I've Had a Dream

And it's the recurring kind.

I've had it twice in recent memory and it played out exactly the same way both times.

It's about a firesteel.

(Yeah, maybe I've got a bit of a problem.) :)

Here's the scenario:

I've got one of those monstrous non-Light My Fire firesteels and it's cold and snowy. My hands are frozen. I need fire quickly to stave off hypothermia. I scrape and scrape and scrape some more and can't get a spark. I scrape the firesteel so much that I wear through the firesteel and into a filler material in the center. It looks like Rice Krispies of all things.

I keep scraping around the rod and just can't get a spark. I get long curls of material but nothing that's going to set my tinder alight.

Then the material in the center falls out onto the ground.

Then I wake up as perplexed as ever...


What makes this dream especially strange is the fact that I have had exactly one firesteel from the many I've purchased at Going Gear or Firesteel.com that has given me a problem. It's one of the 1/2" diameter models and it sparked well for the first 20 strikes or so and now I seem to be in a vein of very soft material that only comes off in curls. Turning the rod and striking it again gives me sparks until I get through that outer "layer" of sparking material. I haven't used it extensively enough to know how far in the layer of softer stuff goes but I've had a few attempts at firestarting with that particular rod fail and I've had to resort to other means. One was only a few days ago so maybe that prompted the dream again.

I have a 1/2" X 6" rod from the same source that I used all summer to light my charcoal grill so I simply cannot lump all non-LMF firesteels into the same category. I think this one rod may be a dud but I've been happy with the rest.

I'm sure having gear-related dreams is a sign of something. I just don't have the foggiest idea what it might signify.

Thanks for reading,


B