More and more camping areas are either banning campfires entirely or restricting them to designated fireplaces or concrete ringed firepits. It is illegal in many camping ares to cut down any timber, dead or alive, and consequently more and more campers are having to bring their own wood or charcoal. It is a disappointing situation for most campers, who find it difficult to imagine camping without the smell of woodsmoke and the fascination of staring into a campfire at night.
However, fires are still permitted in many areas and you should never lose your fire building skill or fail to pass it along to your children, if for no other reason than for use in emergencies. Following are some dos and donts of campfire building.
* Dont build new fire rings if one is already there.
* Dont build a fire on the edge of a water source. Keep it as much as 200 feet from the water to prevent pollution.
* Dont build a fire next to a tree, near exposed roots, near vegetation, or anything other than bare ground.
* Dont build a fire with a clean rock as a refelector.
* Dont burn any garbage other than paper and organic trash or other materials that will burn. By putting paper, metal, glass, and other material in the fire, you’re only starting a garbage pit.
* Dont leave the campfire unattended.
* Keep your fire small.
* Use wood that does not create sparks, if possible. Green wood, some driftwood, and woods with lots of pitch such as pine, alder, spruce, and hemlock are notorious for sparks.
* When you are done with the fire, literally drown it, then keep poking around the deluged area for bits of burning material beneath the mud. Smooth over whencompleted.
* If you must build a fire in an area with lots of humas, carefully cut out chunks of the sod and stack them neatly to one side. Dig down to bare dirt and ring with rocks. Then build the fire. When you are through with the fire, drench the entire area with water, and when you are certain it is completely out, remove the rocks and fill the hole with enough dirt so that you can replece the sod to its former depth. If you are neat, nobody will suspect a fire has been there and you have treated the forest properly.
CAMPER SECRET: Unless you are camping right beside a stream, always keep a bucket of water handy incase of fire. Plastic jugs or buckets that collapse are excellent for this. You might carry one that is marked “FIRE”
