How to build a campfire

Survival Use of Fire

When your usual shelter, heating and cooking systems aren’t available, fire is essential. It’s so important that it’s wise to have several ways to start fire in your possession at most any time. Some of these are covered in another article (pending).

In the wilderness (or a city made wild), fire serves you by six basic functions: heat, light, emotional comfort, means of cooking, means of signaling, and animal deterrent. Going beyond basics—as with an extended survival situation—it can also become a tool for making other tools. It’s this broad utility, along with the importance of its uses, that make fire so crucial.

Fire is one of the first things (second after shelter) you want to consider if you’re lost or stranded in the wilderness or a city without normal heating. Going back to the rule of threes, fire may become important well before water or food, since it is an integral part of the “shelter” function.

Where to build a fire
for survival

Ideally, you will find an area where wind is blocked on all sides and the heat of the fire will be reflected by rocks or some other reflective (and even better yet, heat-storing as well as reflective) material. It isn’t as unlikely as it may seem.

However, chances are also pretty good that such a shelter won’t be readily available. More often, one or two sides of protection may be what you’ll find naturally, and you’ll need to construct the others.

Shelter is discussed in another article (pending), but bear in mind, when looking for a good shelter place, that it is ideal to find natural, heat-reflective shelter if at all possible.

If you find yourself stranded in the mountains, another point is to camp well above a valley; cold air sinks, and the bottom of the valley, being the lowest point, will also be the coldest point. Futher, valleys tend to duct wind, which adds a wind chill to already colder air. Chances are, fifty to a hundred feet off the valley floor, the temperature will be as much as a dozen degrees warmer than at the valley floor.

Still another point: choose the valley wall that faces the sun all day. It soaks up the heat, and will release that heat during the night. This, of course, keeps you warmer.

A basic theory of fire building

To make fire, you need heat, air and fuel. The heat stimulates a chemical reaction (combustion) between the fuel and the air. Combustion produces more heat which, as long as air and fuel continue to be supplied, will stimulate on-going combustion.

Some fuels are easier to ignite than others. To build a fire, your first fuels have to be as easy to ignite as your heat source is small.

As your initial flame grows, obviously more heat is generated, allowing you to use harder-to-ignite materials as fuel. Whatever you add, be sure that air can reach the ignition point. Otherwise, you’ll smother your fire and may have to start all over again.

At a certain point, your fire will be hot enough to use whatever fuel is available, as long as you don’t smother it..

So, for fire building fuels, we talk of three classes: tinder, kindling and “fuel.”

For those who have only lit backyard barbecues, your tinder and kindling have been chemical—starter fluid, either that you sprayed on or that was manufactured into “match-light” charcoal.

Incidentally, a lot of people don’t know that regular charcoal is merely reconstituted, partially burned wood. The goal for the best cooking fires in the field, with natural fuels, is to bring wood to coals that work just like charcoal.

Preparing to build
a natural-fuels fire

First, don’t be one of those survivors that survived by setting the whole forest on fire as a signal. The ones who did, did it by accident; there are ways to protect against that, and doing so is a moral obligation and may contribute to your survival (better if rescuers aren’t forced to evacuate you from a forest fire, and better not to have to run (or die) from your own signal fire!

Wherever you build fire, build it in a clear area, away from trees (as in, not under a tree) and separated from all flammable materials (even ones on the ground) by five feet in all directions. This probably means you’ll scrape out a ten foot circle down to the dirt. Or, and this is likely, you will just find a spot that is already clear or at least won’t require a shovel to clear properly.

In preparation for building a fire, you need to gather several things together where you can get at them quickly as you need them. They are:

• Igniter: source of heat or spark
• Tinder: a fuel material that is extremely easy to light, insistent on staying lit, burns for a while, and will be used primarily to light other fuels
• Kindling: “intermediary” fuels that focus on increasing the amount of heat the fire generates until you can add heavier fuel
• Fuel: larger logs that will burn for some time and make good coals.

Igniters: matches and lighters are luxury items. It’s mighty nice to have them if you’re out in nature and need fire. But there are other means to build a fire if you don’t have them. As already mentioned, these other methods will be discussed in other articles. It’s good to have at least three methods for spark generation with you: matches, a lighter, and/or these other methods.

Tinder: paper, dry grasses, dry leaves and dry pine needles are ok tinder, but for a very small spark (from flint or friction tools, for instance), it helps to have even lighter tinders. Certain plants (mugwort, when naturally dry, is wonderful); anything that is “fluff” is good, like cotton, lint, seed fluff (cattail seeds, etc.). Wax, gasoline, vaseline, lighter fluid or pine pitch can help.

Kindling: anything that is larger (and harder to light) than tinder. It’s smart to have several sizes of kindling prior to starting the fire. For the first level, I like soft, light woods, like pine or cottonwood (cottonwood bark has some fuzzy fibers, if you find them, that make outstanding tinder, by the way). Hardwood twigs are somewhat hard to light and are better used for “larger” kindling. After the first level, it’s just a matter of bigger pieces and harder woods.

Wood lights more easily when split than left in the round. Partially charred wood also lights more easily than uncharred.

Fuel: fuel is simply larger-than-kindling wood or other flammable stuff that takes a lot of heat to light and keep lit.

Fire Safety

I already made one comment about fire safety: whatever else you do, clear space around your fire. Five feet all around, and not under a tree with low-ish branches. This is critical stuff; if you set fire to the forest, you can be held civilly and criminally liable, as well as putting yourself at risk. A word to the wise...

Always have water and dirt around to put out the fire, if things start to go wrong. And if things do start to go wrong, act immediately. Dirt is great for suppressing flames, and water is best used to finish the job by dousing the heat.

Never leave a fire unattended. Don’t go to bed and leave the fire burning (certain survival applications of fire mute this rule, but each of the applications has its own rules to replace it. These will be discussed elsewhere). When using water to put out a fire, sprinkle, don’t pour. Make sure the ashes are cool before you leave it.

Be exceptionally mindful of your fire if the wind kicks up. If you expect this, or if you want to defeat the problem before it can start, dig a trench or hole for your fire to sit in.

Hints

Have more tinder at the ready than you think you’ll need. It’s hard to say how much you will need, but the basic rule is that if the tinder will burn fast, you will need a lot of it. Paper does this. Leaves are better than paper, but pine needles last longer than most leaves. Mugwort, exceptionally, which is a leaf, lasts for a long time, and will smoulder for very long periods. If mugwort is available, this is ideal.

You can pre-build your fire, by arranging sticks in a tipi or “log cabin” type of arrangement. Just remember to leave a place to put your tinder, and lots of ways for air to get to it.

Don’t try to force the fire to grow too quickly by introducing significantly larger sticks or logs before the fire is really going. And as you add wood, be careful not to smother the fire, by crushing even the currently burning materials.

Don’t build a bonfire. Conserve your energy by keeping the fire small, and using it to heat a space that you can enclose enough to keep heat in, but not enough to keep smoke or fumes in. Fire that keeps you from hypothermia isn’'t much good if it kills you by poisoning your air.

For cooking, coals are best. A fire that has had some good sized hunks of wood on it will burn like a charcoal fire. This is best.

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