Firewood: Here's How It's Done (I Need To Vent)

[mete]

It's all a moot point as the wood supply to heat homes is in very short supply ! Maybe worse than last year !

 

[jpr9954]

As a Boy Scout growing up in North Carolina in the 60-70s, I can remember a number of campouts where it was raining and we had to have a fire to cook. If we had picked the wood off the ground, we'd have never gotten a fire going. We learned quickly about dead branches that were still on the tree.

 

[Thomas Linton]

"First you get some squaw wood, dead but from a tree."

 

[RevolverGuy]

Sounds like building a fire by committee. The less people involved the quicker it will get going.

 

[Jhansenak47]

People are stupid, I once saw a maple tree someone had cut down at a campground to use as firewood, it hadn't burned very well as most live green trees contain water.

 

[Shotgun]

This seems to be everywhere now. Most see camping as rolling up in a house on wheels with prepackaged food and satellite tv. The parks also seem to be dedicating more space to glamping, outfitted yurts and cabins.

My wife and I stayed in a yurt once. It was nice to play cards while it rained but it had thugs scurrying around after the lights went out. Tenting it from now on.

 

[Thomas Linton]

"Thugs" or bugs?

 

[redsquid2]

People are stupid, I once saw a maple tree someone had cut down at a campground to use as firewood, it hadn't burned very well as most live green trees contain water.

I saw something similar. Don't know what species of tree it was, but there was this guy in our group sawing down a tree, and I yelled over at him, "Is that a live tree?" and he said, "It didn't look live when I started sawing on it."Pure stupidity. The tree was only about 3 inches in diameter, but after he threw it on top of a roaring fire, it took forever to get it to burn.

 

[upnorth]

Yep. I live in a very densely populated part of Chicago. I see good firewood all over the place.

Actually bud I was thinking more along the lines of crystalized sap globules etc. from limb trimmings and such.

 

[22-rimfire]

This seems to be everywhere now. Most see camping as rolling up in a house on wheels with prepackaged food and satellite tv. The parks also seem to be dedicating more space to glamping, outfitted yurts and cabins.

You might think of parks (state and national) as a business and they move toward serving the general "customer". Still lots of campsites or campgrounds in national forests and they tend to be not real trailer friendly unless the trailer camper likes no electricity to power their stoves and so forth.

In terms of fires, it just takes a little experience. Maybe that experience includes catching a field on fire or your lawn.

 

[HwangJino]

I've been using wet wood on purpose..

I stack a bunch of the wet or soaked wood on the bottom, and continue stacking smaller wood perpendicular, at the top I place lots of kindling (dry stuff).

I learned it off youtube (great for building fires in wet conditions), called upside down fires.
It worked on the first try and all the wet wood burned great!

Nothing to be mad about.

 

[duxdawg]

Yes, Mors Kochanski should be required reading on this. The dominant idea of our time is that if you don't see it, it's not happening. The materials used by most backpackers are much more devastating than locally procured materials and wood shelters/fires. Materials are not dropped to the earth by a stork for our use. A tent alone requires metals and oil to be removed from the ground and shipped around the world. It may appear to be Leave No Trace, but this is a solipsism (an idea that nothing exists outside of oneself). Wash your plastic-based clothes and you are sharing that plastic with the rest of the world as it bioaccumulates and enters the drinking water; rely on materials drilled out of the ground and a huge trace is being left, just elsewhere.

Beyond this there is the philosophy which leaves a much larger trace. In many ways the whole industry of tourism backpacking is leaving a huge trace on the environment. In many parks you cannot really use local materials, they subscribe to one of two dominant theories: either forest fire management or wild/unkempt forests. In each case we are separated from nature, and the woods just becomes another tourist attraction, an entertaining place to get away from it all. Meanwhile these places of beauty develop line-ups and become overcrowded with people using oil-based equipment that leaves a huge trace somewhere else. There is nothing really natural about locations with line-ups and overcrowding, if anything they turn these places into a zoo and actually further distance us from nature. The sites become permanently scarred by tourist practises and pilgrimages.

This means that the forests in one's backyard often become 'wild', or in other words unused, while people have to travel and seek out bureaucratic processes for going into nature. The forests then go through long processes of either choking each other out and/or accumulating excessive dead material which can be disastrous in the event of dry season fires. Brush trees and dry dead material make for poor forests, and the philosophy ignores that humans lived along with animals for millions of years in forests. Now that the ecosystems have been destroyed and many animals wiped out there is no easy return to proper forests, and they will not just balance out on their own, especially when humans continue to alter the climate and dump accelerants into the forests.

Proper forest management, and ironically the use of fire itself, would actually help prevent wildfires. Many of these wildfires are occurring in part because of the hypocritical Leave No Trace philosophy (which is itself based on the absurd scientism of ecology - developed from irrational Cold War game theory and the idea that nature acts like a computer). Wise forest practises and fire use would help prevent these disasters, but today there is not a lot of wisdom left and it tends to be attacked as 'politically incorrect' or 'privilege'.

redsquid2, have you actually discussed the fire issues with your group? If you're getting so upset about it then it may be coming across wrong. Otherwise, if they simply adhere to Leave No Trace you may have to just leave it or go on your own trips. If the fire gets going it's not that big of a deal, and a proper fire can dry out wet wood very quickly. At some point you could calmly suggest you would like to start the fire this time, and if others are helping collect wood politely ask them to leave the wet wood or set it aside. If they see how well you can make a fire they may learn from it. But never underestimate the willingness of people to not learn, or even scoff at suggestions of what was once common sense.

Much wisdom there.

 

[Bo T]

I've been using wet wood on purpose..

I stack a bunch of the wet or soaked wood on the bottom, and continue stacking smaller wood perpendicular, at the top I place lots of kindling (dry stuff).

I learned it off youtube (great for building fires in wet conditions), called upside down fires.
It worked on the first try and all the wet wood burned great!

Nothing to be mad about.

I recall that video. It was amazing and somewhat counter intuitive. But, at least on the video it worked. A little bit of dry wood to get it going and a lot of wet wood to keep it going.