kmm .....I am an anti baton person. Half of my fires have been in wet weather. I use deadfalls and forest floor litter to start and fuel a fire. I don't carry gasoline or bring fire wood with me. I do bring a lighter and an axe.
If you don't have a dry climate or an abundance of deadfall, what do you baton and split ?
I was more annoyed with the batoning is dumb comments coming from others.
In wet and boggy areas there is often a lot of standing dead trees whereas anything on the ground is waterlogged. You can take them down with axe or knife. Typically an axe is the best option for taking down a tree, but a knife can be put to the task easy enough provided you are tackling something of appropriate size. In these cases, forcing the split to get kindling is important.
There are often multiple ways to do things in the woods. If you didn't have a knife with you, I'm sure you can improvise. If you didn't have an axe with you, you can improvise. If you didn't have matches or lighter with you, well you can improvise there too using primitive methods.
I for one am one of those guys who likes practicing primitive skills. I don't start every fire I use with a bowdrill, but if I'm not using bowdrill, I'm almost always using flint and steel and charcloth (not to be confused with a modern day firesteel). These methods begin a fire with a coal, not a flame, and one of the things the method teaches you is the importance of preparing your tinder and kindling ahead of time. Jeff Randall of RatCutlery and part owner of the RAT Jungle Survival Training school states 'you gather as much tinder and kindling as you think you will need, then triple that amount'.
Nursing your coal into a little flame, and that flame into a full fire is very rewarding. I also admit to the fact that I just get a lot of pleasure from making the fire by this route even if its more tedious then pulling out a pocket blowtorch. Its more of a ritual for me than just trying to get a cooking fire going. If you use this approach, its considered a real silly thing to do to go to all the effort of getting a flame, only to have your fire die out on you because you didn't prepare your tinder accordingly. So I usually make doubly and then triply sure, I have secure kindling to build a solid base of coals before starting my main fuel logs up.
Despite this being a pain, there is much said to using a methodical method to fire building. If, I had to a get a fire going now, hell yes, I would you a lighter to do so. But I would also go about making sure that I built up my tinder appropriately to get the task done. There is a lot less energy expired doing this than trying to get by on the minimum and failing as a result.
