Firecraft

My dear friend Chris just loved to make fire, and his favorite challenge was caveman-style. Here is what he taught me.

There’s three fuels to lighting a campfire: tinder, kindling, and fuelwood. First is tinder, which is fluffy, dry material that ignites easily such as the duff from the forest floor or dry moss. Second, kindling, which ignites more slowly but burns longer. Kindling is wood pieces or twigs sized from pencil lead to thumb diameter. Third, fuelwood, your source of heat. It can't be lit directly with a match which necessitates the tinder and kindling. Fuelwood is forearm sized, less bark is better, and do avoid punky wood. Punk is a chaotic musical genre, but in wood is soft-rotted by fungus. Both -punk and bark are too moist and smoky to produce heat. Good fuel is a classic log like on Christmas cards. Pieces about a foot long can make a roaring fire but longer than two feet is unwieldy.

The safest way to make fuelwood is to break the wood. Use your hands to break smaller pieces, or step on them, or snap them by pulling it back across your shin. You can prop a dry, dead branch on a rock to elevate one end, and use your foot and bodyweight to snap it. For more but less predictable force drop a big rock on it. Or swing a branch like a baseball bat to smash it apart against a rock or solid object. This is the most dangerous option because broken pieces can fly anywhere.

Once you have harvested two or three times as much wood as you think you need, it's time to build. You can’t lay your fire right on a bunch of dry brush. Rake an area 10 feet across to clear out the flammable forest floor. In the center scrape more deeply. There’ll be a dry top layer, wetter mulch, organic soil, then finally mineral soil. It's mineral soil, clay, or sand that you want for your fire ring. Desert locations will have mineral soil but be careful of fragile desert plants of all sizes. Choose a barren spot.

Now, gather rocks and build a ring of stones. Most of the time your fire area should be previously used. If the location is unsuitable, you can just move an old fire ring to a better spot. You can tell if a random jumble of rocks is or was a fire ring by looking for black soot. Do not gather wet river stones for a fire ring, and do not fire-blacken more dry rocks than necessary, because if you will be scattering to re-naturalize the area when you're done, that's just more work.

Once your spot is ready, it's time to light. If you remember your automative lessons, you'll know that ignition requires fuel, air, and a spark. The spark is easy, it’s your Bic lighter. The initial material you will use is tinder, in a pile the size of two fists. Array kindling against it.

The tricky bit is managing the air. You want a fire to get hot fast, to get from tinder to kindling to your fuelwood burning. But drafty fire rings can blow out burning tinder. Airless fire pits make it hard for fuel to stay lit. When I am solo camping I like my ring to be high on one side as a wind and smoke break, and low on the side that I will sit near and cook on.

Once you've struck the right balance of air and fuel, you only need to add fuel wood to the fire periodically.

Nice fire you got there.