Let's keep the woods looking beautiful.

We have a love of the outdoors, we enjoy seeing it's natural beauty right?

Well to go for a walk and see it is great but if like me that brings a desire to spend extended periods of time outdoors you may study some bushcraft skills, perhaps you know a bit as a former scout etc.

So we may come to the woods for a long camp to see it's beauty, we'll have a camp fire and may even have a few cans of beer (most will agree).
This leaves a noticeable amount of destruction though, no matter how careful we are, we WILL leave a trace.

Now your probably thinking what about the ''leave NO trace rule'' or some I've heard say ''Take only pictures, leave only footprints''.
Whichever way you phrase it it means leave nothing behind. Well anybody who has studied a bit of tracking knows this should be taken with a pinch of salt. We can't leave NO trace but we can tidy up and give a little back to the nature we enjoy so much.

So do we all know how to correctly clear up.
We can all take the trash home with us. I'm referring to the camp fire.

So we have our fire roaring to cook on and keep us warm, but how do we ''leave no trace''. 

How on earth do we clear it up?

It actually all starts before we attempt to put it out.

Here are the last few embers and wood burning through to leave as little as possible to clean up. 

I have arranged my fire just before I took down my tarp and packed my gear away so that it would smoulder away to leave less to clear.
Depending on what state the fire is in will obviously determine how long the process is, normally for me after breakfast and a cuppa I will leave it to look like the above.

So I move all the large chunks closer to the middle of the heat and then start to pack up.
once I got back to it my fire would look a bit like this:

You can see from the smoke this is still smouldering away and the left over coals are still burning away at this point. 

Here you can see I'm ready to put out the fire, the smoke has stopped now but be careful the ground is still hot.

So it's obvious I'm going to pour water over the fire. I actually used three times the amount you see above so that's three buckets full.

Now step by step. 

Hot ash filled steam rises from the first douse. Be Careful.

Be careful when pouring your first douse over. What seems like a fire that has no life to it surprisingly fights back when it is hit by some water. The steam that rises from the ashes is hot and a step back might be necessary.

The steam will calm down eventually

Eventually three buckets later it is out and steam is not appearing at all. 

So our fire is out and the heat is gone. Although we are still left with a damp pile of ash.

Only by touch can we truly tell if it is out properly. 

Now scoop up all the ashes and scatter them into the woods around you, Nature will clear the scattered ashes as plant life love all the ashes anyway. 

Once all that is done, we can use a pointed stick (I use the stick I would have likely already used for my pot hangers) and poke some holes into the ground as deep as you can, I then douse the area again with more water. It's better to be 100% sure as the fire can smoulder underground.

Poking a sharp stick as deep as you can will help heat escape that's trapped underground

If it is left to smoulder underground it may re-appear later. The chances of this happening also varies depending on the type of ground you have your fire. You may have heard not to start a fire on peat grounds. 

Now the fire is safe and the mass of it is cleared. Nature will do the rest but for cosmetic reasons I will try to cover it with the natural litter around. scattering the leaves with a makeshift broom or just your stick will help it look that little bit more untouched. 

When we start our fire, we clear the ground anyway. So why not clear the area into a pile to the side so we are left with material to cover the area back with.

You'll be amazed by the results once it is done this way. 

It takes a bit of time but it's what we give back to nature after it has given to us. 

A fair trade between us and the natural world and it leaves the area looking nice for the next person or even ourselves. 

After all we tend to visit these places for their beauty, so as the title of this post... Let's keep the woods looking beautiful. 

Before the clear up.

After the clean up, A big improvement, Nature will do the rest for me.