The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man (27 page)

6. Make your fire.
Drop the ember into the tinder nest and blow on it gently. You’ve got yourself a fire.

Flint and Steel Method

This is an old standby. It’s always a good idea to carry around a flint and steel set on camping trips. In wet conditions, matches will be rendered useless, but flint and steel will still create a spark. You should ideally bring along a char cloth as well. The char cloth catches the spark and keeps it smoldering, without bursting into flames. If you don’t have a char cloth, a piece of fungus or birch will do.

If you’re caught without a flint and steel set, you can always improvise by using quartzite and the steel blade of your pocketknife.

1. Grip the flint (or quartzite) and char cloth.
Take hold of the piece of rock between your thumb and forefinger. Make sure an edge is hanging out about 2 or 3 inches. Grasp the char cloth between your thumb and the flint.

2. Strike!
Grasp the back of the steel striker or use the back of your knife blade. Strike the steel against the flint several times. Sparks from the steel will fly off and land on the char cloth, and it will begin to burn.

3. Start a fire.
Fold your char cloth into the tinder nest and gently blow on it to start a flame.

Lens-Based Method

Using a lens to start a fire is an easy matchless method. Any boy who has melted green plastic army men with a magnifying glass will know how to do this. If you have by chance never played God with your action figures, here’s how to do it.

To create a fire, all you need is some sort of lens to focus sunlight on a specific spot. A magnifying glass, eyeglasses (the concave lenses that correct nearsightedness won’t work, only those for reading glasses or farsightedness will do), or binocular lenses are all effective. If you add some water to the lens, you can intensify the beam.

1. Angle the lens.
Angle it toward the sun in order to focus the beam into as small an area as possible.

Figure 6.4 Angle the lens toward the sun in order to focus the beam into as small an area as possible.

2. Prepare the tinder.
Put your tinder nest under this spot and you’ll soon have yourself a fire.

The only drawback to the lens-based method is that it only works when you have sun. So if it’s nighttime or overcast, you won’t have any luck.

Steel Wool and Batteries Method

It’s hard to imagine a situation where you won’t have matches, but you will have batteries and steel wool. But hey, you never know, just ask MacGyver. And it’s quite easy and fun to try at home.

1. Stretch out the steel wool.
You want it to be about 6 inches long and ½ inch wide.

2. Rub the battery on the steel wool.
Hold the steel wool in one hand and the battery in the other. Any battery will do, but nine-volt batteries work best. Rub the battery’s contacts on the wool. The wool will begin to glow and burn. Gently blow on it.

3. Transfer the burning wool to your tinder nest.
The wool’s flame will extinguish quickly, so don’t waste any time.

Manly Advice: Five Foods You Can Cook on a Stick

As mentioned, the easiest way to streamline your camping trip is to eat meals that don’t require any cookware, preparation or cleanup. Enter stick cooking. With only the blazing fire you just made, simple provisions and a rod of wood, you can make a complete meal. And nothing tastes better or feels more satisfyingly primal than filling your dumpling-depot with food fresh from the flames.

Choosing Your Stick

It’s the only cooking utensil you’ll be employing, so make it a good one. Find a stick that is sufficiently long to enable you to sit far enough from the fire so you don’t get scorched as you cook, and sturdy enough that your stick won’t droop and release its precious cargo into the fire. After you choose your stick, whittle off the bark on the end so you have a smooth, clean area with which to spear your food.

Your Gourmet Stick Menu

1. Meat of any sort. While the hot dog’s tubelike shape clearly cries out to be impaled, any meat you can put a stick through can be cooked over a fire. Go ahead and spear yourself a steak, pork chop or chicken breast. Extra man points if you kill your own meat in the wild. You may need to make the initial hole with your knife and then thread your stick through. And make sure your stick is sufficiently strong; losing a hot dog to the fire gods is one thing, having the flames consume your juicy tenderloin quite another.

2. Marshmallow. This item surely needs little explanation. It constitutes the finest stick dessert available to man. And there is only one way to consume this delicacy: golden brown and slightly crisp on the outside, hot and gooey on the inside. The barbarous man will stick his marshmallow directly in the fire, quickly charring the marshmallow in a crude flameout. The civilized outdoorsman, understanding well the delicate nature of the marshmallow, is willing to patiently roast it, turning it constantly until it is golden brown and ready to be sacrificed on a graham cracker altar.

3. Biscuits. Not enough men know that delicious biscuits can be made with only a stick and a fire. Start with a can of refrigerated biscuit dough. Break off one of the biscuits and if needed, flatten it until it’s about ¾ inch in thickness. Wrap it around the end of stick, firmly pinching the sides together. Slowly roast it like a marshmallow, turning constantly until golden brown. When done, eat it plain or place sausage, butter or jam inside. You can also take biscuit dough and wrap it around a hot dog for a pig in a blanket on a stick.

4. Grilled cheese. Grilled cheese is the ultimate comfort food, so why not have Mother Nature help whip one up while out in the woods? First, find two forked sticks. The forks must be wide enough and long enough to be able to securely balance a piece of bread. Butter two slices of bread and rest one on top of the first stick. Add a couple of slices of cheese and cover them with the other slice of bread. Toast the sandwich. When the bottom slice is brown, take your second stick and lay it on top of the sandwich. Carefully flip over the sandwich, and toast the other side.

5. Egg. There are more ways to cook an egg than you can shake a stick at, and to this list we can add a stick itself. Using the point of your pocketknife, very gently make two small holes on both tips of the egg. Carefully thread a very thin stick through the hole on the egg’s wider end and out the hole on the narrower end. Keeping the egg horizontal, roast it over the coals. When the egg becomes difficult to pull off the stick and egg white ceases to leak from the holes, it’s done and ready to be eaten.

Predict the Weather Like a Frontiersman

Before hot weather women, Al Roker and weather.com, men predicted the weather on their own. Using aches in their bones and clues from Mother Nature, frontiersmen could predict the next day’s, or even week’s, forecast. When you’re out camping and away from your Blackberry, being able to predict the weather like Daniel Boone is a critical and manly skill to possess.

“Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”

It turns out Shakespeare, the Bible and skippers the world over were right; this familiar rhyme is actually a fairly accurate way to predict the weather. If the sky at sunset is red, a high-pressure system with dry air is coming in and whipping up dust. The longer red wavelengths of light break through the atmosphere, while shorter wavelengths of color are dissipated. If you see a red sky at sunrise, it means the dry air has already moved past you and a moisture-laden low-pressure system is on its way.

Look to the Clouds

Cirrus clouds.
Cirrus clouds are the long, wispy clouds that hang high up in the sky. Low-hanging cirrus clouds that look like a horse’s tail mean bad weather is on its way.

Figure 6.5 Low-hanging cirrus clouds that look like a horse’s tail mean bad weather is on its way.

Cumulus clouds.
Cumulus clouds are the big puffy clouds that angels use for harp playing and Care Bears employ as cars. If the cumulus clouds are white, like a giant cotton ball, you can expect good weather for the day. If they get darker and more ominous, expect thunder, lightning and a murder at the old inn.

Figure 6.6 If the cumulus clouds are white, you can expect good weather for the day. If they get darker and more ominous, expect thunder and lightning.

Stratus clouds.
Stratus clouds look like a white blanket covering a portion of the sky. Stratus clouds that are hanging medium to high in the sky can mean rain in the next thirty-six hours.