Stockholm Hike and Starting a Camping Fire

  Today we got to embrace nature and go for a Swedish hike with Patrick, our Green Trails guide. Sweden continues to stun me with how amazingly beautiful its nature is. At the beginning of our hike Patrick explained how much the Swedish people value nature. For much of the year Sweden is quite cold and dark, which is not very suitable for hiking activities. This is very similar to Minnesota, where many of us will maximize outdoor activities during the late spring up until the early fall. 

    Here is a little lake we stopped at on our hike. I didn't even edit the colors, this is just how insanely beautiful nature is in Sweden.

    Though the entirety of this hike was absolutely stunning and the most enjoyable nature activity we've done so far, there was one part, in particular, I was quite nervous about. At the beginning of the hike, Patrick had explained that we would be having a bonfire to heat up some food for lunch, but that we would be using a metal fire starter and some tree bark. He said that one of us would be starting the fire. Obviously, I volunteered as a joke, but then it wasn't a joke anymore and my dignity was suddenly on the line. 

    I was meant to use the metal fire starter (which sort of resembles a metal stick in one hand and a metal nail file in the other being rubbed together) to make sparks, set a small shaving of bark on fire, and then slowly build that fire up with bigger pieces of bark, sticks, and eventually logs. Now that I'm writing it out, I'm realizing this is a rather mundane task, but it was also one of the coolest things I've gotten to do -- I made fire out of metal! This is the kind of stuff they do on Survivor! It took a few tries, but I was patient and eventually created flames. This means that there are currently at least twelve videos circulating of me creating flames in twelve different angles, but it was also a really cool moment where I got to set myself up for potential embarrassment, having never created fire from nothing before, and still enjoyed the task. What can I say -- exposing myself to so many new things at once has turned me into quite an adventurous person (maybe that's a bit of a stretch, I literally rubbed two pieces of metal together).

    Nevertheless, if I'm ever stranded in the woods, now I know which plants are edible and I know how to make a fire (but only if I coincidentally have a fire starter which probably wouldn't happen since I don't own that).