How to Make Fire in the Desert

"Hi. I'm Mike Meyers with Zion Wilderness Survival School for Expert Village. We talked earlier about having the necessary gear to make wilderness survival a more possible event. One thing that I always include in my pack, my survival kit, are three means of starting fire. I have in this matchbox, obviously, matches, waterproof matches. Which I keep in a waterproof pouch. I have a Bic lighter. And I have my flint and steel to start fire. I carry these everywhere I go when I'm in the wilderness. Obviously with these, I should be fine. We all know how to use these devices. Actually, you may not all know how to use the flint and steel. It's simply a matter of taking a knife blade. The flint runs along here. And, you simply strike it. I don't know if you can see the sparks coming off the end. But, those sparks when dropped into a bundle of tender will start a fire for you. Those things I carry all the time. Let's say that you get out into the wilderness and you don't have these items and you have to make fire. Now, we're not going to have time to actually make fire. But, I'm going to show you the technique. The bow basically is just a good solid piece of branch. It's pretty strong. The rope is just a piece of heavy rope. It could be a shoe lace, any piece of rope or cordage that you have. I have split the ends, carefully split the ends, both of these here. So that, I could tie a knot at the end of the rope and slip it through on both sides. This actually comes right out. Okay. The spindle, the spindle actually is not the right one for this. I have several of them. It's kind of large. But, you twist it in there like this. Just like that. Okay? You take your piece of wood. And, you take your knife and you start a little crater about a half an inch or more in from the edge of the wood. Then, with your spindle, you're going to start to create a crater by spinning it with the bow which you'll see in a second. Then, once you have a crater, then you notch the notch in, a "V" notch. Do you see the V notch in there? Notch it. And that's where your coals are going to fall. So, you set that down and place your left foot on it. I'll get myself set here. Set the end of the spindle in there. A socket over the other end to hold it in place. And then you just start to crank. And, I've got smoke coming from somewhere cause I can smell it. And eventually what will happen is an ember will form in this notch. You carefully, I usually use a knife blade, remove the ember and place it in a bundle of very dry material. This is grass which I've gotten right here from around me. Once you have your ember in this grass, you blow on it as such. We don't have an ember. But, if we did, this grass would then begin to burn. I would then put that into a little pile of small twigs and get that burning. I would then add larger wood, all of which I would have collected well in advance. Don't start the process of making fire and not have a good collection of wood all around you. One last thing, this is real dry pieces from agave, you've seen those pointed, arrow-type plants, agave plants, Mojave Yucca plants, that's where I got this. And, it makes great fire starter. I often carry a bundle of very dry stuff that I pick up along the trail so that I have dry tender when I get to camp or when I need to make fire."