Survival Woot: How to make a fire in the woods!

[theanne]

Rachel and I went camping in Vermont for a couple of nights. We're on this road trip and therefore aren't totally real-camping equipped but we wanted to try it anyways.

Neither of us have done this as adults before, and I've never been true-blue camping at all.

What we had to work with:

• A tent (provided by one of our new CouchSurfing friends)
  
• Sleeping bags
  
• A cooler
  
• Plastic knives, forks, spoons
  
• Matches and a couple of small lighters
  
• A few groceries we picked up on our way in: 14 breakfast sausage links, 6 brown eggs, 4 potatoes, 4 ears of corn, 3 baby bell peppers, 2 chuck eye steaks, 1 small vidalia onion, a bag of baby carrots and Rachel's leftover half-loaf of bread
  

We mostly left our phones in the car or in the tent, so the times below are estimates.

FIRE #1: First Night, Dinner

Time to start: 45 minutes

Matches used: 2 boxes

Lighters used: 1 whole lighter

Meal made: 2 ears of corn, 2 potatoes, 1 bell pepper, 2 chuck eye steaks, 1 onion, half bag of carrots

Special conditions: Dark

We ran around collecting wood for the fire as soon as we'd set up our tent, as it was already past 6pm when we first pulled in and the sun sets around 8ish. This process was very unorganized and we grabbed anything that looked like dry wood that we could find. (It was wonderful weather while we camped but had rained pretty hard the days before.)

I tried about three different arrangements of wood before just starting with the tiniest of the tiny sticks and lighting the cardboard from one of the fully used match boxes. Even that took about 5-10 minutes to actually get consistent flames going, and building up into a real fire took about half an hour.

The food was mostly good, even though it took forever to cook since I had a hard time keeping the fire hot or big enough. The potatoes were a bit undercooked in places, and the carrots weren't as soft as I like them.

FIRE #2: Morning/Noon, Breakfast

Time to start: 20 minutes

Matches used: 1 box

Lighters used: A few tries with 1 lighter

Meal made: 6 eggs, 8 sausage links, 4 pieces of bread

Special conditions: Windy

We let ourselves sleep as long as we wanted, then hopped up and went wood hunting again.

This time it was windy, although it only took two arrangements of wood before it got started. Once the fire was going, it still took a while before I was able to figure out how to make it grow and burn well. I tried my hand at trapping the heat under a sort of oven I'd made with rocks, but it didn't work well to cook the food.

Both this fire and the first fire were very small in diameter even though we did get them to a respectable level of heat and flame.

The eggs exploded in the foil and were tasty, but hard to eat plastered on the foil. Probably only each got to actually eat 1-1.5 eggs worth. The sausage was good after we put it in new foil containers and put it on the fire a little longer.

The toast was really more like very soft, warm bread. I wrapped it around the sausage and it was pretty good.

FIRE #3: Second night, Dinner

Time to start: 5 minutes

Matches used: 6

Lighters used: N/A

Meal made: 2 ears of corn, 2 potatoes, 2 bell peppers, 6 sausage links, half bag of carrots

Special conditions: Windy

This last and final fire went really, really well. I'd perfected my starting technique and had flames within a few minutes. I focused on growing it wide and hot, which somehow the previous fires had given me the eye for because it totally worked. I had a fire we could cook with ready in under 10 minutes — which was a total shock to Rachel. (Writing up how I finally was making my fires would be a whole other post I think.)

One big difference is that we thoroughly sorted out our wood collection into tiny, medium size, and thick branches. This allowed me to put in exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it. We'd also discovered that one of the types of wood was very moist inside and didn't burn well until the fire was already pretty hot, so we mostly stopped using those — especially when trying to get the fire started.

This was by far the best meal we had the whole time. We cooked the sausage separately based on our breakfast experience. We sliced the potatoes based on last night's dinner. Everything cooked amazingly and quickly, and was insanely delicious!

And so ends the story of how I learned to make an awesome fire for cooking. It's true I still need matches, but I think that figuring all of this out was pretty good considering I've never had fire-making training.

P.S. We have photos of our fires and the last meal's turnout, but I don't have them on hand right at the moment. If people are interested I can post them to this thread later!

[Loren Wade]

Wow. That's awesome. Good job!

[theanne]

Wow. That's awesome. Good job!

Why, thank you!

[Haikoo]

HOoray! Glad you had a great first camping experience!

[Church]

I gotta do this sometime before the nice weather leaves. Get my camping on. Lol. Glad you had a good time

[Archer]

my oldest kid is 8, and she can start a fire with a pocket knife and a magnesium fire-starter quite reliably. The trick is to start small with good, dry, tinder bundle. Think "birds nest" of grass and moss. That will light easily. Then build a teepee of kindling sticks over it, careful not to rush it. Place bigger and bigger sticks and you'll know you're set once you see the coals glowing. Works a lot better than pouring gas on a big log and wondering why it doesn't stay lit.

[JediJem]

Loved this post.

Awesome job!

[Kyalii]

This is awesome, I've always been the resident fire-killer. Maybe I'll have to take some of your successes and try again!

[theanne]

Here's some photos

Rachel collecting firewood:

Successful fire #3:

Successful meal #3:

Extra photo of the view for jealousy:

[theanne]

HOoray! Glad you had a great first camping experience!

I gotta do this sometime before the nice weather leaves. Get my camping on. Lol. Glad you had a good time

Loved this post.

Awesome job!

Thanks x3!

my oldest kid is 8, and she can start a fire with a pocket knife and a magnesium fire-starter quite reliably. The trick is to start small with good, dry, tinder bundle. Think "birds nest" of grass and moss. That will light easily. Then build a teepee of kindling sticks over it, careful not to rush it. Place bigger and bigger sticks and you'll know you're set once you see the coals glowing. Works a lot better than pouring gas on a big log and wondering why it doesn't stay lit.

That is AWESOME! Yeah, that's about the method I finally had going minus grass and moss because all of that was really wet. Had to skip right to trying to light the teepee of sticks.

This is awesome, I've always been the resident fire-killer. Maybe I'll have to take some of your successes and try again!

It was really frustrating at first, but totally worth sticking with it till I figured it out!