To Build a Fire?

In the classic Jack London story, To Build a Fire, a man dies trying to build a fire in the frigid north.  While hopefully you never get to the point that your life depends on your ability to start a fire, it is nonetheless a very important skill to own.

The ability to start and build a fire depends on an understanding of what is known as the fire triangle.  A fire needs heat, fuel and oxygen all in the proper proportion to blaze successfully.  Understanding what a fire needs to burn in any condition is what makes you a master fire starter/builder.

Often a beginner will try to put too much fuel on a small fire and smother it out. Or, the fire never gets started in the first place because the fuel is too damp or the wood too green.  I teach my students that when a fire is small, it is like a baby.

You have to feed it very small, dry, pencil-thick twigs until it gains enough strength and heat to move up to pinkie finger size, then thumb size and then wrist sized and on up.  Indeed, when the fire is hot enough, when it has grown to an adult fire, then even wet or green wood will burn.  It can even burn hot enough that a heavy downpour cannot extinguish it.

There are probably a hundred ways or more to start a fire.  For centuries, fire was kindled using nothing more than the spark from a piece of steel and a piece of flint and some type of tinder.

In more modern times, a ferrocerrium rod, sometimes called a Ferro rod or metal match, is often used to spark a fire.  These sparks are much hotter than from flint and steel and burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The flash from a ferrocerrium rod is brighter than the sun!  However, you still need to have good tinder to catch the spark and turn it into a flame.  Many people have successfully used 100 percent cotton balls coated in petroleum jelly to do this.There are also natural sources of tinder that can be used to catch the spark with the most easily recognizable ones being cedar bark, finely shredded, or cattail fluff.

Fire is hardest to start when you need it the most! Anybody can start a fire in August when the sun is high in the sky, it’s ninety degrees and it hasn’t rained for two weeks.  Indeed the problem may be too much fire as everything is like tinder.

However, it is an altogether different issue when you are wet and cold and your fingers are numb and you are beginning to shiver with the first stages of hypothermia!

When you are going outdoors for a while, either camping or just woods wandering, it’s a good idea to have at least three means of starting a fire ( such as: matches, a lighter and a ferrocerrium rod ) and a Ziploc bag of already collected dry tinder etc.

That way you are never unprepared to start and build a fire.

Spiritually speaking, a believer is to be filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit.  We must let Him keep our spiritual fire burning.  We must never try to kindle or start our own spiritual fire.  We might say that there is a spiritual fire triangle.

The Holy Spirit is the Heat/Flame, the oxygen/atmosphere comes from His Presence and our obedience is the fuel.  When all of these things are as they should be, our fire will never go out and we will never grow cold spiritually.

By: James B.