Good idea gone bad, and just good ideas

"Okay first we need to see if my plan will work," I said pulling my compass off my wrist and pulling out the flint and steel, I found a piece of bamboo growing as far away from the others as possible which was maybe two metres from any other.

The bamboo was maybe a metre and a half tall and didn't have a lot of leaves but before trying anything I pulled all the leaves and cleared the area of any debris as to not cause fire to spread. At the bottom, I put a good amount of dried twigs and dead leaves then struck the flint and steel at it, after a few good hits it lit up. The bamboo caught fire much quicker than I expected and soon the fire managed to climb up the bamboo. Because of this, we had to move back so as not to get burned, before a loud pop similar to when you put a small bottle into a fire rang out, causing us to back up more and sending several birds to scatter. The bamboo began falling towards the rest of the grove, and not wanting to lose the best thing we could have found, I raced towards it. Luckily I didn't get burned as my hands didn't touch it for long, I basically managed to get to the other side and push it through the air into the river.

"Shit! That was a bad idea," I exhaled holding my chest in an attempt to keep my heart from popping out.

Alison looked a little pale too, "Yeah, please don't do that again!"

The bamboo however began floating down the river and I made sure to follow it. We followed all the way down to the fall where it managed to go over, slightly sticking into the ground before falling and floating in the pool below. I didn't want to take my eyes off of it so instead, I stayed at the top of the fall watching and waiting for it to make its way over to the mouth of the stream, but it didn't really move that way instead just bobbed in the water.

"Oh, that's a good outcome. Come on lets climb down and then I can go get something to cut a bunch more down," I suggested.

We managed to get down and upon getting to camp I quickly found something useful to cut down the bamboo. I looked through the pack again just to see if maybe there was something better than an axe, I knew how strong bamboo was which was why I'd thought burning it might have been a good way to pull it down. I was hoping that maybe one of the multi-tools that had been put in the pack might happen to have a mini saw or something on it, Lucky me there was something better, much better. In one of the pockets, I'd missed were four chain saws, two were the cheap wire saws that basically looked like platted wire connected to keyrings but the other two were much stronger looking it was basically a chainsaw chain connected to orange cords for handles.

I grabbed one before looking up to see where Alice was, to my surprise she'd collected a bundle of sticks and one of the axes.

"What are you doing?" I questioned, scratching my head.

"Well, do you know what is quicker than one person cutting down bamboo? Two people cutting down bamboo. I thought we could hammer these into the ground before the stream gets to the sand, that way even if the bamboo does manage to find its way into the stream it can't get onto the beach and won't end up in the sea," Alice explained looking extremely proud of herself.

I laughed, "It doesn't matter what anyone says about you Alison, you've got looks and brains."

I quickly realised what I'd said and began blushing, Alison looked proud but then her face contorted into confusion, "Wait, what does who say about me?"

I couldn't help but laugh, "No one, it was a joke, anyway, that's a great idea but we're gonna need thicker pieces of wood than those little twigs, and they're gonna have to be longer. I'd say we want pieces at maybe like two-foot-long and an inch to an inch and half thick, we will have to drive them into the ground a decent amount so that they don't get pulled out, we should also sharpen the edge that's going into the ground to make it easier to drive them in."

With all that being said, I put all four chain saws in the bag our pots and pans came from and we both got to work on the stakes.