Temple Fire
“Many hands make light work”
Survival skills are all well and good but I suspect almost everyone underestimates the time it takes to complete even the most simple of tasks when out in the wild, particularly if you are trying to complete them all on you own.
If you watch tribesmen setting up camp, hunting or starting a fire on some TV documentary they are almost invariably doing so as a group. There are good reasons for this. Hunter-gatherers were exactly that – one group would hunt for protein, another group would stay close to camp and collect resources and edible plants to provide carbohydrates. The point is that in situations like these, where survival is difficult, the work load is shared out and those humans who act co-operatively are the ones who thrive.
This is the contradiction at the heart of a lot of survival prepping strategies – the idea that you can run for the hills and live off the land, alone but safely hidden from the rest of society, is a short term solution. Long term survival is best done by forming groups and working together.
Even something as simple as starting a fire takes more time than most people imagine, particularly in damp conditions: you need to search for and collect firewood, find tinder, prepare kindling, split wood, prepare the fireplace, get an ember … and all this can take time. A lot of time.
If, on top of that, you have to do all this alone and have other things to do before darkness falls (build a shelter, find water) then you may well find that you run out of time and pay the price.
There are four important lessons I have learned the hard way:
1) set up camp early; on the equator the sun sets just after 7pm, so set up camp around 3-4pm, or earlier.
2) Prioritise the tasks you need to complete before the sun sets.
3) Know how long each task will take (think you can quickly build a shelter? Try it one day and time how long it takes you).
4) Remember the ‘good enough’ rule: don’t waste time making the perfect shelter if you can get away with something that isn’t perhaps as elegant as you’d like but more-or-less does the job and takes a fraction of the time to construct.
The last point is what I trying to demonstrate in this video about the temple fire. I came across the design for this in the SAS Survival Handbook by Lofty Wiseman (a book I have a lot of fondness for and, despite its limitations, well worth the price) and the idea is to build a fireplace that elevates your fire off the wet ground, provides a drying station for damp firewood and a roof to protect from the rain. It’s a neat idea.
The problem with something like the temple fire is that, assuming you are on your own, it is time consuming to make (it took me over an hour and that was with the help of plastic sheeting for the roof). There is a simple alternative which is to use soil and stones to raise the fireplace and simpler ways of creating a rack on which to dry damp firewood (to be fair to Lofty Wiseman’s book he does cover this as well) – an alternative that does the same thing and takes about 10-15 mins from start to finish.
So why, you might ask, bother making a temple fire in the first place? The reason I would recommend trying to do so is that it gives you excellent practice in shelter building techniques, teaches you how long construction of these structures is likely to take, makes you more aware of ways to cut corners that will save you time and build with the minimum use of resources (also saving you time).
In terms of techniques, some lessons I have learned are:
1) If possible, look for a site that has suitable trees to act as support columns for your structure.
2) Try to avoid square/cubic designs – triangles and tripods are more stable structures particularly if you’re forced to make it freestanding.
3) Try to avoid structures with many lashing joints and, if you do need to do lots of lashings, then look around for some rattan (which is the strongest cordage to harvest) or vines (the fastest to harvest).
4) Use lashings that are quick and easy to tie – the Japanese lashing method is, hands down, the winner here.
Only when you’ve done it for yourself will you fully appreciate how long it takes to build a shelter and how tricky it can be if you’re doing it on your own. Building a temple fire will teach you all of these things as it is , after all, just a miniature version of a full sized shelter. So its a great way to practice.
Finally, a few things to remember when you are drying a stack of firewood over a fire:
1) Don’t leave the fire unattended or allow it to burn high enough that the flame ignites the drying firewood above.
2) Split the firewood before you put it on the drying rack – that way it will dry faster.
3) When taking wood from the stack, take from the bottom of the pile. This means that you are using the driest wood and gets it out of the way, allowing the heat from the fire to reacher the damper wood on top.
I honestly believe that even someone who had never built a shelter before in their life could work out how to do if they found themselves in a survival situation – it’s pretty obvious – but someone who already has experience of doing so will do it much, much faster and build something that is more stable.
Another great video Paul.
Thanks!
Wally
Hi Wally,
Many thanks for the support and kind words….always appreciated.
Cheers!
Paul
Been enjoying your articles and videos – keep them coming!
This one reminds me of a very common practice among the natives here in Borneo and in a more permanent way i.e. cooking area in their kitchen are built with firewood storage above it like in this photo http://i.imgur.com/oaCWyEy.jpg – which was shot only last year.
Hi Ade,
Many thanks for the comment and I loved the photo – very nicely shot and the cat looks happy! Yes, I’ve seen this sort of set up before but only in videos and the ones I’ve seen are almost identical…..but of a fire risk but I know the idea is to take from the bottom of the pile and, as your photo shows, the firewood is quite high up and away from the flames. Also, I imagine that in these long houses there’s always someone around to keep an eye on things and make sure an errant spark doesn’t ignite the firewood.
Thanks again,
Cheers!
Paul
Hello Paul,
I couldn’t agree more.
For time managing, selecting material, and the building itself. It can be really nice to make a Temple Fire at a base camp.
I really liked you tripod, especially since that shape can withstand a jungle bamboo bed! I would like to try a high one to support a hammok.
Do you know if Orang Asal do this kind of sheltered fire?
Thank you!
Hi Wawa,
Thanks for the comment and agree with you that a Temple Fire is more a base camp solution that one to be used when on the move. I’ve never tried making a frame for a hammock but don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do it.
The Orang Asal don’t, as far as I know, bother with a fully temple fire and wouldn’t lift the fire platform off the ground. However, they do stack firewood above the fire to dry it and that is quite a common practice (both in their long houses and when out in the jungle)….in the jungle they use something more like the simple structure at the beginning of the video. They also often have two fires going and one is large (and not beneath the firewood stack) for cooking on.
Cheers!
Paul
Another great one. I always use tripods set ups whenever I can for about anything, so much simpler, quicker, and stable like you showed. I will have to try the Japanese lashing next time out. Thanks for showing that.
HI John,
Many thanks for the comment and the Japanese lashing technique is something I find a lot easier than the traditional way…in fact after discovering it I started to wonder why the old method is still the one that is most often taught in the survival books.
Cheers!
Paul
I tried this one and man this is my go to from now on for sure. Thanks again for showing this one. I agree with you on wondering why the old method is still being taught when an obvious improved way is now here. I suspect it is the can’t teach an old dog a new trick mentality. I am glad I am an old dog with a young dogs heart. If I ever write a survival book I will put this in as a replacement.
Hi John,
Thanks for the comment and I agree with you about the lashing technique – I find it much easier to do the Japanese style lashing and use it all the time now… the main time I don’t is when using rattan strips as these can be threaded under previous lashings and secured that way. But I do find it odd that this method of Japanese lashing is missing from so many survival books….weird.
Cheers!
Paul