You live in THE WINDY CITY and your not aware of Nature's pruning service? Everybody wants to 'get away from it all' but leave a few more board feet of denuded forest monday morning in thanks. Think small fire sit close versus bonfire dance like nekkid druid in the moonlight. You can readilly gather wood from the ground and break dead and dry branches from trees without harm. You don't need an Alaskan Log Splitter, Viking broadaxe or a houstrained pet beaver to do that either. Any decent fixed blade knife such as discussed in Doug's section on sharps will give you more options than decent people deserve. Chances are you'll wind up opening up a can of beans because your P 38 got lost, cutting paracord for that broken shoelace and gripping it tightly at 3 A.M. when a field mouse runs across your camp and you have visions of Bart the Bear sniffing your toes. Axes, parangs and kukris wil just make you walk with a list to port and throw your compass off 5 degrees, which in the East just about cancels each other out. <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />