My oldest daughter just turned eight, so I felt that this was a great time to start training her on the necessities of life. When you live a rural, remote lifestyle like my family does, that means learning how to take care of your own needs. Although we have the capacity to drive to the store that is an hour away, for the most part we grow or shoot our own food. We have a well for water, and cut down trees for firewood. Since Savvy is old enough, it’s time she learns about some of these things, because if she can’t provide her own heating, she won’t be able to do anything else. She understood that eating meat meant going hunting, but she didn’t understand that without heating to cook the meat, it was basically useless to them. Heating is the basis for life, before all other needs our safety and comfort must come first. To that end, learning how to make a fire under any circumstances , to provide that heating for cooking and warmth, was the keystone for all survival techniques. Man requires fire, it’s what sets us apart from the animals. To make sure she understood how to do it perfectly, I put Savvy in charge of heating our cabin for the whole week. She had to tend the furnace, chop wood for the fireplace, and make sure that the ducts and flue were cleared. By the end of that week, she knew every heating system in the house like the back of her hand, and I knew I’d never need to worry about that skill again.