#14 – You ever start a fire without any matches or lighters? Yeah, me neither.
How to (Almost) Start a Fire
First of all, just want to take a minute to give a massive shoutout to the cavemen. Those dudes knew what they were doing. Just feeding and sheltering and keeping themselves warm without as much as a sniff of wifi. It’s amazing, really. Covered in nothing but loin cloth and sleeping under a rock they managed to survive just fine.
Me? I arrive in a new place and someone hands me the keys to a pre-arranged apartment, a local SIM card and a list of the best places to hunt for food. If my inability to survive on my own wasn’t already apparent, it’s about to be…
I spent this particular Saturday hiking in the Vitosha mountains just outside of Sofia, Bulgaria with my buddy Nick. It was a fairly simple hike, but like any two slightly out-of-shape grown men we got tired much quicker than our 18-year-old selves would like to admit, so a pit stop was needed about an hour in.
Then, again, like any normal grown men with functioning brains, we decided it would be a good idea to try and start a fire at a campsite we found in the middle of the woods. Let’s keep in mind that it was legitimately 100 degrees outside, so of course starting a fire was the only logical choice here.
The conversation went something like this:
“Wow, man, it’s pretty hot out.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“What if we started a fire?”
“That be pretty cool.”
“You got any matches?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nope.”
“How bout a lighter?”
“Nope.”
“Ever start a fire with just sticks…?”
“I don’t think so. Have you?”
“Never, but how hard could it be?”
And just like that, we were rummaging through the forest looking for “the right sticks” to rub together.
Then the actual “fire” building went something like this:
First we tried The Birdman Handrub method…
45 minutes in and with our hands blistering, we had caused plenty of friction, but were no better off than a pre-teen boy after a long day of finding his dad’s Playboy stash for the first time.
Next, we moved to more of a chisel method and saw immediate results with this one. Smoke everywhere. And some serious heat, too. Every single Man vs. Wild episode I had ever seen was flashing through my head.
Do I blow on it?
Is it more of a front-to-back or side-to-side motion?
Once it starts, what do I do next?
(it’s unclear whether this was Man vs. Wild or a sex-ed class)
After about an hour and a half we were exhausted and even the little smoke we had created had stopped. It was time to come to grips with our inadequacy and call it quits. It just wasn’t going to happen tonight, babe.
I’m sure many of you will call us quitters. You’ll say that Millennials today never finish what they’ve started. And you’re right. There’s probably some truth in that, but I think there’s a much bigger lesson to be learned in here. If our failed fire attempt can teach us anything it’s that if at first you don’t succeed, try again. And if again you don’t succeed? Well, maybe you should stop being an idiot and stop trying to start a fire with sticks in the woods on a 100-degree day.