It’s an important skill to know and can be a life saver out in the wild. Fire isn’t just a source of heat, it also means you can cook food and boil water which means that you don’t have to take as much fuel for a stove giving you a lighter rucksack. The third advantage is the psychological one after a hard days walk or in a survival situation.
Light fires with consideration for the local environment and other people who visit the area. In popular areas lighting fires can cause a few problems. Firstly the demand for wood means that there wont be much left over for you or others, this also means that people start chopping down trees that should really not be touched. Secondly all the fires leave scars in the landscape which lessen the wilderness experience for other visitors.
Take also into consideration the local fire regulations. Many wilderness areas are nature reserves, Natura 2000 areas, or national parks. These areas have restrictions on where you are allowed to light fires, if you are allowed at all. Find out about any restrictions before you go. Many areas with restrictions also have special places for lighting fires, often with their own supply of wood. In prolonged dry periods lighting fires can be banned because of the obvious risks (called Brandförbud in Sweden).
If you are the type of person who likes to get off the beaten track and discover areas which few others visit then lighting fires is usually no problem.
If you can light a fire depends on where you are and where you've been. Above the tree line in Scandinavia it’s often hard to find anything to make a fire with. All you may find is a few dried branches from some low growing bushes which you might find now and again. An idea is to collect wood along the way. It won’t be much, but will be enough to cook your food or boil water for coffee.
We won’t go into lighting fires in different environments at this time, but what we will do is to go through the basics of lighting a fire in the wild.
Example: Was out today with my daughter who is only 3 years so we weren’t going to be walking very far and I wanted a place which would also offer us a little shelter, so I opted to use a lean-to (wooden wind shelter) with a place for lighting a fire. I could have relied on using the wood that was there and I am glad I didn’t because it was almost fresh and couldn’t be used. I brought my own wood which I had prepared earlier. So this is how I made a fire to boil my coffee and grill some sausages:
1) I used old charred bits of wood which had been left as a base for my fire.
2) I placed a piece of spruce which I had cut into with my knife to make a lot of feather like shavings which are still connected to the wood at the bottom end. This is what I will light a little later.
3) Around this I placed some dry birch bark and a few very small pieces of wood.
4) On this I then placed thin pieces of wood to form an airy tepee around the initial wood.
5) On the outside of the thin strips I then placed a few slightly thicker pieces of wood. Remember not to pack the wood too tightly, you still want a lot of air to get in.
6) The next stage was to light the fire by setting fire to the initial piece of wood with the feathery shavings cut into it. Hold the match under this until you are sure it’s properly alight.
7) Let this burn for a while and add more thin pieces of wood in order to keep the fire burning. Should still have a rough pyramid form to the fire.
8) After a while you can put a few slightly larger pieces of wood on and let them burn down a bit then add a few more.
9) Once a good bed of embers has been made you can then think about cooking food or boiling up some coffee as I did. Note that I have placed a few pieces of wood around the coffee pot, this encourages the flames to spread up and around the pot making it boil quicker.
10) Sit back, relax and enjoy.
Sorry about my coffee pot, it's not really that good for this. What you really want is an all metal pot with a handle over the top which you can use for hanging the pot over the fire with help of a stick. Muurikka amongst others have coffee pots for use over open fires, or you could search around 2nd hand shops especially in Sweden (Loppis they're called, find them all over). I would recommend a pot which takes 1,5 - 2 litres, that’s a good multi purpose cooking instrument (excuse the technical jargon)which can be used for all cooking purposes.
For the fire I had good seasoned wood (well dried) which made things a lot easier. I also had dried Silver Birch bark just to help get things going a bit quicker. Birch bark is relatively easy to find out in the forest. Look on the south sides of Birch trees, you will see where the papery bark is starting to peel off. You can rip this of using only your fingers this wont damage the tree (no knife needed and this avoids scaring the tree). Take the white bark and try to avoid bark with lichen on as this is most often damp. Birch bark has a lot of oils in making it easy to light.
Out in the wild it’s not always quite as easy to find wood to burn. I always try to take my own wood whenever possible. I’ll cover types of and where to find wood at a later date.
// Scandinavian Wilderness
