This was written by Chris on Oct. 28, 2012.

Starting A Fire

A Story

Quick story. The other day I wanted to test my shelter skills. It was dark and raining. It had been raining all day long so everything outside was soaked. My goal was to make a fire from my EDC (everyday carry). The tools I actually decided to use were:

• Fire steel
• pocket knife
• Poncho
• Flashlight

I put on my poncho, grabbed my flashlight and headed out. My original intention was to find a standing tree to take tinder from but the fact that my night vision had not recovered made me change my plans. I walked in to the woods near our house and made my way in about 30 yards. There I spotted a fallen birch limb about 8 inches in diameter. Most of the bark was missing but some was still attached.

I tested to see if the attached part was still firmly attached and once I found it was, this is where I started. I knelt down with the front of the poncho under my knee and stripped some of the bark off the log. As soon as a piece was stripped it went under the poncho out of the rain and sat on the poncho in front of my knee keeping it dry.

Once I had a fair bit of the bark, I collected it all by feel and stood up. I walked to the nearest pine tree and broke off some dead wood from the tree, again collecting it under the poncho. By this time I had my hands full so I found a place where I wanted to make the actual fire. If I had intended for the fire to last I would have created a bit more shelter but this was a test of starting a
fire more than keeping it going.

Once I had cleared a small area I knelt down over it and pulled my head into the poncho. I was now inside a shelter. One piece of bark went down onto the ground with the dry inside up and the wetter outside against the ground. This gave me a dry location to build my tinder bed. Another piece of bark was placed dry side up to take the rest of my bark.

Splitting the bark gave me access to the very dry interior of the bark. This paper thin layer was broken up into slivers that were placed into a small pile on the base plate. Once I had a small pile I sorted out my twigs and other pieces from smallest to largest,
including the extra bark.

Once everything was in place I got out my fire steel and got my knife back out. A half dozen attempts and finally a spark caught. The bark pile got a good clean flame. I slowly fed it some more until it was established. At this point I added my twigs. It was
getting a bit warm under the poncho but I wasn’t ready to let the rain fall.

A few moments later I had a good flame with the starter twigs catching. At this point I just stood up using my arms to hold the
poncho out to provide shelter for my fire. If need be I could have built the fire larger. If the fire had been sheltered it would have
kept right on going as it was fed. As it was, I considered it a successful test and carefully put out the fire. Putting my head back in the hood I watched for another five minutes to make sure there were no embers still live and headed on home.