Making fire

Pile of sticks used for making fire

“I hadn’t thought through the whole process, and I hadn’t lined up my resources properly to get me through it.”

Some takeaways…

  • Map out the process
  • Map out the required resources and align them to the process
  • Cover the contingencies

 

Some thoughts arising from the need to ‘make fire’ whilst on holiday

 

I have rarely seen myself as much of a backwoodsman – a ‘backwards man’, sure, plenty of times, but a “person who is acclimated to living in a forest area that is far removed from civilization or modern conveniences”?* Not so much. It was a bit of a shock then to find myself called upon to make fire on our recent holiday in the Greek mountains.

 

Our cabin had a burner which had to be stacked, stoked and fired every night if we were to have hot water or heating. Heating, we could probably get away without, but cold showers are hard work, especially with little ones. So, it was down to me to make fire each day.

 

It turns out making actual fire is not as straightforward as you might think. The helpful local who showed me how to do it explained that you need three levels of wood – the stringy light stuff (at the top of the pic) which burns readily, then midsize sticks (at the bottom of the pic) which can catch once you have the fire going and finally the big thick logs (middle of the pic) that will take you through the night. He had even done me a favour by gathering plenty of the big logs to keep us going. Lovely.

 

Each evening, upon our return to the cabin, I would head out to get things going. Collect stringy bits from down the hill, a few midsize sticks on the way back up, set it all burning, and then later, add the big logs stacked inside by the burner. So far, so good. Until one day, it chucked it down, proper torrential rain, late in the afternoon.

 

Out and about, the consequences of this were lost on me until I tried to make fire that evening. The thick logs stacked neatly inside by the burner were perfectly dry, of course, but they don’t just burn on their own… you need to get fire going first, using all the other stuff that was still piled up outside, completely sodden. Good luck getting those guys to light! Making fire took a long time that night, and produced a LOT of smoke, which I can still taste… I went to bed a well smoked and quite disgruntled kipper.

 

We need a new process…

Next day, however, I was determined to learn from my mistake. Here’s where I had gone wrong – I hadn’t thought through the whole process, and I hadn’t lined up my resources properly to get me through it. I had the big logs stacked up inside, sure, but none of the other stuff I needed to get a fire up and burning. So the next day, I shifted half of the pile of thick logs to the side, and brought up several thickets’ worth of dried shrubbery and a good stock of midsize sticks. After laying them out to dry in the sun, I stacked all the different types inside, away from the rain, meaning I now had a full set of dry stickage to be able to make fire whatever the weather. ‘Backwards man’ becomes backwoodsman!

 

Lessons learnt

It was a simple lesson that reminded me not only how pretty much useless I am in the wild, but also how to approach any sort of process. Here is what I learnt:

 

Map out the process

Go through from start to finish and be clear on what all the steps will involve. You can’t just hold a match to a thick log and hope to have fire.

 

Map out the required resources and align them to the process

Overlay the resources needed against the process you have mapped out, so you align process with resources and know you are covered from start to finish. If you need different resources through different stages of the process, do you have them all to hand?

 

Cover the contingencies

I didn’t even think about rain when I made fire the first few days, let alone make a plan for when it happened. I very quickly learnt however that a big pile of thick logs stacked inside is precious little use when all the stuff you need to get your fire started is standing outside in the rain!

 

 

*https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/backwoodsman

 

Thanks for reading.

 

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