by Les Stroud
If you build a small fire inside your shelter, you must stay in there with it. So the trick is to maintain the big fire outside and then bring it inside when it rains or you are bedding down for the night. Most adventurers keep their fire right outside their shelter, then crawl into the shelter to sleep (only to wake up to a cold or rain-doused pile of ashes the next morning).
If you can master the skill of making a small fire right outside your shelter, you’ll keep the heat inside with you. It makes your survival experience not only more comfortable, but also comforting.
All of the same rules of site selection apply when making a fire inside your shelter, but there are additional considerations. Oxygen supply is one. You defeat the purpose of having a fire inside if you have to keep your shelter open to the chilly air in order to feed the fire the oxygen it needs.
Be careful not to make your fire in a shelter built against a rock with a big overhang. On one survival course, a young couple did just that. The fire heated the rock to the point that a Volkswagen-sized chunk cracked off. Had they been in the shelter at the time, they would have been crushed. I couldn’t stop thinking about this story when I was surviving in the Utah Canyonlands inside a tiny cave, fire by my head and thousands of tons of canyon rock above me. If you find yourself in a similar situation, make sure that there is at least 4 feet (1.2 m) of distance between the top of your flames and the rock overhead.
Butch Cassidy and his “Wild Bunch” hid from the law in these same Utah caves.
Perhaps the most serious risk with an inside fire is that you might burn your shelter. I’ve made hundreds of inside fires, and for many years I’ve never had a problem. But once, on the coast of Alaska, I awoke one morning to find several-foot-high flames reaching up through my shelter’s driftwood roof. Had I not been only feet from the ocean, the whole shelter would’ve burned down.
Driftwood made a great shelter on the Alaskan coast, but nearly burned down when my inside fire grew too big.
Making a Chimney
1. Smoke inhalation is an issue with an inside fire, so make sure your smoke can escape through a chimney.
2. Constructing a chimney tunnel with a direct route to your flames will feed air to your fire without cooling you down.
3. This birch bark vent allows air to circulate from outside of the shelter right to your interior fire.
4. Your shelter will be warm from the fire and the chimney will allow oxygen to circulate to keep the fire going.
In any survival situation you should make the biggest, hottest fire possible, provided you build it safely and have plenty of fuel. I have spent many cold and unpleasant nights huddled by a tiny fire trying to keep warm—but only when I didn’t have a choice. Don’t waste your time thinking small when you can go big: a big fire will kick the chill right out of you.
An emergency is no time to wax environmental and worry that you’re burning too many trees. And the advantage of making a massive fire is that once it gets going, you can burn almost anything, including big, punky logs that smolder forever, which means you can reserve small, dry wood for kindling.
During my plane crash survival experience in northern Ontario, I made a fire that was eventually about 6 feet (1.8 m) long and 4 feet (1.2 m) high. With a blaze that big and so much heat being generated, I was able to sit against a nearby tree and fall asleep in the middle of a cold and snowy winter—without a shelter! There’s little risk of waking up to find a fire this size cold and dead, and in any case, the mounds of red-hot coals sitting there can easily be used to get it going again.
The other benefit of a big fire over a small one is that it takes much more rain or snow to put it out. I’ve had fires going that were so hot they continued to burn right through a downpour.
Believe it or not, a big fire requires less work and effort to maintain than a small one. You simply need to add a few large pieces of wood every once in a while to keep it roaring along. With a small fire, you’ll burn all the small branches in the area to constantly feed its flames, and you’ll spend a significant amount of your time and energy finding and collecting these branches. On top of this, if you need to leave the fire for a while, you run a real risk of it going out while you’re gone.
A pilot friend of mine once found himself stranded on a beach covered with driftwood. He made a massive blaze that kept him warm until rescue. It was the right thing to do.
Preparation
THE GREATEST ENEMY OF A SUCCESSFUL FIRE is your impatience. It is vital that you are diligent in preparing your fire, though it may seem tedious.
An important aspect of fire preparation—especially if you’re using one of the last-ditch efforts I describe later in this chapter—is making sure you have enough fuel before you produce a glowing ember or a small flame. You don’t want to get to the point where you have a flame, only to discover that you don’t have any tinder or kindling to add to it. This is one of the most frustrating things that can happen in the wilderness, and it happens all the time.
A strategy I use with my survival students is to have them gather as much wood as they think they need for the night. Once they’re finished, and without looking at their pile, I tell them to get five times the amount they just collected. Even after they have done that, many of them run out of firewood before morning. It may sound like an exaggeration but it’s true: most people misjudge their firewood needs by a ratio of five to one.
And don’t take for granted the fact that you have a primary fire-starting method such as a lighter or matches, either. What if your lighter breaks or your matches get wet? Now the fire you’ve just started may be the only fire you will ever light. Do not let it die just because you don’t have enough fuel available.
A big, dry tinder bundle is the key to success, followed by lots of dry kindling and lots of dry (and if possible, split) wood. You also need to make sure that your fire doesn’t spread. Clear an area immediately surrounding your fire pit, particularly if you’re in a wooded or brush-covered area. You can even build a wall from damp logs or rocks to both protect your fire from wind and reflect heat back to you. Remember, however, that wet and porous rocks (such as those pulled from a river or lake) have been known to explode violently when heated, so avoid using these very close to (or in) your fire.
Build Your Fire
WHEN IT COMES TO GATHERING FUEL FOR YOUR FIRE, you’ll need tinder, kindling, and large fuel. Each component is critical, but none more so than tinder.
Tinder: Stages 1 to 3
If you don’t have a lighter or matches and are making a friction fire by, say, rubbing two sticks together, the step that takes you from glowing ember to tinder ignition is critical, and one at which many people fail.
Though you shouldn’t discount the tissue in your pants, the pages in this book, or even the lint in your belly button, your primary source of tinder in the wilderness will be fluffy, dead, and dry plant material. The greatest lesson you can learn here is this: Remembering the names of plants means nothing in a survival situation. What’s important when it comes to fire-starting are plant characteristics.
When I first learned survival, I was taught that you can ignite milkweed fluff with a single spark. And it’s true—it goes up like gasoline! But what I discovered later is that almost any plant with a light, fluffy part (usually the seed pods, and especially those that will blow easily in the wind) will do the same thing. Fireweed, various grasses, cattails, and numerous other plant species throughout the world work too. So rather than looking for milkweed, look for any plant with the characteristics of milkweed. Shoot a spark into it and you should have fire.
Don’t get caught up searching for specific plants such as birch bark in Canada, white cedar bark in Kansas, or coconut husks in the tropics. Rather, keep your eyes open for plants that have the characteristics of good tinder. Think “Hey, that coconut husk is hairy and light and fluffy. I wonder if that works?” Not surprisingly, coconut husk is great tinder.
So, what characteristics should you b
e looking for in your tinder? Most important, it should be dry. Damp tinder leads to great frustration…and ultimately, no fire. Tinder also needs to be thin, light, and fluffy. If something has these characteristics, it will ignite into flame when a spark is introduced.
Note that dry leaves make surprisingly poor tinder. Most dead leaves need a fair bit of heat to ignite, making them a poor choice for fire-starting without matches or lighter.
I like to divide tinder into three stages. Stage 1 tinder is the lightest, fluffiest stuff you can find—fine, very thin, even wispy material such as dead grass, birch bark, Spanish moss, or scraped cedar bark. These materials are best at capturing a spark or ember when formed into a bird’s-nest-shaped bundle. Once the bundle catches, you can blow it until it glows and ignites.
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STROUD’S TIP
If you are traveling through an area that has loads of dry tinder, gather it now, and gather lots. You don’t want to end up later in a survival location without tinder sources nearby, regretting that you didn’t fill those big pockets in your hiking pants when you had the chance.
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Stage 2 tinder is slightly thicker and more substantial than stage 1 tinder, and includes toothpick-thick bits of wood, pine needles, or thinly peeled bark such as birch bark. These materials will take the flame you created with your stage 1 tinder, hold it a little longer, and burn brighter. You can jump right to this stage if you are lighting your fire with matches or a lighter.
Stage 3 tinder is another baby step up, to the smallest pieces of burnable material, such as pencil-thick dead and dry twigs. These will take the secondary flame and hold it even longer than stage 2 tinder. Remember, however, that although the flame may seem more substantial at this stage, you still don’t have a fire. Sure, you have a flame, but it would take little to put it out.
The following are other possible sources of tinder:
Bird down: I’ve never used bird down, but it certainly has the characteristics of good tinder.
Cotton balls: These are fantastic as tinder, and you may have them in your first-aid kit (the end of a Q-tip works too). Cotton takes a spark well and converts it to flame. If you daub a bit of petroleum jelly or lip balm (which also may be in your first-aid kit) on the cotton, it will hold the flame longer than cotton alone.
Lint: This is a favorite in many survival books, but lint is difficult to find in a survival situation.
Sawdust: You can make a little by cutting wood with your folding saw. Produces a good stage 2 tinder.
Kindling
Once your stage 3 tinder has caught, you can progress to the kindling level. Kindling is not as readily combustible as tinder, so don’t use it until you have a discernible flame.
Kindling generally comprises small twigs and sticks that are thin enough to burn easily but thick enough to last longer than a few seconds. You will slowly graduate from those that are about the thickness of a pencil to those that are the thickness of your thumb.
Fuel
Eventually you will get to the point where you can add large pieces of wood to your fire. As always, work your way up slowly in terms of thickness. Wrist-and forearm-thick wood is the most common type of fuel for survival fires, but don’t hesitate to add larger pieces of split wood and even logs, as long as you’ve got a sufficient amount of fuel available and a solid flame.
When selecting wood for fuel (or for any stage of building a fire, for that matter), choose standing dead trees. They are far drier than anything else you’ll find in the wild. Avoid wood that’s lying on the ground, because it will have absorbed a fair bit of moisture from the ground.
Wood is your primary source of fuel, but there are other sources, including animal droppings, dried grasses, and animal fats.
Animal droppings: Dried dung patties from cows, deer, moose, elephants, rhinos, or other ungulates (grazing, grass-eating animal) can be very good for starting and maintaining fires. These are essentially concentrated plant waste—the natural version of the starter logs and briquettes that are popular these days. Animal dung doesn’t flame very well, but makes for excellent coals.
Dried grasses: If you don’t have much large fuel on hand but find yourself surrounded by grasslands, you can twist grass into tight bundles. By increasing the density of the grass, you make it more wood-like. It will burn quickly, though, so make sure you have lots on hand.
Animal fats: Chances are you won’t have much animal fat available, and what extra you do have you will likely eat to stay alive. For years, however, pioneers rendered animal fat such as whale blubber into fuel for their oil lamps. Long before that, the Inuit people used rendered seal fat to fuel their quuliit, the soapstone lamps in their igloos.
Maintaining Your Fire
BUILDING YOUR FIRE IS JUST THE FIRST STEP. The second is making sure it doesn’t go out; otherwise, you will have to start again from scratch. The bigger the fire you have (provided you have the fuel), the more likely it will keep going, even if you get hit with rain or snow, go to sleep, or need to leave it for a while to carry out other survival tasks.
For millennia, the Inuit have been using quuliit (seal oil lamps) such as this one to heat their igloos.
Should you decide to leave your fire for a few hours, first, make sure it’s not in an especially windy area, or else you’ll burn through your fuel too quickly and also increase the risk of starting a forest fire. Try to find a location that affords at least a little protection for your fire, whether near rocks or in a place that offers natural protection from the elements. The exception, of course, is in the case of a signal fire, which should be out in the open and as visible as possible.
How long you leave your fire largely depends on how much fuel you have to add to it. If you’ve got plenty of fuel and you have made a big fire, you should be able to stay away for as long as eight hours and come back to hot coals, from which you can restart the fire. The smaller the fire, the less time you’ll be able to stay away.
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STROUD’S TIP
Once you get a fire going, make it a practice to never come back to your base camp without a piece of firewood, even if it’s just one stick. This way you’re always adding to your firewood stock. We’ve been doing this as a habit in my family for years. Even when my children were little, they always returned to the campsite with a twig or stick in their hands.
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Resurrect a Fire
CHANCES ARE THAT IF YOU LEAVE your fire for any length of time, you’ll return to something much smaller than what you left, usually just a pile of hot coals or a warm bed of ashes. In these cases, it is vital that you have all the stages of fire-starting materials already on hand, so that you can get the fire going again immediately.
Just how much your fire has burned down will determine which stage of tinder (or kindling) you need to get it started again. You should have gathered what you’ll need before leaving and stored everything in a dry, protected area. You shouldn’t have to scramble to get your tinder, kindling, and fuel.
I’m amazed sometimes at how far gone a fire can be and still be resurrected into flame. In the canyonlands of Utah, I awoke to a fire that had been reduced to nothing but white ash. Rather than sweep off the blanket of ash to search for hot coals at the bottom (which would have risked putting them out by cooling them down), I slid the empty cable I had ripped off my mountain bike into the ash. I then blew gently through the tube, which supplied oxygen directly to the warmest part of the pile of ash and coals without removing the protective blanket of ash. The coals began to glow, then slowly transferred their heat to the other dead coals around them. Only then did I brush away the ash and gradually begin adding tinder to the now red-hot coals.
How to Carry Fire
WHEN YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES FORCE YOU TO MOVE, taking your fire with you may save you a lot of trouble in the long run. This is why I recommend including a coffee tin with a lid in your survival kit. You can put some red coals and other tinder inside, where it will s
molder while you travel. You can also make a fire bundle, light the end as if it were a large cigar, and carry the glowing bundle to your next destination.
A fire bundle is a collection of tinder that begins with the finest material in the middle and graduates out to the shell or covering.
Tie the material tightly together into a cigar shape. Once lit, it should smolder for hours.
A properly lit fire bundle can last for days.
Ways to Make Fire
GIVEN THE MANY AND VARIED PURPOSES A FIRE SERVES in a survival situation, the ability to make one is an important skill. If you’re a dedicated outdoors person, you should be able to get a fire going just about anywhere, even if it’s been raining for two straight weeks and even in the pouring rain. If this sounds daunting, don’t worry, with the right knowledge and training, you can do it too.
There are several well-known methods of making fire—some of them easier than others—so you’re really limited only by your imagination. Should you find yourself stranded and with no available fire-making method, start thinking like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, and get creative.