DALE'S WILDERNESS SURVIVAL - HOME

1. COLLECT WOOD. You should have about 20 to 30 very thin twigs, and 10 to 15 small sticks like the ones in the picture to get the fire started and as many larger pieces you need to keep the fire going for as long as you need it.

2. BOTTOM BRANCHES.  If the ground is covered with snow you can break dry branches off the bottom of a tree like this one.

3. STARTER MATERIAL. You will need some material that ignites very easily to start the fire. There are a number of things you can use for this. Dry leaves, dry grass, bark, or chips from a dry semi-decomposed dead tree as in the picture above. Paper works fine too if you have some with you.

4. FIRE RING. Find a good location for your fire, there should be nothing nearby that could catch fire such as dry vegetation. Make a ring on the ground with rocks as in the picture.

5. STARTER MATERIAL. Place the starter material in the center of the fire ring. Make sure there's plenty of air around each piece of material.

6. TWIGS. Make a teepee around the starter material using the thin twigs you collected in step 1.

7. STICKS. Put the larger sticks from step 1 around your twig teepee. Finish off with some more massive pieces as in the picture.

8. LIGHT. Light the starter material.

9. WAIT. In about a minute your fire should look something like this. The starter material has started to ignite the small twigs.

10. FIRE. After a few minutes your fire will look like this. Soon the teepee will collapse into a shapeless collection of burning wood, don't worry this is all normal and good. By now you fire is stable and will keep burning for as long as you feed it wood.