Phase 01 — First days: water, fire, shelter / About year 1
01.06
Tinder and kindling store
kept dry for fire starting
AWhat it needs
No other product. It is made from raw materials alone.
BWhy
A fire is lost or won before the first spark. With dry tinder and graded kindling ready, an ember becomes a fire in a minute. Without them it dies in the hands.
CYou need
- Tinder, fine and bone dry: dead grass, shredded inner bark, seed fluff, old birds' nests, dry bracket fungus from dead trees
- Kindling: dead twigs still hanging on the tree, from the thickness of a grass stem up to a finger
- Fuel: dead wood from wrist-thick upward
- A dry place under an overhanging rock or a roof of bark slabs
DSteps
- Gather only wood that is dead and off the ground. Snap a twig: if it cracks cleanly it is dry; if it bends it is not.
- Rub bark and grass between the palms until it is a soft ball of fine hair-like fibre. This is the tinder.
- Make each tinder ball into a nest the size of two fists: the finest stuff in the centre, coarser round it.
- Sort the kindling into three heaps by thickness: grass stem, cooking skewer, finger.
- Stack everything on a bed of sticks, off the ground, under cover, with the driest tinder at the back.
- Keep one tinder nest inside your clothes, against the body, in wet weather. Body heat keeps it dry.
- Make it a rule: whoever takes from the store replaces it the same day.
EIt worked if
- A nest held to an ember smokes at once and bursts into flame within a few long breaths.
- There is always enough under cover to start three fires.
FWhat goes wrong
- Tinder smoulders but will not flame. Too coarse or slightly damp. Rub it finer and dry it against the body or in the sun.
- Kindling from the ground. It looks dry and is not. Take only hanging dead twigs.
- The store is used up on a wet day. Nobody was responsible. Name one keeper.
GIn the story
Preet is the least strong of the 24 and knows it. Adam gives her the tinder. She sorts it with a care that makes the others laugh, until the second evening, when her nest is the one that takes the ember.
