Tea-fire on snow
A one-match fire on snow, no knife or axe needed (OK, I used one match, twice).
The tea-fire tradition crossed the Atlantic with early settlers when America was fresh and wild. A mid-day tea break was felt essential and restorative on even the most difficult trails. Tea drinking caught on everywhere. Tea trade reached the furthest remote indigenous populations, even Inuit nomads wandering traditional hunting grounds from Arctic tundra to ice flows in the Arctic archipelago. The immaculate white Arctic fox belts bought a lot of tea and the metal pots to steep it in.
A slow transition to coffee drinking during the early 20th century mostly displaced tea as our national hot drink. Tea remains popular but the trail-side fire, today, is likely a coffee-fire. Coffee drinking has gained enormous popularity as tinder & twig fire-making skills have declined. Today, our tea-fire is kindled by our local barista at the ubiquitous Starbucks.
Give it a try. Make a traditional tea-fire the old fashioned way, it’s more fun than building a snowman. Call it a coffee-fire, if you like.
Midwestern woodlands provide if you know where to look. Recently, we had rain and sleet followed by an ice storm, then a snow storm. Dead and down wood is snow covered, down wood exposed above the snow is iced along the tops of twigs. Dead grass and weeds still standing above February snow are moist and frozen and lightly iced, too; nice conditions for a fire challenge.
First, a fire base of three to four inch diameter dead poles, more than adequate for a coffee-fire with a little extra warmth for cold hands. No need for sawing green logs used for all night survival fire on deep snow. A cluster of elm trees provided necessary leverage to reduce a dead elm pole by breaking it into four usable fire base lengths. A fallen cottonwood offered a partial wind screen. Fire base poles aligned with the cottonwood brought the fire lay roughly in alignment with wind direction while offering some protection from gusts.
Now for kindling; dead grasses, our native wild rye and invasive canary grass stood along the small stream. Standing dry asters still held tiny dry leaves and carpels, remnants of tiny flowers. Hand fulls of grass, shaken and beaten against my leg to rattle off some of the thin ice coatings, made a kindling fuel base on the snowy logs.
A nested handful of aster-tops removed by pulling rooted plants through hands to pinch-off fines and tips will help to flare the match flame. Oak leaves clinging to twig clusters fallen from pin oaks came next, but held hard to remove ice coatings.
I found key kindling underneath a cottonwood pinned against an oak where dry leaves were protected from recent precipitation. Even small amounts of ice on twigs, grass, and leaves rob essential heat from ignited kindling.
Fire-making success depends on controlling moisture.
Essential dry twigs, often easy to collect from the ground just about anywhere in Midwestern woodlands, were buried on icy ground under deep snow. Suspended down wood filled the fuels gap. I found fallen branches of cherry and pin oak, large wind fall and branch tips cut by squirrels, hanging in shrubs and vines within reach. Scattered larger down wood on the ground supported branches rising out of snow that terminated as fine twigs. The icy coatings were easy to rub off enough twigs to fuel the fire start up. The weather challenge increased the effort necessary for fire, but did not diminish the likelihood of success.
Suspended down wood filled the fuels gap.
Knowledgeable woodcraft enthusiasts may point out that dry inner bark of the cottonwood log in the image was protected from recent precipitation by the outer bark. Inner bark shreds from seasoned cottonwood make excellent kindling (and tinder, if reduced to a fibrous bundle). I had something else in mind for today’s single digit temperature, no tools firecraft challenge.
The partial songs of white-throated sparrows, “poor-Sam-Peabody-peabody”, and the cheery chatter of Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice, and blue jays calling their name and imitating rusty pump handle sounds accompanied my fire-building efforts. These same sounds surrounded frontiersmen and early pioneers dependent on trailside fires during Ohio Country winters more than two-hundred years ago. When you feel at home in the outdoors, woodcraft is housework in the wilds.
When you feel at home in the outdoors, woodcraft is pleasant housework in the wilds.
The final stage of winter firecraft, extinguishing fire by dismembering and dis-embering followed by cold ash dispersal, is introduced in another post, follow the link. Readiness enables outdoor enthusiasts to minimize and recover outdoor impacts, to leave it the way they found it, or better.
Modern approaches to trail coffee and outdoor meals:
Technology offers efficient alternatives to fire on snow. Spirit stoves, solid fuel stoves, small rocket stoves, and multi-fuel liquid stoves boil water in minutes and use no wood, but require carrying fuel. All but select pressurized liquid stoves lose efficiency in colder air. These are the best cooking systems for use on public lands subject to high impacts from high visitor-days. Small efficient wood stoves use simple enhanced combustion technologies fueling twiggy fires to boil water in minutes leaving so little ash, you can blow it away. These are excellent choices for most outdoor recreation uses. The competing Bushcooker and Bushbuddy stoves fit inside small pots and weigh very little, yet will burn twigs, grass, pine cones, anything, very efficiently (I have not used the Bushbuddy stove, my remarks are based on reviews by others, I have used all the other stoves mentioned). The Sierra Stoves use a small battery powered fan to quickly boil water with little fuel. These are among the fastest, hottest twig burners on the market, though bulkier and heavier than non-powered choices. Volcano kettles (Kelly Kettle, Gillie Kettle, etc.) boil water with very little wood fuel in the worst weather imaginable! The chimney funnel exposes large surface area to direct flame heat to efficiently boil water, stove and pot are one and the same. These are a bit bulky and heavy, excellent for boats and vehicles, good for low impact camping if you don’t mind the minimal extra bulk and weight. More on these technologies and others in future posts.
Tom Bain, Outdoor Readiness