to hot coals, from which you can restart the fire. The smaller the fire, the
less time you’ll be able to stay away.
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. 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 firestarting 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 gath
ered 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 res
urrected 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 put
ting 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 tin
der to the now redhot coals.
(^110) | Survive!