The Quest for Fire
When I think back to life’s major achievements, the quest for fire would have to be one of the most important. I can remember when I was in boy scouts and starting a fire was important to every scout. I learned many things from the scout program, but building a fire always seemed to be the one thing that everyone looked forward to the most. We would earn merit badges for the skills that we learned and could perform correctly. Just like many of the other skills that I learned I had to be the right age and have earned enough merit badges to qualify to learn to build a fire. As an older scout, I got the chance to learn how to make a fire. I learned the proper way to prepare the material, along with the methods of building the fire, and finally learned the ways to starting a fire.
Before the scout leader would let me start a fire, I had to learn the proper way to prepare for a fire. Just as everyone before me, I learn the proper fire safety, cleaning the area, gathering supplies, and building the proper fire place. When thinking of safely building a fire I had take into consideration the wind, along with the temperature and humidity, for these conditions may have affected the fire. It was difficult to focus on this when all I wanted was to start a fire. At this point I learned to find a good location for the fire and pick up all the loose debris so the fire would not spread. Then he showed me what kind of materials I would need, as well as some different fuels that could be used to start a fire. With the materials and fuels gathered, it was now time to learn how to build a fire place. There were many ways to do this, but the ones that I learned were the reflector, the trench, and, my favorite, the pit. This was just a shallow hole with a ring of stones around to hold in the fire. It felt good to finally get the fire place built, so we could move on. This meant I was one step closer to starting my first fire.
The next learning experience was...