Last night we had one of the greatest experiences we ever had here at the ranch, we went to sleep in the bush with just our sleeping bags. For this occasion, Nick, our instructor in Bushcraft and Survival, came with us and showed us the plants we can eat in nature, where and how to build our shelter, how to make a strong string with tree bark and how to make a good fire to keep us warm.
A camp fire can have different sizes and shapes depending on what you want to use it for: to warm or cook your food and water, to sit around or to sleep beside. When we prepare a fire for the night we need a fire which can keep us warm in every part of our body and not just the head or the feet. For that we needed to make a long fire, as long as our bodies and we were going to sleep along the fire. The fire has to be at least one meter away from us and well contained.
We started making three small fires, each beside the other. We built the middle one first and after we had time to start the other two. By adding long branches or pieces of wood we made them reach across as one long fire. It's a great way to stay warm for our whole body. We also needed to keep our fire next to the ground and not too big. We added wood just enough wood to burn slowly and for a long time. To stay warm all night, we also had to think about if we had enough wood beside us to keep our fire going constantly.
Once done, we just had to refresh our fire twice in the night and could sleep until the morning beside our cosy, nice and warm fire.