[at-l] Re3 Thru hiker Survivor Fire

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob C.)]

When I was 10 or 11 I wanted to join the Boy Scouts. I was invited to a winter
cookout in the woods a mile from my house. We were divided into teams, given one
match and told to build a fire. Mine was the only fire the troop was able to
build that snowy evening.

 It was largely luck. My wife, who was born in Brooklyn, now gets exasperated
 when I can't get a fire going in the kitchen range. "Here, let me do it," she
 tells me. "You've piled on too much wood again. A fire has to breathe."

 However, fire building (with a match) is not so difficult that most of us can't
 learn rather quickly. My secret these days is not to gather too much wood
 before I start. That way I can't smother the fire with too much wood, too
 early.

 I rarely build fires on the AT -- other than in my Zip stove, or to burn the
 trash others have left at the shelter sites -- but as I approached Katahdin in
 October of '93, temperatures dropped into the low 20s and I was still carrying
 my worn out pound and 3/4 sleeping bag. Each night I burned up most of the
 stubs of logs from other fires in order to get warm enough to sleep.

 BTW the troop died about the time I joined. I never did get to be a Boy Scout.

 Weary