Toasty fingers.

I lit my hand on fire. Yes, that is right. I lit my hand on fire. The front, the back, the fingers, the thumb. The whole enchilada, basically.

In the woods, cooking is a true occupational hazard. Imagine coming back from a day of hiking 5 to 10 miles, carrying 40-50 lbs on your back, and working all the while with heavy tools doing labor intensive tasks, and then coming "home" (read: mosquito laden grassy roadbed) from work to cook your own dinner. For all of you that have office jobs and whine about cooking after work, feast your eyes on that.

Well anyway, enough with the dramatic imagery. This past week, I sat down to make my dinner in my usual managed but somewhat desperately hungry state. I was using an MSR whisperlite, a backpacking stove that burns white gas and doesn't generally "simmer." So I was going to get fancy and "burp" the stove (meaning take the pressure out of the gas bottle) to reduce the boil to a simmer.

I explicitly remember turning the gas connection off so that I could remove any danger of an open flame. And then went to unscrew the top of the MSR Sigg holding the white gas. At the moment that the pressure was released from the bottle a ball of fire shot from the stove, to the pump on top of the bottle and overtook my entire hand. Weirdly enough I did not feel a thing. I remember seeing my hand as though it didn't even belong to my body. I guess instinctually I threw my hand on the ground batting and batting the top of it and then the palm against the dirt until it was put out. When the fire was out, I looked at my hand and I felt distinctly as though a miracle had just occurred because nothing was burned and nothing hurt. Nonetheless my hand was red and shaking so I ran it under water for a long time. The next day it felt like a sunburn. And today (two days later) it looks and feels like nothing ever happened to it.

As far as the rogue stove, I have a few thoughts on the subject. I think that though I turned the gas off to the stove, that the flame was still on (sometimes it's hard to see the flame on the MSRs). And I think that when I released the pressure from the bottle, it sprayed white gas on my hands which the flame somehow traveled to. I have no idea why my hand was spared despite being 100% on fire. Just luck and good instincts, I guess.

Love,

Zoe