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Tangerine flames swirled as Gerry Ward sat fireside, deep in thought, with campfire crackles and wafts of ember taking his mind far beyond the Scottish Highland surroundings. It’s a scene many of us know well: a starlit woodland evening spent cozied up around a fire ring. Yet for Ward, this solo backpacking trip beneath Scotland’s Cairngorms mountains was about more than stars and s’mores. Ward, now 56, had spent most of his adolescence and early adult years navigating deep-seated childhood trauma, which eventually led to issues like chronic anxiety and alcohol abuse. Solo treks through his native Scotland during the height of his struggles, his thirties, provided rare solace from stress, trauma, and depression. “I was connecting with nature as a remedy to escape from all of that,” he recalls.
When Ward became a father at age 42, he knew he had to get clean. “I got professional help, but what helped me most of all was going back to nature,” Ward says. For him, the fire-building process, from gathering raw materials to starting and then watching the blaze, was the most therapeutic part. “Once the fire’s going, that’s when the real connection starts. The fire cracks, the smells—it goes back into our subconscious minds. We connect with our primeval brain, and that connection is a quarter of a million years old.”
Ward spent every spare weekend for more than a decade navigating recovery via these solitary fireside meditations. After realizing how much it helped him, Ward invited a friend who was struggling to join, too. It turns out, campfire camaraderie was what they both needed. “When you get two people around the fire, the inevitable happens: you start talking,” he says. “We were sharing things we would never normally share, like deep-rooted trauma. By just talking about something, you’re breaking the power it has over you.”
Since 2021, Ward has been using the healing benefits of fire to help those struggling with mental health challenges and addiction through his Scotland-based nonprofit, Fire and Peace Recovery. He runs monthly retreats in Scotland’s great outdoors that harness the healing power of campfires. He’s not the only one tapping into fire’s therapeutic effects.
As the popularity of eco- and adventure-therapy grows, so, too, does the role of campfires. “Fire, like the other natural elements, has the ability to help someone be more comfortable in the discomfort of change processes like therapy,” says Brian Strozewski, a certified clinical adventure therapist and founder of Ohio-based Everchanging Counseling and Consulting.
Campfire therapy is simple: the idea is to use the fire ring’s healing and soothing benefits to help people open up while navigating trauma. A 2014 study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology suggested that fireside sitting can decrease blood pressure, foster relaxation, and improve social interactions. Counselors and organizations around the world have watched these results unfold before their eyes.
“Sitting around campfires, being around likeminded individuals who have gone through similar trauma experiences, then having the opportunity to talk in a safe environment about your trauma—those are all healing things,” says combat-wounded Marine Corporal Jed Morgan of U.S.-based White Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that uses eco-therapy and specialized care to help post-9/11 veterans improve mental and physical health.
It’s a critical need; suicide is the second-leading cause of all post-9/11 veteran deaths.
The White Heart Foundation hosts eco-adventure therapy retreats to help veterans and first responders cope with trauma and psychological stressors from the frontline. The trips, run among the pines and peaks of Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, and Colorado, fulfill participants’ adrenaline needs with adventures like rock climbing and whitewater rafting. “The healing comes when people sit around the fire,” Morgan says.
Fireside sharing is peer-led. Veteran mentors, such as Morgan, a Purple Heart recipient who lost his legs during an IED accident in Afghanistan, start with their own personal stories. “We’ve had groups with people extremely closed off, they hardly say a single word during the first couple of days of the trip,” says Morgan. “By the end, they’re sharing their story with everyone. It’s an amazing transformation.”
As research shows, sharing feelings, especially putting negative emotions and experiences into words, is an important step toward recovery and improved mental health. Ward says the fire provides a safe, less vulnerable place to open up.
“They’re not speaking to me, or anyone in particular. They’re speaking to the fire,” he says. “I’ve watched someone do an entire share of 45 minutes, and blink two or three times [without looking] at an individual. That’s the start of the healing process.”
Let’s be very clear: Fireside sharing, or really any sort of therapeutic nature experiences, is only one part of a more extensive therapy program. “Sitting by a campfire is not a magical fix to the issues,” says Morgan, noting many veteran participants have seen, or continue to see, therapists or counselors. “I believe [campfire sharing] is a helpful gateway for individuals to realize they need professional help.”
Some therapists, including Strozewski, use natural elements, such as forests and campfires, to aid their sessions. “I connect with nature as more of a co-regulator, almost like a friend or partner who is present to help the person be regulated, to feel safe, and to have internal balance,” he says. And, just like, say, rock climbing, isn’t for everyone, Strozewski notes that fireside chatting isn’t always the right call. “It’s important to consider someone’s existing relationship with fire.”
One reason Strozewski says campfires work well with nature therapy is that they’re a symbol of letting go. “Letting go of the pains and learning what that process is like is necessary so we aren’t tethered [to negative emotions],” he says. “We can move forward to what’s next.”
For years, certified therapeutic recreation specialist Kevin Gruzewski watched this release firsthand. He ran bonfire therapy sessions at a residential facility for teenage boys undergoing drug rehabilitation and mental health recovery in Chicago, Illinois. During these sessions, the teens jotted down their regrets, gathered by a fire, and tossed the papers into the flames. After experiencing the fire’s therapeutic effects, they enjoyed the lighthearted fun many associate with campfire hangouts: talking, joking, playing games, and sharing s’mores.
“Most of them were from the inner city; they hadn’t experienced a bonfire or being in nature,” Gruzewski says. “Some of the boys did or dealt with pretty rough things, so you could tell some of them liked that feeling of letting go, even just for that moment.”
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