I scraped and scraped the two sticks together for what seemed like hours. I had never started a fire before, or had the need to. The darkness that was settling in cooled the air and made my body’s demand for warmth grow. The skin on the palms of my hands was was cracked and brittle. I hadn’t noticed, but they had started bleeding. I set the sticks down. Wiping my hands with some leaves that were piled up next to me. I fell asleep huddled in a fetal position clinging to myself for any possible warmth I could produce self-sufficiently. I don’t know what it would feel like to have hypothermia, but I couldn’t imagine it being any worse than this was. As soon as I woke up I felt the coolness of the morning. I convinced myself to try starting a fire again, despite the rawness of my hands. This time I grabbed a piece of wood that had an indent across it,  about an inch deep along with a standard sized stick. Setting the piece of wood down, I used my jacket as gloves and took the smaller stick along the indent, harshly creating friction between the two pieces of wood. My hands ached, the stick still manaced to make the cuts worse through the jacket. Just as I was about to give up a small spark lit. I vigourously continued the process to create a more sustanable flame. After a minute or two, I dropped the stick into the fire. The flames crackled, sizzling. I added a few smaller sticks along with some pocket lint to the miture, the flames multipled. The warmth tingling my hands, I felt revived. The cool November air and the endless woods in front of me somehow felt like less of a threat. All of the sudden, footsteps. I hadn’t heard footsteps, since I left. Had they found me? Figured out that I’d left? Tracked me somehow? I panicked. They couldn’t know I was ever here.  The fire was still small enough to put out. I stomped on it, feeling the warmth burn through the soles of my shoes. The fire continued to burn, smaller though. Hoping it would die out before they found it,  I kicked the few sticks that weren’t aflame away from the wood and I ran. Thinking only of the small chance of survival and the crackling fire behind me.