rock
shaving the magnesium at home is ok I guess... but its real hard to light with a spark. An esbit tablet assures plenty of heat to get a fire started.

And as we ofen say - it depends on where you are.
In one of our Oregon rain forests you can forget about building a fire. Out in Eastern Oregon its dry desert and you have to very careful because its so flamable.

Well anyway hers some constructive input. You start with very small dry wood - think match sticks. You can probably light a couple of match sticks on fire with one match. The principle being that the flame and heat from any given piece of wood burning, is enough to ignite some more wood about the same size. If you put all of the fuel on at once it won't start burning. You must start with a tiny fire and make it slowly grow by placing the right size of dry wood in the rizing flames from underneath. The fire will grow upwards and pull air up through the wood above. As this wood get going, lay a few more pieces over the flames, cross wise, and then continue to add wood changing directions so the wood stacks up with a lot of air in it, instead of all being lined up like spagheti in a package. Only add larger wood when you get a good little fire going and the fuel in it is atleast half lit on fire. The principle being that cold wood cannot burn. It must first be warmed by the heat of fire underneath it.

I find a teepee fire to be the easiest. Put some tinder on top of a piece of bark and put a few small sticks around it like a teepee and light the tinder. Then feed in small sticks through a opening in your teepee and get a fire going inside it. Later just angle more wood and larger wood over it, but always keep the sticks about as far apart as the are in diameter to assure good air and heat flow around them.

In closing, I have a snowcreek gigatorch that goes on a butane bottle and should assure a fire most anyplace except an oregon rain forest...

Oh ok - collect thin dry pieces of dead stick from close under trees. If you have a chain saw and an axe you can burn heart wood from a dead tree...

There may be an "eastern" and a "western" attitude but theres also a PNW entry. We have billions and billions of pine trees. We burn them to heat our homes - atleast out here in the country we do.
Jim