Saturday 31 December 2011

Strike a light.

It's easy to neglect some of the basic bush craft skills. Walking today I gathered the materials required to build a fire, lit from a spark. I had my 'Strike Force' fire starter, for the bulk of the tinder ball wind dried fern (any remaining moisture rubbed off in a pocket), peeled and gathered a small amount of the papery outer bark of Birch (high in resin), some honeysuckle bark (papery) and a small bundle of graded (bone dry) Birch twigs. On finding a suitable gravel stream bank we had a fire going within 5 Min's; a skill worth keeping up. It was only damp today, add wind and rain and it's something else again; practice now and save the pain later.

1 comment:

  1. Nice fire. Would you be so kind as to teach me how to do that and what tools I should procure in order to do it?

    ReplyDelete