People build lots of fires that are un-needed. What do you wear while you're out there getting wood?

You'd better have a water filter and sufficient shelter/clothing to not need a fire. Having to start a fire by splitting wood (when all is wet) is the mark of the un-prepped, and other bad things are bound to happen to such folks.
I have to agree. Wood fires are for lighting up at night, atmosphere and maybe a little bit of cooking, but should not be something you absolutely have to do.
As for getting a few "micro-folds" in the edge, I consider
visible micro-folds that are longer than pin-point hard particle damage to be outright edge failure on wood...
Wood should never do
visible damage to metal (other than discrete dulling). What makes it worse here is I suspect that the edge angle that got this damage was around 15-20 degrees per side or more (30-40 inclusive or more), and I would not tolerate this even at 10-12 (20-24 inclusive), which I consider "chopping angles"...
There are three possibilities for wood causing micro-folds:
1-The knife has not yet been sharpened enough to get out of the burned-out surface steel caused by machining. (Extremely common)
2-Batoning with the grain puts focussed lateral loads on the edge, and therefore should not be done. (The knives I keep do not do this while chopping)
3-The steel or heat-treating has something wrong with it.
If
visible micro-folds are caused by batoning, from the grain moving around for instance, or a greater tendency to yaw from the baton impact (I don't know, since I only ever use chopping), then that is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of batoning for me...
Gaston