Hi fellow Edders,
Today I have a bit of a shorter post but still one I find incredibly important, particularly of late! Survival skills.
Boy vs. Wild
I’m not any kind of army ranger or anything but I would like to think that I have some basic skills that would be important in the event of being in a survival situation. I can’t make a fire through sticks only and friction but I’ve accumulated some tools over time that are important to have around in the house or car in the event that you need to do some basic things like start a fire.
I want to pass on as much of these types of things as I can to our son because I want him to be more of a wilderness person than I was when I was younger. I was good in that we lived next to a massive wooded reservation so I was able to get out there and would do so often just to hike around. I would mainly hike though, I didn’t spend much time identifying plants and that type of stuff, which I’m trying to learn now with him. One of the most important things to do when you are outside though is be able to keep yourself warm. Making a fire is crucial to staying alive if you happen to be stuck in a situation. It’s also important to know how to properly respect a fire. Fires are great and cool to look at but that needs to be respected with a big helping of it. Fire is very destructive if you let it get out of hand.
We spent some time learning how you build a basic fire. We have a little outdoor fireplace in the complex we live in so that’s been nice to have. I am pretty sure the 3 times we’ve lit it over the past few years have been the only times people have lit it lol. No one likes to use it except is. That’s okay to me! I love fire pits.
The building process is easier since we have a little steel grate so we can put stuff below and on it to give it good air flow so that’s good for his first experiences. We had a bunch of paper to help us keep it going but I made sure to have him gather leaves with me so we can use leaves as a big portion of the fire since you will find leaves outside but not really paper.
The other things that were nice to show him was when he was feeling cold we built the fire up bigger and I held him and we got closer to the fire than normal. Safe for sure but closer. He felt how much heat a nice big fire gives off and was warming his hands. When the fire died down though I showed him that the coals that were nice and orange would give him some great warmth so try to put your hands closer to those.
He had an all-in-all great time with the fire. I was always stressing how important it was we make it safely and we don’t walk away until the fire was finished and it was just coals burning. You never want to leave a fire burning outside of a specific fire pit like this since it could spread and burn things down. He did suggest we go to the pond next to it and get some water to put it out but I kindly declined for many sanitary reasons lol. We let it go down to coals and went back home.
The first thing he said when he walked in the door to see my wife was how much fun it was learning about fires and how to make one. She could smell the smoke on us as soon as we walked in lol that’s okay, it’s a wonderful thing to teach kids. The more we respect fire the better off we are I think.
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