Listen as Scott chats with North Shore Radio host, Mark Abrahamson, about the many ways to start a fire in the wilderness, including some fun and surprising options that you’ll want to try at home!
Pack & Paddle: How to Start a Fire in the Wilderness Transcript
0:00:00.2 Mark: WTIP's feature, Pack and Paddle with Scott Oeth is up next. Scott is a registered Maine Guide and Eagle Scout and Minnesota Master Naturalist. He's an instructor for the Okpik National Cold Weather Leader School. He joins us now by phone. Welcome, Scott.
0:00:15.1 Scott Oeth: Hey there, Mark.
0:00:16.8 Mark: Well, we just spoke with the meteorologist from the National Weather Service, and he said as of this date in October, we're already in a mid-November kind of cold, and doesn't look like it's gonna warm up much, so fire seems like an appropriate subject this morning.
0:00:32.7 SO: Yeah, we're getting into that hypothermia zone, and whether for fun or for emergency purposes, I think it's great to know really the science and the art behind being able to start a fire any time.
0:00:45.9 Mark: Well, let's talk about that, and I think some interesting points would be to talk about what to take with if you're just doing a short trip and how to plan for longer trips, too, as far as getting a fire going.
0:00:57.8 SO: Yeah, absolutely. The reasons are many. Obviously, warmth, we're talking about that, but in an emergency situation or even just a camping trip that's heading a little bit south, being able to dry out your clothing. Cooking, you can cook on the food, you can purify water by boiling, it can provide light at night, a signal delivered by a fire at night or smoke during the day, and I think one of the big things that we all agree about, it's fun. It's peaceful and relaxing to sit by a campfire, and if you're in an emergency situation, where you had to spend the night overnight in the woods, it would make a world of difference if you had a fire to sit by to provide some companionship versus just sitting in the dark woods. So I highly encourage people to be prepared, and as I heard someone say, there's a big difference between watching someone play the piano and being able to play the piano. And what I've noticed is fire-starting skills are really... A lot of folks struggle to get a fire going, even under good condition. And if something happens, you get wet or you're injured or you're a little bit panicked because you're turned around and lost in the woods, it just becomes that much more difficult.
0:02:02.4 SO: So I'm a big fan and encourage people to study natural tinders for lighting a fire, things you can obtain from the landscape. And there's all kinds of items out there, whether it's birch bark, which is the king of the Northwoods or inner barks of cottonwoods, or cedars. You can get dried grasses and fluff them up into a large ball, or different types of plants and seed heads. Red pine needles, different resins and saps. There's a whole lot of things you can obtain from the landscape. With a good knife and a little bit of skill, you can make shavings or curls and that can help get your fire going. With all that said, I think it's always good to practice with the natural materials, but to always carry a couple of ways of igniting a fire and a couple of man-made tinders in your pockets or in your pack, in case you really need to get something going, so that you're prepared.
0:02:52.0 Mark: Alright, so let's talk about the basic things for providing that initial flame.
0:03:00.4 SO: Yeah, to get that initial flame, I think there's a couple of main sources. Matches are an obvious one. There's a wide range, from the little paper matchbooks that you might get on the counter at a restaurant or something like that, up to the very robust, waterproof lifeboat matches. Carry the best ones you can. If you just have the cheap lightweight paper matches, try and carry a few, and carry them in Ziplock baggies. One little tip is if you really need some help getting a fire going and you have many matchbooks, open that up and span out those match heads and light the whole thing. That'll give you a really robust burst of flame for a few seconds. Lighters are good. Lighters can fail in the cold, so just know that you need to warm them up with body heat to allow that butane to start. And there's now magnesium and ferrocerium rods. A lot of people just call it flint and steel, which might not be technically correct. But the scrapers and the sparkers, those can be wonderful, but those really take practice, good technique, and you need to know what can start with a spark versus other items that need a consistent flame to light.
0:04:02.4 Mark: Well, right now, up here on the North Shore, we're dealing with moist conditions and it's not gonna stop, so talk about some of the products you can find in the woods that you can get dried out or that you can use even when it's moist.
0:04:16.8 SO: Yeah. Well, in the woods in the North Shore area, like I say, birch bark is a good one. I think the lower dead branches of spruce in particular, also fir, but spruce, if you can snap off those dead, very fine lower branches, leave them very long and bundle them together in the fashion of like a broom, an old-fashioned witch's broom. Here we are in October. And if you can put those together into a large bundle and you can start your birch bark or a man-made fire starter in there, that will give you a really good robust burst. And you don't necessarily need to light that on the ground. A lot of people think you need to stack it up on the ground, but that might be the coldest, wettest, muckiest place. So build a platform, a big slab of bark or several sticks together like a raft. And I think it really helps to lay a large log or rock perpendicular to that, 'cause then you can put your tinder down and it doesn't get crushed as you start piling wood on top of it. If you could light that tinder bundle under the shelter of a [0:05:14.3] ____ breaker and a windbreak...
0:05:18.0 SO: That'd be some natural materials, but there are a few things I've found are great multi-purpose items that you can carry with you in your pack that would really help. And a few of my favorites, cotton balls. You get real cotton balls, 100% cotton, and you soak them in Vaseline, and you carry those in a waterproof match case or a waterproof pill bottle. They're fantastic. You can use the Vaseline on your chapped lips or knuckles or if you have chafing, lots of things, but if you pull out one of those cotton balls and kinda fluff it up little bit, it'll light with a spark very easily, it'll light with a flame, and it'll burn for quite a while with that Vaseline in the cotton ball. So that's one that I love to carry. It doesn't weigh anything, very cheap, pretty much everyone has access to that.
0:05:57.2 SO: Another one is duct tape. So we all know there's millions of uses for duct tape, but if you could tear off a piece of duct tape, say six inches to eight inches long, and tear it into length-wise shreds and make a loose bundle ball of that, that will burn and burn and burn. You need a flame to light that from a lighter or a match, but that's a very good emergency lighter. And I like to wrap some duct tape, I get the orange duct tape, and wrap it around the top of my water bottle or the shaft of my hiking pole, so I always have bits and pieces of that there. And then the third one I really want to mention, Mark, is thick rubber bands, or a bicycle inner tube cut into sections, so you make your own thick rubber bands. Very handy. If you're carrying a notebook or a field guide along with you, you can use it to hold that shut so the pages don't get all messed up. You can bundle things together, you can grab your bundle of sticks and use the rubber band around it, but you can light the rubber band or the inner tube band, and it can be soaking wet and you just flick the water off and it'll burn, burn and burn, and that's a very good emergency tinder.
0:06:57.5 Mark: Those are excellent suggestions. So these aren't just things that you'd take camping, these may be things that you wanna have in an emergency kit in your car or your four-wheeler or whatever.
0:07:08.3 SO: Yeah absolutely. You can buy items specifically made for this, but they're... I only scratched the surface. [chuckle] There are lots of items out there, but these are ones I like that are cheap. Most people have them around in case they don't have time to go to the specialty store and buy them before they go out for a hike. Grab some duct tape, grab some of your favorite items, the cotton balls and Vaseline. Since you mentioned the car, and the ATV, another one that I often bring on group trips, if I'm paddling in the [0:07:33.4] ____ season when the water's cold, or winter camping, is road flares. You can buy smaller emergency signal flares now or the full-sized road flares, but I tell you, Mark, if you really need to get a fire going because someone's gone through the ice or if it's a canoe's tipped in cold water, those will do it. [chuckle] You can light the road flare and pretty much start piling fine brush on, and it has enough of a blast of heat and it lasts long enough that it'll dry it out and get the fire ignited. And they're a great signal and I've heard bears are actually scared of them, too. Some people carry them as a bear deterrent.
0:08:05.9 Mark: We're talking with Scott Oeth. Scott, is there a place we could go to get more suggestions about fire building?
0:08:15.2 SO: Yeah, absolutely. I write a fair amount about this on bullmoosepatrol.com and on our Bull Moose Patrol Facebook page. And often, I'm sharing other great resources I find there. So I think that's one source, and I just have to throw something out. Every year at this time, I love to watch on YouTube, there's an old version from the '50s of Jack London's To Build a Fire, and it's an hour-long film narrated by Orson Welles, and it's just so much fun to watch and it really makes you think seriously that you need to be prepared to light a fire in the woods.
0:08:46.9 Mark: I have read that story. [chuckle] Alright, you can follow Scott's adventures at www.bullmoosepatrol.com. Scott, anything else that you wanna add this morning?
0:08:57.5 SO: I really enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to talking to you next month, Mark.
0:09:00.5 Mark: Alright, thank you so much.
0:09:02.5 SO: Thank you.