The FIREBED!

This article, by Ron Hood, is available
in the Backwoodsman Magazine,
November/December issue. When you buy the magazine you will also
get Karen Hood's exceptionally clear illustrations of this life
saving technique. 

"I Burned my Buns!"
"By: Ron Hood"
"Illustrated by: Karen Hood "
"

" I burned my Buns!" 

"Huh??" I mumbled intelligently as
I tried to clear my sleep clouded mind.

"Yeah&#133;" he said "Look here,
I've got plastic melted on my pants and I burned my butt"


"You didn't use enough dirt" I said
as I noticed that it was darned cold out there. "Out there"
was the air two feet from my face and all around the rock overhang
I was calling home. "


I looked at my survival student with the most
severe look I could muster under the conditions (wrapped in canvas
and covered with a foot thick layer of pine needles) and asked
him if he had followed the Tooferate rule. "Uhhh, I forgot
it" he said. He left but I knew that he would learn the rule
before the next night began. It's important when you want to use
a fire bed."


What's the Tooferate rule? What's a firebed?
Well&#133;&#133;.The fire bed is a basic survival technique used
by many cultures during periods of cold weather when adequate
insulation isn't readily available. It remains one of the best
ways to stay warm in the coldest weather. It is essentially nothing
more than an area of ground that has been heated by a fire. How
you heat that area is the topic of this little bundle of words.
"


Building the Firebed"


Probably the easiest way to make a fire bed
is to build a long fire on a flat piece of ground, burn it as
a cooking/ heating fire for a couple of hours and then just kick
the coals into a hole nearby. While the coals are getting used
to their new home, you take dirt from the surrounding area and
cover the old fire site with about four inches of dirt. When the
area is covered (and hopefully flat), you lay down a piece of
canvas or a mat and plop down for a snooze on the soon to be warm
dirt pile. "


While this method is expedient it has a certain
lack of class. It is also difficult to control the intensity and
duration of the heat being released into the pile of dirt you
call a bed. Since you are laying on a pile of dirt, gravity and
your inevitable night movements will tend to metamorphose your
butt into a digging engine which will soon enough find itself
adjacent to some very warm ground. Time to get up! I prefer the
following technique and have used it hundreds of times during
field trips with my survival students. "


Find a suitable site, one free of overhanging
fuel, nearby flammable clutter, wet ground and major root systems.
Dig a hole. Build a fire in the hole. Burn the fire for a certain
amount of time. Cover the fire pit with the right amount of dirt.
Cover the dirt with debris like pine needles, leaves etc. Cover
the debris with canvas, plastic (tarp, trashbags etc.), leather
or just your tired body and snooze. Turn over whenever the top
gets too cold or the bottom gets too warm. Now the details."


The Tooferate Rule"


Actually the Tooferate rule is just numbers,
Two - Four - Eight. They stand for the following essential bits
of information. "


Your fire burns for TWO hours. 

You put FOUR inches of dirt on top of the fire
at the end of the burn period. 

You originally dug the hole EIGHT inches deep.


That's it folks.

"Whoa there Fella! How LONG is that hole?
How WIDE is that hole?" 

It doesn't really matter. You can treat the
hole digging like wood chopping, it warms you when you dig it,
it warms you when you burn it and it warms you when you sleep
on it. I don't like to get too warm digging, or gathering wood.
The bigger the hole, the more wood you need. My beds tend to come
out at about one foot wide, six feet long and eight inches deep.
The fire will heat the earth out from the edge of the pit to a
distance of about 18 inches from either side. That should accommodate
even the most profound body or restless sleeper."


Once the hole is ready, line the inside with
fist sized stones. These stones aren't there so much for holding
heat as they are for allowing air to get to the fire for a hotter
burn. Don't tile the bottom. Place them about one inch apart.
The tops of all of the stones should be at about the same height
inside the hole. CAREFUL, DO NOT USE STREAM STONES! Avoid any
stone that may explode when heated. Stones taken from a stream
bed may be soaked with water. When the water heats up and becomes
steam you could be laying on blasting stones. These can cause
injury or scatter your fire to nearby flammable material. Stones
taken from the surface of the ground are probably OK even if the
outside is wet."


Once the hole has been lined with stones, start
your fire. Burn the fire hot and spread the coals out evenly across
the bottom of the pit. It is important that the coals be spread
as the fire burns or you will have HOT spots! The fire should
burn long not high. You aren't trying to signal Mars so the flames
should be a foot or so high. Burn with flames for about an hour
an a half then let the fire die down. Keep smashing the coals
with a walking stick or fire prod to make certain that the pit
is covered evenly. If the fire burns for more than two hours,
no problem. There's no advantage but no problem either. After
two hours or so has passed, cover the coals with dirt. You DO
NOT need to remove the coals. Once the pit is covered there is
almost no visible sign that you had a fire there. "


If it's dark out, I often build a small fire
pit off to one side, a safe distance away and start a fire to
illuminate the area for the completion of the construction process.
Once the dirt is in place, stamp the ground down. This compresses
the earth and helps you to find spots where there isn't enough
dirt covering the coals. A little hint. To dimension your firebed,
measure your hand span, tip of thumb to tip of little finger.
That is about the depth of the hole you dig. To check the depth
of the dirt, measure the length of your index finger. I push my
index finger into the dirt over the coals. If I start to get burned,
the dirt is too thin and I add more dirt. After compressing the
dirt and checking the depth, check the area for loose coals that
may ignite the material you will be using as a cushion."


Now you wait. If heat comes out of the ground
after 30 minutes....... you need more dirt. If the heat starts
out after about 1 hour ......... You'll be just about right. After
thirty minutes you can cover the bed with your cushion material.
I prefer dead pine needles because they smell great as they soak
up the moisture being kicked loose from the soil. Sometimes, if
I've been out for a few weeks, I add sage leaves to the padding.
This helps to cover the sublime odor my body exudes after long
term survival living. Remember too, the ground may give up a lot
of moisture. If there is moisture in the soil you need to either
cover the bed with a waterproof covering or let the moisture bake
out. If you don't you may have a bad case of "Dish Pan Body."
"


The bed will release it's heat slowly over
many hours. If you plan to camp in the same spot the next night
you can just dig up the pit, refire the coals for an hour or so,
cover up and snooze again. Without refiring, the bed MAY last
two nights but don't count on a comfortable second night. "


Just a thought. Sometimes I'll wrap meat (marmot,
quail etc.) in leaves and canvas and bury it in the dirt at the
foot of the bed. When I get up I have a hot cooked meal ready
to go. If you try this trick remember to put the food at the FOOT
of your bed. The odor may attract some toothy critter and it's
much better to have it rooting around your feet than your head!
"


Fine Tuning the Bed"


When you build your firebed, try to build it
in an area away from rocks that you may scar with the flames and
smoke. Naturally you want to do as little damage as possible with
your experimentation. If you need to build the bed for a real
survival situation, things change."


In a survival situation, build the bed under
an overhanging rock, the rock above your head will absorb heat
as well as the ground below. This will result in your sleeping
between two heat sources. It's a little like a low grade oven.
I've used firebeds in 10f temperatures with only a piece of canvas
as a cover. The sleeping area hovers around 75f!"


A few pointers about overhead rocks and the
firebed. The heat from the firebed can cause the rock to fracture.
This is not good for survival! Check the overhead rock to be certain
that it is not just a projection of stone, like a finger, that
might drop off onto you. Do not use sedimentary rock with inclusions,
like stones, stuck inside."


Sandstone is an example of this. Heat may cause
the sandstone to fracture and drop its stones like eggs of death,
onto your head. Large leaning boulders, overhangs and boulder
piles usually offer the best choices."


Once the bed is constructed and the dirt compressed,
you can add a barrier to the edges of the bed to keep your insulation
from wandering all over the ground. I like to roll a log up to
each side of the bed. Large stones will work as well. The barriers
should make the sleeping area look a little like a stone or log
coffin. Fill the coffin with pine needles or leaves to make your
bed. Wriggle down into the insulation and cover up with a piece
of canvas or plastic&#133;Snooze time!"


If you are in a hurry or don't have any insulation
available, winter desert survival comes to mind, just your canvas
or plastic and sleep on the ground. Before you do &#133; lay on
the bed the way you plan to sleep. Mark where the small of your
back encounters the ground. Spread your hand wide and draw two
parallel lines with your thumb and little finger, across the width
of the bed where the small of your back will be. The lines will
be roughly the same width as the small of your back. Dig small
depressions (about &#189; inch deep) above and below these lines
for your butt and back. When you lay down those cups will hold
you centered on the bed and the raised area in the center will
offer support for the small of your back. They make sleeping on
the ground tolerable if not comfortable.

If you want to learn more about this technique
and a lot more about shelter selection and construction in general,
get a copy of the Hoods Woods Woodsmaster Volume 2 "Principles
of Outdoor Survival Shelter" video. The video instructions
cover the firebed and lots of other interesting and useful skills
including time telling with your fist, distance with your thumb,
height with a stick, using trash for survival and other interesting
skills. The high quality 60 minute VHS tape only costs $19.95.

Good Luck!"

