The editors of a new collection of stories from our national parks and scenic trails say the title of their book may throw people off at first.
“I think when people hear ‘Campfire Stories’ the first thing they imagine is spooky ghost stories,” Ilyssa Kyu said. “But besides us being completely wimps, we’re not equipped for ghost stories.”
Ilyssa and Dave Kyu are visiting the Pacific Northwest from Pennsylvania, the place the couple and their two children call home. Their latest book is Campfire Stories Volume II, which includes tales from Olympic National Park and the Pacific Crest Trail.
While you won’t find many spooky stories in this collection, you will find stories of people who are searching. Searching for rare sightings of wildlife; searching for their place in these beautiful settings and often searching for a connection to a lost loved one.
For their first volume of Campfire Stories, they spent five months traveling to national parks, and combing through archives and libraries and bookstores to find stories that already existed. This time though, they wanted to find stories not yet told.
“We really from the start of this project set out to tell a diverse perspective, to share a diverse perspective of the national parks,” Ilyssa said. “And it was challenging to do it the way that we were doing it. So with Volume II, we really saw a lot of opportunity to kind of rewrite the script.”
Interview Highlights
On featuring Indigenous writers.
Dave Kyu: We thought it was so important to include works from contemporary Indigenous writers, just to let us know that these tribes are still here. They're still trying to forge a place on the land. They talk about this kind of bittersweet understanding when they revisit these places. They're so glad that it's preserved. But they understand that their ancestors used to live here. Rena Priest talks about going to this one place in the Olympic National Park and trying to imagine her ancestors being at these hot springs and trying to retain that connection to the past. It's certainly challenging the idea that all these parks were simply 'America's Best Idea', and just leaving it at that, I think, in 2023 we're starting to challenge those narratives.
On the notion that Olympic National Park ‘rewards the curious.'
Dave Kyu: I think Olympic is a place full of mystery. And that's what we saw over and over again, through the writing, you know, most of the park, I think at least 95% of the park is protected wilderness, and there's no road. So a lot of it has to be someone chasing the urge to discover more about their park. So in this section, specifically, we find our different writers searching for the ‘One Square Inch of Silence’; we find writers searching for Sasquatch or Glukeek; we find our writers searching for Roosevelt elk. And even if they were able to find it, or if they weren't able to find it, being rewarded by the process of the search itself.
On one Pacific Crest Trail story called ‘On Trail We Dream of Enchiladas.'
Ilyssa Kyu: We were connected to Shawnté Salabert as someone who has written a literal guidebook to the PCT. And we enjoyed her writing and we mentioned 'hey, we're featuring PCT in the book. Do you have any good stories?' and even just through our email exchanges with her, she had so many stories, and this is one example that she sent to us.
Dave Kyu: What we hope to do with Campfire Stories is invite more people to have outdoor experiences and part of that is lowering the barrier of entry to be outdoors and admitting that sometimes we eat Pop Tarts and sometimes we eat enchiladas. Sometimes we dream of enchiladas.
On Naseem Rakha’s story ‘Everything is Stardust.’
Ilyssa Kyu: It completely stopped me in my tracks. In the process of creating this book, my father died and I was really moved by this story because she [Rakha] was seeking something that was bigger than herself and her grief. So I'm crying, but this is my favorite story in the book. And yeah, I was completely struck by this story, it really moved me and I was looking for something not to give me closure or help me work through my grief, but it helped me find the beauty of life and honoring a person. We had to put the project on a hiatus because soon after my dad had passed, my aunt had passed. This piece meant so much to me.
On what the Campfire Stories book tour will be like.
Dave Kyu: Well, selfishly, I'm excited to meet the people who are reading this book. And this isn't going to be our first opportunity, because the book was written during the pandemic, this is going to be our first opportunity to meet many of the writers and contributors to the book and hear them read their pieces firsthand.
Campfire Stories Volume II Book Tour:
Aug. 3, REI, Seattle, 6 p.m.
Aug. 5, King’s Books, Tacoma, 2 p.m.
Aug. 9, Wenatchee River Institute, Leavenworth, 7 p.m.
Aug. 10, Village Books, Bellingham, 6 p.m.
Aug. 11, Harbor Books, Hoquiam, 7 p.m.
Aug. 12, Lake Quinault Lodge, 6 p.m.
