Fire in the Wind

Sometimes making fire in the wind can be almost as difficult as fire in the rain…especially if you don’t learn from your mistakes.

This is not intended as a demonstration of the right way to do things; rather it is an example of what happened and the results of some mistakes on my part.

The weather in the river valley started out calm and beautiful, but the wind started gusting through and definitely kept things interesting.

I initially tried lighting a piece of charred punk wood by placing it on a found stone, but the smoldering pieces just crumbled off with each strike, so I switched to striking into the tin.

When I broke the stone, I ended up with such a nice edge that I didn’t want to compromise it by breaking it again. This larger stone worked great for throwing sparks, but twice in a row I didn’t account for the extra size in my strikes and flipped the tin over twice.

Had it been raining or the ground soaking wet, this might have meant total failure, but I did my best to gather some of the pieces up before the wind could take it all away.

Luckily, I got a spark to land on one of the few remaining pieces and tried to get it to spread to the others. I transferred the smoldering material into a bundle of black cottonwood bark and the wind that was once a liability, became an asset as it helped the flames to climb the kindling ladder quickly.

Because I had emptied my char tin, I took a few moments to restock it with some more cottonwood bark, and gave it the spark test to make sure it was viable.

Please keep in mind that fire can be extremely dangerous in high winds, especially in dry environments. I made a point to position myself so that there were no flammable materials downwind should sparks or embers be blown from the fire.

Ideally I would have found or built a windbreak, but I wanted to treat it as a fun and challenging exercise.

I also should have known better than to compromise my whole tin full of char in these conditions, and it would have been much smart to have put a few pieces into the bundle, and dropped sparks onto them.

When the wind picked up, my first instinct was to grab the tinder bundle before it blew away, when I should have been focused on the much more valuable charred material that was being scattered.

Materials Used

Black Cottonwood Bark: Tinder Bundle & New Batch of Char
Black Cottonwood Twigs: Kindling
Assorted Driftwood: Fuel

Striker by Wolf Creek Forge (a thoughtful gift from a BCUSA friend)

Music:

Ikson- Reflect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A26LDRmLP58

Last of the Mohicans Theme – Luca Stricagnoli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.