How to Build a One-Match Fire Using Only Materials you Find in Nature

By Andrew Last updated Aug 3, 2020 1,513 0

It’s no secret that camping is having a moment in July 2020. Coronavirus is still putting most travel plans on hold, but instead of hopping a plane, folks are taking to the woods and the mountains. So whether you’re hitting the road in your Kia Soul Camper Van or just spending a weekend at Redfish Lake, here’s a step-by-step guide to building and lighting the perfect one-match fire.

My preferred style of fire is the Lean-To, where you use a large piece of fuel like a thick log or a stump, place the tinder next to it, then lean smaller sticks overtop the tinder onto the log. You can also build a Teepee style fire or a Log Cabin fire. A Teepee has the tinder in the middle, with the sticks leaning up against each other around it like a teepee. A Log Cabin has fuel on four sides with the tinder and kindling in the middle. Tinder? Kindling? Fuel? Don’t worry, we’ll explain.

STEP ONE – TINDER

All that dry grass? Perfect to create our little fire-starter bundle of tinder

Put your phone away. Not that kind of tinder. The first step in building a one-match fire is to create your own fire-starter out of materials you find around camp. You want your bundle of tinder to be made out of the smallest and driest combustable materials available. And y’all, let’s leave the toilet paper as a last resort, okay? That stuff is VERY valuable if you don’t wanna be doing your business with leaves – and trust me, you don’t.

The photos in this post are from a campsite Northwest of Lander, Wyoming, but there are great options for tinder in nearly any place you can camp. In this case, I used dry grasses, but my other go-to favorite fire-starter is chunks of dry moss. Bright yellow or green moss on the ground or on rocks, dark green hanging moss on pine trees in the Northwest? It’s all a fantastic fire-starter. Bundle it up, pop it in the middle of your fire ring, and you’re ready for the next step!

A Note on Leaves: It may seem like dry leaves are a good idea for tinder, but they mostly smoke and burn up without creating much long-lasting flame. And if the rest of your fire is going to catch, your tinder can’t just burn out in a split second. Let’s be a little more refined here than just plopping a hand-full of leaves in our fire pit, yeah? Cool.

Step two – FUEL

Find a big log. Plop it in your fire ring next to your tinder. Congrats, you’ve finished this step. If you can’t find something big, thick and short, that’s okay. If your fuel log is longer than your fire-ring it isn’t the end of the world as long as you keep an eye on it, as you should be doing anyway. And lastly, if you happen to be in an area that doesn’t have any big thick logs, just use the biggest pieces of wood you can find, and pile them up until they’re taller than your tinder pile. Or you can opt for a log cabin or teepee style fire where the sticks you find encase your tinder in a square or teepee shape. These are useful when there are no giant logs to be found. Fortunately, our campsite in Lander had a number of stump-sized logs.

STEP THREE – KINDLING

Now, after you’ve got your tinder and fuel set up, you’re going to want to find small sticks to lean over the tinder, resting on the fuel log. This creates your Lean-To structure! It’s important your kindling isn’t too big that it won’t catch quickly. You want it to be just bigger than your tinder and no bigger than a typical drink straw.

My first layer of kindling is a tumbleweed with incredibly dry, thin, twiggy branches that aren’t much bigger than my tinder

In Lander, Wyoming we were lucky to have some dried out tumbleweed-style plants that worked amazingly as a little bit of tinder AND kindling rolled into one. That’s basically what you want to keep in mind if nothing else – starting from your tinder, you just want to add slightly bigger and bigger sticks until you have a big enough fire that you can just throw on anything you have around.

Second layer of kindling is much bigger and thicker than the first. And that’s the type of progression you want to have!

Note about kindling: Make sure you’re leaving enough space between the kindling layers and the tinder so that the fire-starter bundle has oxygen. Fires can’t start without enough oxygen, so you don’t want it to be suffocated by packing the fire too tightly with sticks.

Step Four – Add More Fuel

She’s a thing of beauty, ain’t she? Nothing prettier than a well-built fire. Except my girlfriend, if she’s reading this.

Don’t just drop another giant log on top of your beautiful structure of course, but this is the part where you want to gently lay some bigger pieces of fuel above your tinder and kindling. If all goes to plan, the tinder will light the kindling, which will light the bigger kindling, which will light the fuel up top! Fire and heat rises, so if you set up your fire in this manner, you’re setting yourself up for a successful combustion chain-reaction!

Y’all ready for the best part? That’s right? It’s time to light ‘er up! But… without a lighter of course. We’re not trying to cheat like that.

STEP Five – LIGHT it UP

I figured y’all might want video proof, so here goes. Lighting this stellar-looking fire with just one match! Thanks to my brother Greg for ruining the take, but I didn’t want to make any cuts in the film! This is a 100% Authentic One-Match Adventure Dudes Fire.