Village Style

I learned this from a Native Alaskan, Brett, in Evansville back in the 90s.

My cousin Kelly and I were out river boating with him on the Koyukuk River and enjoying the amazing Brooks Range when we decided to pull over and enjoy a moment on one of the sand bars.

It was late summer and we thought it would be nice to build a fire. He asked us, “You guys know how to build a fire the Native way?” Kelly and I looked at each other and smirked…we both had been trained since we were quite young on how to build a good camping fire. So we got to gathering birch bark and twigs…

About 1 minute after scavenging around the beach we heard, “Here you go guys!”

At that moment I turned around to see Brett holding a can of gasoline and throwing a match on a couple logs he had slid together…

“THAT’S how you build a fire the Native way.”

We laughed and I was glad we were up river so we wouldn’t worry too much about the gas…

So you know…there’s more than one way to build a fire.