i'm lucky..most if not all of the fires i light on canoe trips,two weeks out a couple time a year for twenty plus years, are made with some sort of pine with enought downed birch laying around to make another canoe if i wanted..so i can just heap up sticks in any old way and that pitch filled wood will blaze up in no time....so here is the question--where you live and camp how careful do you have to pick out fire wood??.in older how to camp books i see long lists of trees that don't grow this far north with notes on how good they are for firemaking.