Cheating!

Camping can be an empowering activity for women. Outdoor activities are sometimes viewed as more of a male activity. I have met many women and girls throughout my life who hate camping or any sort of outdoor activity, some of whom have never tried it and don’t have the desire to try it. I have met much fewer men who feel the same way. Activities that are integral to camping such as starting a fire and cooking over a fire are also often associated with men as Michael Pollan attests to in his book Cooked. So when I go camping with just my female friends–no boyfriends or husbands along–it can feel powerful to prove that we can do all these things ourselves. We don’t need the men in order to survive in the wilderness. Of course, then there are times when it does not feel this way…and my camping trip this past weekend was almost a perfect example of one of those times.

I have been going camping since as long as I remember. I don’t know how old I was on my first camping trip…maybe three? Then I joined Girl Scouts at age five and still hold a life membership to this day. As a Brownie, I started learning the skills needed to build a real campfire. We practiced by making edible fires: pretzel sticks of different sizes to represent the different sizes of wood needed, sometimes using coconut to represent the tinder, and red hot candies to represent the fire. Later on while working at summer camp, it became a badge of honor among some of my camp friends to be able to light a one-match fire. And it was a big taboo to cheat by using lighter fluid or any other methods of cheating (the closest we would come to cheating would be to use some drier lint or some other sort of homemade but natural fire starter to help get the fire started). To me, camping was never a “man thing” and neither was fire. It was only when I started paying attention to the media or how many other women or girls reacted to camping that I realized this was even a thing.

So anyway, back to my camping trip last weekend. This time it was just me and one other friend. We drove 3.5 hours from Louisville to the Tennessee side of Big South Fork National Forest. We got there at a decent time and set up camp while it was still light, then collected some firewood. At this point, I decided to go ahead and start working on the fire. Neither of us had eaten very much yet that day, so we were both pretty hungry.

Well, there was a problem. It must have rained recently because all of the wood was damp all the way through. Not wet, like dripping water off the ends, but wet enough so that you can just barely feel the coolness of the moisture when you pick up the wood. Well, I have started fires with wet wood before. It is definitely more difficult, but I have done it. So I figured I could do it again given some time and patience.

But this wasn’t the only problem. When I was packing up, I grabbed the wrong box of matches. These matches must have been old or something because they were very difficult to light. You had to strike the box in just the right way, and even then sometimes we had to strike so hard we started ripping holes in the box. And yes, I did try to strike the matches on a different surface. Apparently, they were not the “strike anywhere” type. When I was able to get a match lit, the wind was blowing so hard that often the flame would disappear before I even had a chance for the match to reach my perfectly arranged A-frame in the fire pit. I did bring a kitchen lighter, but alas! I grabbed the wrong lighter too. This one barely had any lighter fluid in it and definitely not enough for it to work. The flame just wasn’t catching on anything because everything was so damp. I tried leaves and pine needles (which were all also too wet to do any good). I tried drier lint. I even tried using a tampon, which are said to be excellent fire starters. NOTHING worked. I was getting hungry and frustrated, so I moved on to plan B.

I packed the gas-powered camp stove for a reason, so I pulled that out, including my brand-new canister of Coleman fuel. But again, we had a problem. In packing up the car and putting in the new canister of fuel, I didn’t think to pack the supplies that I had stored with the old canister, including the funnel you are supposed to use to refill the tank of the stove. There was not enough fuel in the tank to light the stove, and even if there was, the matches were pretty much useless at this point. There was a giant hole in the box and neither my friend nor I could get any matches to ignite anymore.

So we got in my car to drive to the nearest town to buy new matches (at this point, the camp store was closed). This took about 20 minutes both ways. On the way back to the campground, I saw a sign that said “Threat of Fire Danger: Extremely Low.” Well, that was definitely true. Even those of us who wanted to start a fire were having a lot of trouble.

Back at the campground, we moved on to Plan C, which I am ashamed to say involved cheating. This was to be my first (and hopefully last) time truly cheating when building a fire. When I was shopping for camping supplies, I purchased a bag of quick-start-light-the-bag charcoal. I bought a bag, thinking it would be good backup for the next morning when I planned to use the Dutch oven and would need some charcoal. Instead, I ended up using the bag to get a fire going so we could cook our dinner that night (ground turkey and couscous burritos). And it did work. But it was definitely not a satisfactory fire. On such a cold and chilly night, the fire never built up enough to keep us warm. This just goes to show that cheating never really pays off…

The next morning, I awoke with the sunrise, excited to try another fire. Since I used up my charcoal, if I was going to make the Dutch oven coffee cake I would need a good fire that I could let burn into coals that I could use for the cooking. I have done it this way before with great success. However, it was not meant to be this time. Once again, the wood was damp and the wind was brisk and after working for an hour and a half, I gave up and declared that we would eat bagels so we could stop wasting time and get on the trail sooner rather than later. (side note: This morning I made the coffee cake in my oven at home. It was delicious!)

The trip was not a complete disaster, though, and the story does have a happy ending. The sky cleared up and I left the wood laying out on the picnic table to dry. We had a great hike and I started on the fire early. By this time, the wood was mostly dry and the fire ignited quickly. We had plenty of wood so we were able to keep our fire burning for at least six hours. I successfully controlled the fire, letting it turn mostly into coals for cooking our salmon and potatoes, then building the flames back up for marshmallow roasting and keeping warm. I would say it was one of the better fires I have made in my lifetime.

So we didn’t need the men along after all. I’m not even sure they would have been able to do any better than I did. But I do know I need to practice my skills for building fires using wet wood!