Yeah, a log that naturally decays or is burned emits the same amount of carbon.
The carbon footprint of a canister of gas is obviously much greater than a log, even if the emission is less.

The Beaver

Long live the fire!!!!!

In my 50 plus years of camping, I can only recall 2 times that we went into the park with a stove and that was because of a fire ban. I hated it.
On both of those trips after we had extended rainy days, we went back to cooking over the fire.
We gather all of our wood from along the shoreline on the way to camp.
Cooking over beaver wood is quick, easy and clean. I can boil water as quick as most stoves and fish just ain't fish unless it is cooked over a fire.
As stated earlier, cooking over a wood fire is becoming a lost art. We come into so many campsites and wonder ????? what the heck were they thinking when they wrecked this perfectly good fireplace????
It appears that fewer and fewer fireplaces in the Q are setup with cooking in mind.
Anyway, I learned from my Grandfather who started going to the B & Q in 1915. He taught us grandkids how to build and tend a fire for different purposes. It is something that we all take a lot of pride in and have passed that on to our kids as well. Kind of a little competition to see who can have the nicest fire.
Kind of a minimalist approach, but, why bring another "modern" contraption to the wilderness???  ( Just kidding, kind of. )
GeneM

I can't imagine camping and cooking without a fire.  I lived in GA for some time and I couldn't imagine camping in the summer. We always go to MN canoe country late season, and when there isn't a fire ban.  Half the fun is keeping warm by the fire and cooking on the fire grate.  The only time we use the stove is heating up soup to warm up at lunch time.

starwatcher

Well, I may have solved my problem, anyways. I don't like carrying stoves or fuel, but stoves are pretty darn nice for "quick" stuff, like coffee in the morning or boiling a few cups of water for the freeze-dried stuff during a lunch stop.

I don't know how this works yet, but the idea has some potential. Apparently, you just load it with short, pencil-size dry twigs, and let it burn from the top down. The holes in the bottom suck air up through the middle, allowing for a hot and efficient primary burn. The angled holes along the top rim are supposed to help burn up the excess gases (and thus reduce soot, and allow for a hotter and even more efficient burn).

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A handful of smaller twigs can be collected anywhere enroute, and stored in the pack until used, staying dry and ready. No extra emissions or any other side effect of fossil fuels, and it's made from a recycled can and some extra tent stakes. When it breaks, I can still recycle the can, and simply make a new one.

I don't know how well i works yet, but perhaps I'll try it out in the next week or two. It's not as pretty as the one pictured in the link, but then, neither is anything else that comes out of my garage. I guess we'll see...

DentonDoc wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2009 at 4:40am:


That's a good point. Same goes for the little alcohol stove I made tonight out of some empty PBR's. I guess one could argue that it's not a "can" in the sense that it's useless for carrying anything, and is more of an essential piece of reusable equipment?

The other potential issue is during fire bans... I suppose a wood-burning stove wouldn't exactly meet the "acceptable" criteria?

All of that said, I'm actually impressed with the little PBR can stove I made. It's a simpler design than the actual "penny stove," and it burned for 10 minutes on approx. 1/4 oz. of Heet for fuel.