Making Fire, Juan

Juan Contreras  July 24, 2013 First Draft

                                                            Making Fire

Many people in the world use matches or lighters to make the fire, but how about if you are alone in the jungle without these tools to create fire and keep your body warm. In order to survive in the wilderness, I want to show you some simple steps to make fire using dried branches.

First of all, you should find a dry place, close to a stream or river because you need to take care of the nature. When you find the best place, you need to clean it around at least three meters. Take all the leaves away from where you are going to make the fire because you need to be careful to not burn the rest of the vegetation and make a natural disaster.

Once you have done cleaning your place and are being sure everything is away from and safe, now you need to look for three branches: two of them are going to be one inch thick and one of them  four inches thick. Also you need to collect dry grass or small leaves because they are going to be burnt first.

The third is make friction with one thin branch against the thick one. To do this, you need to break the thick branch into two pieces. Then break it again, but now just a little bit. As a result you are going to have a fissure going from one extreme to the middle of the one half of your 4-inch branch. Now put the grass in the fissure and take one of the 1-inch branches and rub it back and forth against the fissure. If you see ash coming up from the fissure, it is time to blow air out from your mouth. As fast as a blink, you will get the fire.

Making fire in this way can help you if someday you are in the wilderness, or if you forget your matches or lighters at home when you are camping. Please just remember that you need to be very careful with the fire, and over all you need to make sure to extinguish it. We do not want to deal with a big ecological problem.  Doing it with responsibility is going to be helpful to you and the rest of us.