Choosing an Area to Build a Campfire: Online Guide to Camping & Fire Safety

Series Summary

Roughing it in the great outdoors is one of those activities that awakens something deep inside of us, reminding us of the relationship between man and Earth, reminding us to look at the greatness, the intricacy of the world around us. Many people in the post-industrial world are surrounded by the infrastructure of the city and must drive 30 miles out of town to find someplace semi-deserted and free from the concrete of man’s influence. Yet, even then some people even prefer to bring the city with them, only semi-roughing it with electricity, television, and air conditioning.

Whatever your preference, if you’re camping outdoors, you’ll probably need to know how to make a campfire at some point. Fire is an important tool to have for cooking food and purifying water, for warmth and light, and for protection from wild animals at night. In this free video series, learn the proper way to make a safe, long-burning campfire. Our expert will show you how to choose the right area in your campsite for the fire, how to build a fire pit, how to start a fire without matches, and how to properly put out the fire when you are ready to break camp and move on.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Brian on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today I am going to show you how to properly construct and build a campfire. The major importance of building a campfire is to select a site that is relatively flat as you can see here. You want some distance away from any trees, in the event that embers would come up out of the fire, we do not want to risk catching them on fire. We want an area that’s relatively clean. If you can take a look around, you can see there is already plenty of fuel wood to choose from here. That makes it very easy to collect woods throughout the night as you need it, if you decide that you need more or to continue your campfire, make it larger or what not. Also, this is a very nice area because there are several flat spots where we can put a tent up, an area for cooking, and things like that. So, we are going to begin by building the fire pit ring. "