What I do when my furnace breaks

I was delighted to spend time in the Girl Scouts when I was young.

I didn’t enjoy the badges, or selling cookies, or any of that garbage.

What I did truly enjoy was studying the most invaluable survival and wilderness skills. It was neat to learn how to survive in the wilderness, or how to find your way home when you are lost. These felt important as skills that I could use to survive just about anything. It surprises myself and others that so few people ever think about how to start a fire. I don’t mean turning on your gas grill, or decreasing your control unit, however legitimately building a real fire. If your power goes out, & you don’t have your extravagant Heating & A/C methods to rely on, what will you do to keep warm? When my kids got old enough, the 3 of us chose to go to spend a few afternoons at a remote cottage in the woods, a place that had no electricity or weather conditions control. It was supposed to be a frigid weekend, & I wanted my kids to learn how to build a proper fire in the fireplace. They were bummed about it at first, more for the lack of wireless than the lack of heating. Then I showed them how much fun it could be to stack up the logs in the fireplace just so & then light them ablaze. I taught them how to manage a fire, & how to tend it so it didn’t rage out of control. I hope they never have a life-or-death emergency involving heating, however if that ever does happen, they will be prepared. Just the same as the motto of the Scouts.

 

Cooling specialist