First I will apologize for posting a wall of text. OK.

So far it is about tinder.
There were quite a few hints. I will add dead wasp nests too.

Canoedogs has a good point. Walking in the wet gets you soaked.
Even if it has stopped raining the brush usually holds a drop of water at each branch tip and at the tip of each leaf. Dew or fog can be as bad for this as rain is.
Walk through brush up to your waist and you get soaked from the waist down. It just gets worse as the brush gets taller.

I am going to go a little off the original topic here.

I would like to mention the next step to the fire which is kindling.
The shredded paper birch shines here. Another good source is the twigs off the lower branches of spruce trees, sometimes the resin out of the blisters on the balsam fir.
These are all full of resins and oils. They burn even if it is wet out.
The lower branches of spruce usually stay dry even in the worst rain. You want the little dead twigs from the size of match sticks up to the size of a pencil.

Once you are at that point old pine cones are full of resin too and burn hot for a long time once they kindle.

The twigs and stuff are still just the start of the fire.
In a lot of places it is the next size up that is the real problem.
Wood of any decent size laying on the ground is likely to be rotten, soggy punky wood. Standing wood is likely still alive and far to green to burn. To burn wet or green wood takes a very good fire already going.

To get decent dry wood for the fire you might need to look for dead branches, standing dead wood or wood that is leaning on something after it fell.

Now here is something else for fire wood.
If you are near where beavers have been working they cut trees down and they flood low areas. They really like poplar and will fall trees over a foot in diameter.
Usually a tree that large stays off the ground in a lot of places. The beavers eat all the bark off it they can reach, so the wood dries instead of going dozy and rotten wet.

Beaver also cut all the branches about the size of your wrist or smaller and drag them to make their lodges, their dams and to pile them under water to eat later, after the pond surface freezes. They seem to cut them into lengths between 4 and 6 feet.
Some shorter, some longer.
The dams and lodges are often peeled wood with mud plastered over them.

When the beaver log out a meadow and move on the mud washes off the lodges and dams. Then the dams quit holding water so these smaller branches become exposed and since they are piled they are usually dry.
Poplar might not be as good as ash, maple or oak as firewood but it still burns nice and does not throw a lot of sparks.

In the areas the beaver flooded you often find standing trees that were killed by being flooded. Often these are black ash, maple, spruce and cedar. The beaver don't seem to like the taste of these as well as they like poplar and alder.
They are usually dry too. Once again because the dams quit holding water most trees like this are easy to walk to in old beaver meadows. Sometimes they are easy to push over because the roots rotted after they were dead.


If you are in a maple woods you sometimes find small dead maples still standing under the larger maples on hillsides. Often the roots are rotted on these and they push over easy. They are small enough to break into shorter pieces and are normally dry.

A warning
Stay away from standing dead birch trees.
Birch bark is waterproof and the trees will rot to a soggy mush inside it. If you touch one of these rotten dead birch the bark can split and the whole thing collapses at once. You could be buried under a ton of rotten and soggy birch punk.

OK, done posting this wall of text.