Hard to light birch bark or a candle with a spark. Not true of the vas/cotton option.
Birch bark lights easily from a fire steel...if you know the proper methods. As for the candle, I carry 3 methods of fire starting (fire steel, wooden matches, BIC lighter) at all times so a candle is still a viable option for me.
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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
John Lubbock