Phase 01 — First days: water, fire, shelter / About year 1

First fire and stone hearth

warmth, cooking, light, safety

MakingYear 1Story day 2Stands on 5 earlier

AWhat it needs

Needs 5 other products in all, 2 of them directly.

View

01.08 First fire and stone hearthMaking Year 1 needs 5 products
- 01.06 Tinder and kindling storeMaking Year 1 raw materials only
- 01.07 Bow-drill fire setMaking Year 1 needs 3 products
  - 01.03 Sharp stone flakeMaking Year 1 needs 1 product
    - 01.02 HammerstoneMaking Year 1 raw materials only
  - 01.05 Twisted plant-fibre cordMaking Year 1 needs 2 products
    - 01.03 Sharp stone flakeshown above ↑← shown at left

Open a box to see what it needs. A dashed box is a product already drawn in full: click it to jump there. In the org chart, drag to move around.

BWhy

Fire is warmth, safe water, cooked food, light, dry clothes, hardened tools and courage. From this evening the island is a different place.

CYou need

A flaming tinder nest (01.06, lit from the bow drill, 01.07)
Graded kindling and fuel from the store
A dozen dry stones from high ground, each bigger than a fist. Never stones from the stream: water trapped inside can burst them.

DSteps

Choose the spot in the middle of the camp, with no branches overhead. Scrape the ground to bare earth for a body length all round.
Set the stones in a ring an arm's length across.
If the ground is damp, lay a floor of finger-thick sticks inside the ring.
Before making the ember, build a small cone of the thinnest kindling in the middle, with an opening on the windward side.
Put the flaming nest in through the opening.
Feed it thin to thick: grass-stem twigs, then skewer-thick, then finger-thick. Add each size only when the last is burning well. Leave gaps for air.
When finger-thick sticks are burning, add wrist-thick wood, and after that logs laid like the spokes of a wheel with their ends in the fire. Push them inward as they burn.
Stack the firewood by size two paces away, upwind.
Set the fire watch: two people at a time, changing through the night. The fire is never left alone.
To keep it overnight without flame, rake the coals into a heap and cover them with a finger-depth of ash. In the morning uncover them, add tinder and blow.

EIt worked if

It burns through the night and is brought back to flame at dawn from its own coals, without the drill.

FWhat goes wrong

It is smothered. Too much wood, too soon, too tightly packed. Open it up; fire needs air from below.
It dies while someone runs for wood. Everything must be within reach before the ember is made.
A stone cracks with a bang. It was damp. Replace it with one from dry ground and keep faces back for the first hour.
Sparks in the thatch. The shelters are too close. Keep three paces between the fire and any roof.

GSafety

Clear the ground wider in dry weather. A grass fire could take the camp and the forest behind it.
Burns: cool at once in clean cold water and keep it there for as long as it takes to walk a mile (about twenty minutes). Do not put fat or ash on them.

HIn the story

When the nest flames in Adam's hands, 24 people who met as strangers make the same sound at the same moment. Sofia cooks the first hot food that night. Nobody wants to be the first to go to sleep.

IFigures

**Fig. 01.08-a**Cut-away of the hearth: stone ring, stick floor, the cone of kindling with its opening, and logs laid like spokes.diagram

**Fig. 01.08-b**Adam on his knees lowering the flaming nest into the cone, faces lit all round him in the dusk.making

**Fig. 01.08-c**The camp at night seen from outside the circle: the fire, two watchers, the lean-tos behind.use