Learning how to start a fire is 1 of the most basic life skills, and everyone needs to know how… Not to sound too dramatic about it, but the ability to start fires is what set man above the other creatures, then fire led to the rise of humanity as the dominant species; More to the point, the ability to start fires can be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.
The odds are that you will never actually need to make a fire to survive the evening… but wouldn’t you rather know how to do it, just in case? The people I was with and I tend to take heating for granted, no matter where all of us are, but remember Mother Nature can take it all away at any time.
When I was a kid I received an upscale lesson about the importance of heating, one I still vividly remember. My folks used a very seasoned gas furnace that requires a constant supply of heating oil. One morning my folks drove into town to get more heating oil before the immense ice storm hit. The ice storm came early, and after skidding off the road our parents could not make it back out to the house. With no heating fuel the gas furnace would not work, so there I was trapped all alone in the house as the temps started to drop rapidly . I found a area furnace in one of the closets, but when the power went out it was totally useless to me. I realized that I could use the brick fireplace to keep myself warm through the whole evening, however I didn’t know how to make a fire yet!