* Creating fire in the first place can be tricky though, so here’s how you create one out of nothing but trees and ambition. First, collect material that can burn easily: dry leaves, pine needles, the inside of barks, grasses, etc. This is your tinder, which you’ll make into a small nest-shaped pile. Then, collect some twigs about the size of a pencil, which burns hotter and longer than tinder but doesn’t light as easily: this is your kindling. Then collect fuel: dead wood that you can use to keep the fire burning indefinitely. The basic strategy is find two dry sticks that look like they can burn easily. Place one on the ground, find an indent in it that you can force the other stick into, and begin rotating that stick while at the same time forcing it downward. Your goal is to create enough friction that things start to burn. This will absolutely take a long while, and it’s energetic, tiring work, but eventually the friction should cause the wood to smolder, producing a small, glowing ember. Transfer that ember to your nest of tinder, and then gently blow on it to encourage it to burn, adding more tinder, then kindling, and eventually fuel to keep it going. After you’ve created your first fire this way, you’ll be so tired and annoyed that you will definitely never want to do it again. Instead, you’ll work to keep those home fires burning, hence the expression “keep the home fires burning, because it’s a lot of work to get them going again if your home fires go out, and I never want to have to do that again.” Once you have fire, you unlock the technology of cooking, which for humans functions both as external teeth (cooking softens foods, meaning you don’t have to chew as much) and as an external gut (cooking increases the digestibility and absorption of many nutrients in food). Not all nutrients are increased with cooking: vitamin C can easily be destroyed, so you’ll always want to eat some raw vegetables and fruit.