Fires: Woodcraft
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by Ernest Thompson SetonMaking Council FiresThe Council Fire is a very different thing from the cooking-fire or the so-called bonfire. And there are just as many ways of making it wrong. These are the essentials:
Here are some wrong methods:
Lighting a FireThe day Columbus landed (probably) the natives remarked : "White man fool, make big fire, can't go near Indian make little fire and sit happy." We all know that a camp without a campfire would be no camp at all; its chief charm would be absent. Your first care, then, is to provide for a small fire and prevent its spreading. In the autumn this may mean very elaborate clearing, or burning, or wetting of a space around the fire. In the winter it means nothing. Cracked Jimmy, in "Two Little Savages," gives very practical directions for lighting a fire anywhere in the timbered northern part of America, thus First a curl of birch bark as dry as it can be, If you have no birch bark, it is a good plan to shave a dry soft -wood stick, leaving all the shavings sticking on the end in a fuzz, like a Hopi prayer stick. Several of these make a sure fire kindler. Fine splinters may be made quickly by hammering a small stick with the back of the axe. In the case of a small party and hasty camp, you need nothing but a pot hanger of green wood for a complete kitchen, and many hundreds of times, on prairie and in forest, I found this sufficient. A more complete camp grate is made of four green logs (aspen preferred) placed as in the illustration. Set the top logs 3 inches apart at one end, 10 inches at the other. The top logs should be flattened in the middle of their top sides--to hold the pot which sits on the opening between the top logs. The fire of course is built on the ground, under the logs. Sometimes stones of right size and shape are used instead of the logs, but the stones do not contribute anything to the heat and are less manageable. In addition to this log grate, more elaborate camps have a kitchen equipped with a hanger as on next page, on which pot hooks of green wood. In wet weather an axeman can always get dry wood by cutting into a standing dead tree, or on the under side of down timber that is not entirely on the ground. On the prairies and plains, since buffalo chips are no more, we use horse and cow chips, kindled with dry grass and roots of sage-brush, etc. To keep a fire alive all night, bank the coals: i.e., bury them in ashes.
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Last modified: October 15, 2016.