This is a bucket list item for those of you who foster a love of camping, daydream about what life would be like if they had to survive out in the wilderness. Though starting a fire doesn’t require a lot of set up – you just need to be somewhere with a dirt floor and have good sticks – most people never get around to ticking off this bucket list item.
If this is a skill you want to your name, add it to your 2020 bucket list and get out there to start some fires. (Safely, of course – don’t break any rules and don’t start forest fires!)
First, you should decide if you want to start a fire with sticks you can find in the woods, or if you’re happy starting a fire with wooden sticks you buy in a kit. Starting a fire this way is surprisingly difficult, when you consider that our great great ancestors managed to get this figured out on their own, but you’ll have a much easier time of it if you read or watch some tutorials before heading out into the woods.
There are a few different ways to start a fire with sticks, but they all work around the basis that enough friction will heat the wood to a point where it catches alight. The next thing you need is a bunch of dry materials. If your materials are damp, your efforts will likely fail. If you buy a wooden fire-starting kit this will be much easier, as you’ll just have to source enough dry kindling to catch alight.
If you’re determined to be a true survivalist, you should find a dry straight stick, a dry flat piece of wood or thick bark to make a fireboard (also called a fire hearth), a dry tinder bundle out of small materials, a larger amount of kindle and dry sticks.
Then, it will be up to you to use your long straight stick and your fire hearth to create enough friction on your dry tinder bundle that it starts to catch alight, and then you add your other materials to it to grow the fire. Voila! You have fire!
If you’re looking for interesting and fun activities to add to your bucket list, or if you’re putting together your ultimate survival bucket list, use our bucket list maker or download the Buckil app, available on iOS and Android, to take your bucket list with you everywhere you go.
