Sprague, Washington
August 10, 2001

My campsite is wedged between I-90 and Sprague Lake. There may be more trees next to my campsite than all of the opposite shore of the lake. Sitting beside the campfire, the sky a hazy, faint blue before it turns to black, I see the second flock of birds flying south. This alarms me. I'm prepared to face the Fall season as I move closer north, but it seems far too soon for birds to be migrating away from where I'm heading. After all, it was a hundred degrees here today. Surely they can wait awhile.

"Now, when the wind comes up, like it is now, you'll, well, you'll have to account for it." He searched my eyes to be sure I understood. While biting my tongue, I nodded for him to continue. "So you may want to, well," and here he was stumped. He looked around and saw a second fire ring about ten feet way, exactly parallel to the wind. "You may want to use that one over there."

I nodded again, as if his logic made sense. "Of course," he added, finding a better argument, "You may want to park over there," pointing to a spot that was between the fire ring and the oncoming wind.

"Right," I said.

From the golf cart he took a stack of newspapers about an inch thick. "If you need more, I guess you can take some from the trailer up there. There's plenty."

"Thank you," I said politely. After he repeated himself a few more times, he left.

When the sun went down, I set to work. It had been two full seasons since I'd made my nightly cooking fires from wet, Yukon wood, but I was determined to not use a single page of newspaper. An excellent woodsman, if forced to use something as decadent as a match, requires only one.

I scrape the fire pit level. With my carpenter's grade hatchet, I split the firewood into useable pieces. I place two sections about a foot long and two inches wide across the bottom, then two more perpendicular to them. Inside this framework I build a teepee of increasingly smaller pieces. The idea is to start small in order to tease the young flames.

On the first match I am not successful. It licks at one of the wooden shards but extinguishes. The second match brings me no closer: it dies before touching the wood. After the third match, I'm the one who's teased-- the small flame burning from a sliver of wood is lost in a breeze that my hands can't block.

As I light the fourth match, my wilderness skills have evaporated but I refuse to glance at the pile of newspapers behind me.