Carry a butane lighter whenever you enter the woods. In fact, make it a habit of carrying one all the time, even if you don't smoke. In this day and age, going into the woods without one is just plain foolish. They're so compact and dependable, why would you use anything else?

Buy a see-through disposable lighter so you can tell how much fluid you have.

If your lighter should run out of fluid, you still have the flint and striker. However, the sparks on a lighter are all aimed downward and covered by a tin "cowel." You need to cut the front part of the cowel away, where the flame shoots up through, in order to get a good spark to direct onto tinder. Do not cut too far where the metal cowel is actually holding the spark wheel.

Matches get wet. Or the striker gets wet or lost or worn to the point of unusability. Matches get old and will not light. Strike-anywhere matches wear off the white tip and will not light. Picture this: in the aftermath of a cold downpour, you are struggling with pruney-wet shaking hands, you scrape down match after match. Then you finally get your match lit only to have a gust of wind blow it out. No, matches are not a good way to go, my friend.

If you are truly determined to start fire by rubbing two sticks together, I give you the following links on friction firemaking: How to use a bow drill,and here and how to make a hand drill to start fire. I recommend every woodsman starts a fire by friction at least once, if only to appreciate what a marvel of ease a lighter is.

The key to a fire is in following the steps. Woodsmen take pride in the "one match" fire, and they are successful in doing this because they always follow the steps. That is why it is called "building" a fire, because it is done a step at a time, like building a house. The tenderfoot is unsucessful because he tries to skip one of the steps.

This is stream-side debris from water flowing over the branches during a flood. These bits of bark, leaves, twigs, and grass have had all of the nutrients leached out of the material by the water, and now dry, will burn quite redily.

Cattail fluff goes up fast.

For a cheap fire starter, melt candle wax in water in an empty coffee can on your stove and mix it with lint from your dryer. After the wax melts, mold into a shape about half the size of a golf ball and set aside to cool. When you need to start a fire, the lint-lined wax can be easily ignited with a match.

Think of twigs when you look for kindling. This should be the diameter of a pencil or less. When you set the tinder ablaze, this had better be handy to immediately put on the flame and "kindle" the fire along. Be sure not to snuff the tiny flame out with the kindling. Lay the kindling over the flame like the log frame of a teepee.

This is all of the rest of the fuel, from wrist-size branches up to thigh-sized logs. Remember still, you are building the fire up gradually to the bigger logs. Also keep in mind the indian fire; just how much flame do you really need to make tea on a balmy evening?

By the time you have the main fuel going, your teepee has probably collapsed, and you should start alternating the branches two by two which form a "chimney" stack.

If you want to make a large branch into smaller pieces for burning, instead of using your own energy and possibly injuring yourself by breaking it, lay it in the center of the fire and burn it in two, then burn the pieces. This way the energy of the fire becomes a tool.

Finally, I will say about fire-making that it is a skill that needs to be practiced. I have made thousands of fires and have the confidence and ability to start a fire whenever I need to in the woods.