Fire starting stick
by Cheryl
(United Kingdom)
Birch trees
I don't have a lot of wilderness experience yet, but I would like to share one thing I learned one night during my shift to keep the fire going. I had been taught that birch burns easily because of the oils in the wood whether dry or wet. On this evening we had our pile of wood (not birch) and I happened to have a thin trunk of birch that I had carried with me that day. The birch had been sawed so it wasn't too long and it was about 5 cm thick.
We had a spoke fire so we wouldn't burn too much wood. I added my birch stick to the spoke fire when it dawned on me that this was precious and it became my magic fire lighting stick. I took the birch stick out of the fire and kept it at the side of the fire. When the fire was almost out I put the stick into the embers and it magically light up.
I used it to restart the other logs and pulled it out again whenever the fire was roaring away again to my satisfacton, to save it for the next time. This is especially useful if you accidentally fall asleep. Please test this as it was a long time ago and I'm quite sure I didn't dream it up.
