One match fire

What you need

• Dead standing wood, never wood off the ground
• Birch bark or fatwood
• A knife
• Matches in a waterproof case
• A dry flat spot, or a bed of green sticks

How

1. Clear a spot down to dirt or rock. If the ground is soaked, lay a bed of finger thick green sticks and build on that.
2. Peel a double handful of birch bark. It lights wet.
3. Split dead branches down to the dry core. Cut one pile of slivers as thin as pencil lead, one pile pencil thick, one pile thumb thick.
4. Build a small tipi of the thin stuff over the bark, with the bigger piles at your knee ready to go.
5. Light the bark low and on the upwind side so the flame climbs into the pile.
6. Feed thin to thick and do not touch it until it is roaring.

Watch for

Notes

Birch bark, fatwood, spruce resin and the dead low branches under a conifer all light in rain. A candle stub or a smear of petroleum jelly on a cotton ball makes the wet day stop mattering.