Why We Need Stoves
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take the ship. – Herman Melville, from ‘Moby Dick’ (A man who never knew the joys of a backpacking stove.)
Why do you need a stove? Good question. You pay your taxes, you’re respectful of your parents and nice to children and small animals.
You don’t shoplift, even occasionally, and come to a full stop at every sign that instructs you to. You’ll drive all the way to the store and back at one mile an hour under the speed limit, just to be sure you’re obeying the law, and politely ignore each and every one of those behind you (backed up for two or three miles) who are all honking and waving at you, reminding you with that single pumping digit that you ought to at least speed up one mile an hour.
Now why, when you finally cut loose from town, drive out where no one knows you, where you’re out of sight of your boss, away from telephones and keyboards and bills, can’t you just sit down and build a fire and cook something on a stick the way your ancestors did in the old country?
True, in some places this just isn’t allowed. But in some places you can do it, though there are reasons why you might not.
If you’re in a national park, ya gotta watch it. They get kind of touchy about some things, and they carry guns. Take Zion National Park: “Fires are not allowed in the backcountry. Carry a backpacking stove, or plan simple no-cook meals.” That’s what they say, and since they went to the trouble of publishing it, I’m sure they mean it.
Or Death Valley National Park: “Campfires are prohibited, except in fire pits in developed campgrounds. Gathering wood is unlawful and burning of wood is not allowed in the backcountry. Use of a low impact backpacking stove is encouraged.”
Or North Cascades National Park: “Use dead and down wood only... On the coast, build your fire below the high tide line. Consider using a large wok, gold pan or other metal container to avoid making scars on the ground... A gasoline stove is essential. You may not cut down live trees.”
They mean well, they really do. The tone is pretty clear, but either someone there is confused, or they have some fairly strange regulations. There is no coastline in this park. The nearest ocean of any repute at all is 50 miles to the west. They expect you to carry either a wok or a pan made of gold. They can’t mean a pan to pan gold with, since national parks won’t let you make off with things you find lying around, especially nuggets of gold. (Try it and see what happens.)
They allow that you might be making fires, and encourage you to use only dead wood, and protect the soil, and then say that a gasoline stove is essential, which is pretty darn confusing, don’t you think? Are they saying that you should use a stove instead of open fires or are they just dumb, and haven’t they heard of backpacking stoves that use fuels other than gasoline?
Who, government employees?
Hmmm. Let’s push a little deeper then.
Generally, the rule in national parks and national forests seems to be that “Fires are prohibited above 3,500 feet elevation.” But no governmental agency wants to let an opportunity pass without enacting regulations, so states have some rules too, as this notice in New York attests: “At all times, only emergency fires are permitted above 4000 feet in the Adirondacks and 3500 feet in the Catskills.”
The bureaucrats at Olympic National Park in Washington State manage to sound a little more like actual humans than some others by explaining why they might have certain rules: “You are encouraged to use a stove in the wilderness. This minimizes the impact on soils and vegetation, and reduces the risk of an escaped campfire. At higher elevations, and in heavily-used camp areas at lower elevations, firewood is scarce... Wood that naturally decomposes is no longer present to contribute organic matter to the soil... Gather only dead and down firewood and be aware of your impact on living vegetation and soils. Choose smaller pieces of wood.”
OK, we’ve already agreed that we’re law-abiding and generally reluctant to be handcuffed and dragged around by ornery, rulebook-wielding rangers. (Except for that really nice blond one in Olympic National Park that I ran into two summers in a row – pleasant, pretty, efficient, neat as a pin, and right on top of her game without being confrontational. Damn. Should she wish to drag me around anytime, by any body part of her choosing, I will consider it great good luck and shall not resist in the least.)
As important as following the rules can be, there are even better reasons for using a backpacking stove instead of an open fire. One of them is convenience. Stoves are pretty much self-contained, and unless you make your own (which we’ll get to later on), they come completely assembled. Backpacking stoves are portable.
Duh. (We’ve used this word before. You know what it means.)
Point two: Backpacking stoves are darn quick to use compared to open fires. Just set up a stove, fuel it, light it, and let it rip. Afterwards, fold it up and get back to hiking. No hunting for wood that isn’t wet. No hunting for wood and bringing back damp stuff. No throwing that away and then hunting for wood that not only isn’t wet but isn’t damp through and through. No throwing that away (again) and hunting for wood that not only is bone dry, and weaker than you are, but isn’t rotted out and useless. No smoke blowing in your face. The joy of simply sitting down at the end of a long morning or a long afternoon and firing up the stove without fighting with it, without really having to think about it should never, ever be underrated.
Point three: Stoves are dependable. You know way up front what kind of fuel they need, how it’s going to burn, and that it comes in remarkably well-labeled containers. You know that when you light the stove it will just work, and work exactly the same way it did last time. You can turn the heat up, turn it down, or turn it off. Period. No huffing. No puffing. No trying over and over again to get it lit, or pouring water and dirt on it to put it out.
Point four: Stoves are safer. By using a stove you can avoid an open fire that might make a break for it and leave you standing there saying “Oh, poop. I did a really, really bad thing just now.” Which you might say as your favorite national park burns down around you. Fire is just itching to run free. This will not happen with a stove, mostly.
Point five: Stoves don’t pop and spark and shoot sticks out all over the place. Stove fuel is either tightly contained in a can (for gases), or in a bottle (for liquids) or you can carry it in a bag of your choosing (for solids).
Unless you really screw up, stove fuel is about as safe as beer, though less refreshing. Remember that point. Beer isn’t totally safe by any means but then again you don’t need a hazmat suit, six years of training and a framed certificate in order to use it. You just have to be old enough to know right from wrong and how to open the can. Stove fuel is about the same. If you’re an adult you should have no problems. (If you’re an adult and can act like one.)
Point six: Stoves are easier to light than open fires, and this makes them safer. Here’s how to do it: (1) turn on stove, (2) light it. Done.
And some stoves, like the ones you can make yourself don’t even have moving parts. Since stoves are easier to use than open fires, they’re also quicker, which just adds to safety. Tired? Hungry? Eyes crossed with fatigue? Getting kind of clumsy? Daylight fading?
Here’s Choice A: Determine your elevation. If below 3500 feet, then get up, crawl around in the bushes hunting for something to burn so you can eat and go to bed and by god you’re tired, cold and hungry. Then asphyxiate yourself over a smoky fire and spend half an hour making sure the fire is out when you’re done. If above 3500 feet, skip supper, or...
Choice B: Light the stove, cook and eat.
Which one you gonna pick?
Point seven: And something you might not think of at first: stoves are hotter than open fires, because they burn higher energy fuel, and their flames are more focused. This means that a stove will heat quicker and the flames will stay in one small place where you can keep an eye on them. Just act grown up and remember to keep your fingers, eyebrows and pants away from the stove and you will be totally all right. I guarantee it. (Note: If your name is Darlene – or Bob – then this might not apply to you.)
You’ve reached the point now where you’ve considered the law, convenience, and safety in your deliberations about whether or not to use a backpacking stove. If you aren’t convinced yet, then there is still another card in the deck. Slap it down, turn it over and read this: conserving resources.
Check back on what the folks at Olympic National Park said. “Wood that naturally decomposes is no longer present to contribute organic matter to the soil.”
OK, even they get confused when trying to put things in writing. They mean well, they really do, but that one just didn’t come out right. What they really meant is the opposite of what they said here, which is “Wood that is burned as fuel is no longer present to contribute organic matter to the soil.” Because it went up in smoke.
Whether you have a cozy little fire that sneaks off and gets intimately acquainted with the old growth forest you’re camped in, or you just manage to safely and completely burn a small quantity of wood to cook your evening grits, you’re taking something away from the forest.
In the case of a massive forest fire you’re taking away all of it at once, and leaving nothing, though if you survive you may become a temporary celebrity. If you’re taking away a few slowly-decomposing bits and pieces, a twig here and there, a couple of pine cones, things which would have been homes for a few ants, termites, beetles and fungi (or at best might have been mouse toys), it ain’t a whole lot, but it adds up over time. Think of hundreds of backpackers a year building thousands of fires a year, year after year. Think of those bored mice, and all because of you.
Take a few minutes sometime, and if you’re near a clean, clear stream, go looking for caddis fly larvae. Caddis flies are harmless little critters that live most of their lives underwater, in little mobile homes that they make for themselves out of bits and pieces of whatever plant material comes to hand down there (and sometimes sand grains, too). Tiny freshwater trailer trash, but tidy in their own way.
Look at the bottom of the stream, and watch for things that look a little like slim cigarette butts. The ones that have legs and move around are caddis fly larvae. The ones that don’t move are probably cigarette butts. Or maybe turtle poops. You can leave those alone.
The live ones (the caddis fly larvae) need all those little bits of stuff to make those tiny mobile homes that they live in. Those small houses are cramped but they work. They keep these little guys from being eaten. “Just trailer trash,” you might think to yourself but they’re pretty clean, don’t stay up late, don’t ride loud motorcycles, and hardly ever play rock music past midnight, get into drunken brawls or urinate on the hood of your car.
If you insist on tearing up the landscape for your own needs (like cooking lunch) when you could be carrying a perfectly good small backpacking stove that you made yourself for free out of recycled materials, then you should just be ashamed. Very ashamed.
To deprive these innocent little bugs of happiness is churlish and rude. No dictator, no matter how evil, would stoop so low, and there you are, Mr./Ms. Eco Friendly, ripping up the landscape just so you can heat food and shove it into your face. If my mother was still alive I’d send her right over to your place so she could whack you with a stick. She isn’t around anymore, so you’ll have to ask your own mother to do it for her.
Oh, the humanity!
On the other hand, though, most backpacking stoves use fossil fuels, which some people object to. I’ve always thought this argument was at least a little dumb. Say you drive (or take a plane, train, bus, cab or scooter) out to the trailhead, and use up anywhere from three to 200 gallons of fuel doing it, then hike for two or three weeks and use half a pint of white gas. Now, if you can, tell me where the problem is. On which end of this story does it occur? And really, how many fossils use fuel anyway?
If you are one of those people who sees a problem, then there are stoves that avoid this. But no matter how you slice it, backpacking stoves are very efficient, and there are ways to increase the efficiency of stoves so much that they use hardly any fuel at all, no matter what they burn.
Don’t forget the last lesson from the last chapter. Any stunted runt can use an open fire, burn lots of wood, and eventually manage to cook something. It takes a modern human with a completely up-to-date brain and a highly developed social consciousness to use a backpacking stove. What you are free to tell any runts you meet is that backpacking stoves can actually be a whole lot easier to use, especially for us modern types with high school diplomas, or even college degrees.
Usually a bachelor’s degree indicates a person who can use a screwdriver without fear of losing fingers, if working cautiously. A master’s degree very often guarantees that we can almost always figure out which end of the fork to stick into the food, and holders of Ph.D.s quite often retain the ability to bathe and dress themselves.
Nearly 100% of those in ALL these groups can learn to use backpacking stoves, especially the simpler, more foolproof ones that have no moving parts. If necessary, you can have a little sticker on the stove’s bottom that says “Other end up.” And one on top that says “Fuel goes here.” Some might need a brief instruction manual that shows how to light a match or flick a cigarette lighter.
And where to stick it. And so on. No, really. Just six or seven easy lessons, maybe a few days in the hospital burn unit for the slow learners, and we’re set. Even for those with Ph.D.s.
Then you get to go out and use some CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY, prove unequivocally that you are superior to each and every knuckle-dragger who insists on using those old-fashioned, gross open fires that ACTUALLY SIT RIGHT DOWN THERE IN THE DIRT. That’s reason enough right there.
Rise above the dirt, my friend. Rise above it. Because you can.
Exercises
- Translate Moby Dick into Esperanto and recite it from memory while roasting weenies over an open fire.
- No, seriously.
- Cook and eat a lizard on a stick.
- Extra credit: Get a job with the National Park Service and write better copy for them.