BLANCHARD SPRINGS -- For men who let themselves be kids for a weekend, the goal was to build a campfire of epic proportions.

The campfire has become a point of emphasis for a group that does a lot of things together. We kick off the year with a January trout fishing trip on the White River. We fish all summer and fall, and we end the year with a Christmas camping trip to Blanchard Springs Recreation Area. The agenda includes a few hours of fishing for rainbow trout at Mirror Lake.

Composing the group is Bill Eldridge of Benton, Rusty Pruitt of Bryant, Ed Kubler of Benton and our newest member, Richard Phelan of Benton. When we arrived at the campground, Kubler presented Phelan with a membership plaque, prefaced by a short, sputtering speech that was delivered with considerable difficulty in the plummeting cold.

After setting up camp. Eldridge plopped in his chair and asked, "What are we doing, guys?"

"Well, it looks like you're sitting on your butt not doing anything," I said.

Eldridge was quickly on his feet, the picture of nervous energy as the rest of the bunch erupted in laughter and jeers. We agreed unanimously that Mirror Lake was the first destination.

With the sky clearing, we took our usual positions along the bank. First, I stopped to chat with Alice Mitchell of Mountain View, who had three small rainbow trout in a wire basket. She caught another while we talked. She was using white PowerBait on an ultralight spinning rig.

I had the next best thing, green glitter Gulp Alive eggs. Kubler, Eldridge and Phelan used casting bobbers with a fly attached to a long trailing leader. Pruitt used a fly fishing rig.

Trout started rising about the time we started fishing as they fed on a late afternoon insect hatch. That was an ideal situation for the casting bobber rigs. Phelan caught four trout and Kubler caught three. Eldridge and I were too busy gabbing to pay close enough attention to catch anything. A few fish hit my bait on the bottom, but they pulled the bait off the hook instead of taking the hook.

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Eventually, the fish stopped rising, but it was enough to scratch our itch.

The next objective was to gather enough firewood to sustain an epic fire. This was important not only for our pyromaniacal proclivities, but also to fend off temperatures that would fall into the 20s. You can't have a piddling little, no-account fire when it's that cold. It makes everybody want to go to bed early.

Fortunately, there is a lot of downed wood near the road. Phelan and I filled the beds of both our trucks with logs that had been conveniently cut to appropriate lengths and stacked it in two giant piles beside the fire ring.

We had a roaring blaze by sundown, followed by the main event. Kubler had marinated big ribeye steaks for two days in Worcestershire sauce. He grilled them to perfection. He also roasted corn on the cob and potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil. The corn was tender and sweet.

To top it off, Kubler brought real butter instead of squeeze bottle margarine. The reviews were so enthusiastic that Kubler apologized for bringing margarine for so many years.

For dessert, Kubler wanted to make peach cobbler in a Dutch oven, but there was no pie filling of any flavor available in Mountain View. Instead, he made Pillsbury Super Grands cinnamon rolls in the Dutch oven. No bakery could have made them better. He followed up in the morning by making Super Grands biscuits in the Dutch oven for breakfast.

The fire was so hot that it wasn't possible to stand less than six feet from it. The abundance of heat created a happy, jolly atmosphere that was marred only by an unbecoming loss to Hofstra by the Razorbacks basketball team. That's not as bad as Jack Crowe's Razorbacks football team getting beat by The Citadel, but it was close. And it wasn't like losing on a fluke three-pointer at the buzzer, either. It was a beatdown.

Worse, Eldridge is an insufferable Baylor booster, even though he's a UALR graduate. After the Razorbacks game, we had to listen to him gloat all night as Baylor beat Oregon. He found that game on some station at the far east end of the AM dial. The fact that he could even pick up that station in the deep hollow of the campground was some kind of cosmic revenge for some sin that somebody in this group had committed.

Finally, not even the warmth of the campfire could keep us awake. It was all illusory. Shedding clothes to climb into my sleeping bag is when I realized just how cold it really was. And then, I had to lie there and freeze for a few minutes before my body heat warmed the bag.

Oh, but after that, it was sublime. I enjoyed a contented slumber with the rushing waters of North Sylamore Creek providing a comforting dream track.

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