Camping with your family can be a cathartic experience. After long months of hard work, a short weekend out in the wild can be everything you need to relax and unwind. Sleeping under the stars, bathing in a lake, eating canned food… all of these activities can be the perfect escape from your busy city life. But if you’d like to go even further and really immerse yourself in the full camping experience, building a fire is the perfect task for you. Camp fires, or fires in general, create the perfect atmosphere for family bonding. From roasting marshmallows over orange flames to telling scary stories, sitting around a fire is a sure way for you and your family to relax, bond and create valuable memories.

However, building a fire may not be as easy as you might think. It is also important to ensure that you build a safe fire as well. This is because fires can be very dangers if they are not built with enough care. Below, we will walk you through how to build a good environmentally conscious fire.

1. Collect the firewood

The very first step to building a good fire is to collect the firewood, tinder and kindling that will be required. When you go out in search of good firewood, it’s important to looks for dry older looing logs. Green branches will not burn as well as husky brown ones. Next, you’ll want to find materials such as newspapers and or straw, which will be used as your tinder. The thinner twigs that you find will constitute your kindling.

2. Lay down your fire bed

After the collection phase, it’s important to set the ground work for your fire. If you build a fire without first building an adequate pit, this could result in your small camp flame turning into a dangerous forest inferno. As such, it is important to first lay out your fire pit (the area that you’d like your fire burn on) with either sand or rocks. If your fire pit has already been pre-built with concrete, you won’t have to worry about this step.

3. Set the tinder and kindling

Your next step would be to layout your tinder and kindling within your fire pit. When doing this, it is important to lay down your tinder first, then place the kindling above.

4. Ignite the tinder and kindling

Next, you’ll want to use a lighter or matches to ignite your tinder. The flames from your tinder will then ignite your kindling as well.

5. Add the firewood slowly

Once the kindling is alight, you’ll want to add fuel to the fire. This step can be done by laying down firewood over the ignited kindling in small pieces, and waiting for those bits to catch fire. Once your smaller logs and branches are burning, you can now add larger logs and build up your fire.

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