Fire, Fire, Fire

Fire is essential for wilderness survival. A fire keeps you warm, provides light, cooks your food, purifies your water, raises your spirits and improves your morale. Whenever you venture into the wilderness you should carry at least two ways of lighting a fire. Most commonly this will be matches or a quality lighter, and perhaps a FireSteel. I personally like the Light My Fire Swedish FireSteel and the Magnesium Alloy Emergency Fire Starter by the Friendly Swede. While tinder can often be easily found in the forest, in a wet or humid environment finding a supply of dry tinder may be difficult; this is where having something such as a few packets of Wetfire Tinder can come in very handy.

Learning how to start a fire using a bow-drill, hand-drill, or fire plow is a useful skill, and one which anyone who spends much time in the wilderness should master. These friction-fire methods will let you start a fire with little more than items you can find in the forest, but understand that these methods take considerable practice to master and regular additional practice to maintain your skill. Although pictured in many survival manuals, you are unlikely to get a friction fire in a survival situation unless you have mastered this skill in previous practice.


Getting a fire lit is just the first step in having a fire at your camp. After lighting a fire, you must maintain it. Take time to build your fire from tinder, to small sticks, to larger sticks, to firewood.

If you have learned to make a fire, you will have it when you need it, but you must practice. So make it your habit to always carry a way to light a fire, and learn additional ways to light a fire when your primary methods fail.