was a campfire roaring out in the yard.

Turns out he was flying into Fairbanks the next morning and his grandmother had called and asked him to cut her some salmon strips and bring her some campfire tea in a thermos.

I'd heard of this campfire tea before when other schools in the district sent some students in for a school carnival. One of the competitions, besides snow-shoe races and jig contests, was tea-making, during which the competitor makes the campfire and then heats the tea over this fire, all the while racing the other competitors to be the first to make hot campfire tea.

My coworker assured me that campfire tea doesn't taste like regular tea, that it's much better. Back in her home village the women sit up at night in the winter sharing their campfire tea that's been made over an open fire beside the house.

So, mid-March, Keith and I tried our hand. We didn't set any Carnival records, but with some ingenuity, we harvested a little tree from the woods, propped it over the fire with a small branch, punched holes in a tin match container, wet knitting yarn and hung up some water to boil.

Keith may have been a little wary of the slightly metallic taste of the Chai Spice Black Tea. But sipping out of our new KZPA mugs by our fire in sunny thirty below, I started to believe in this whole campfire tea concept.