Magic, Nature and Mastery

The first time I got a fire with a bow and drill, I just sat and stared at the fire. The tinder was burning in a patch of gravel in front of the main barn opening at the old farm in Asbury, where Tom Brown, Jr. was running his school at the time. It was the fall of 1984. I was twenty years old.

I had carved a bow and drill set months earlier, on my trail crew in the California Conservation Corps, high in the mountain pass of Kaweah Gap in Sequoia National Park. I was using Tom’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival, but I couldn’t get a fire. I used up three boot laces, and finally gave up in frustration.

But when I finally got that flaming tinder bundle, I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it. All of the practice and effort high in the mountains had given me the form, and with an improved notch, I was on my way.

If you haven’t experienced making fire with just wood and a knife, well, it is hard to explain. It is literally magic.

Then I had to do it again. And again. And again.

For me, it was an addiction. I just loved to make fire, and I needed to find wood in the forest, rather than using white cedar from a fence post. I needed to take it to new levels. In the dark. In the rain. With wood I gathered minutes before. With just rocks. With cordage made from plant fibers, from bark, from rootlets. With all kinds of woods and plants....

Yeah, even blindfolded.

Then, I would travel to Arizona, and do it all over again. Then to Massachussetts. Then over to California, New York, Kansas.... wherever I could go, practice, learn and grow.

Okay, I’ll be honest here: I was young, (20-25) during those years, and I wanted to learn it all. You could argue that I didn’t have anything better to do. I would say that’s true! (What could be better than learning to make fire?!)

I didn’t want to be one of those guys who had learned it and practiced it a couple of times before moving on to something else. I wanted to know I could count on the skill, when I needed it most, so it was really a part of me.

I can tell you about those times I practiced, gathered, worked and learned. It wasn’t just about the fire. It was also about getting to know the trees. It was about getting to know the woods themselves, the animals, the area around my campsite. All of it. Just being there made me feel good, alive, whole and complete. Like I was ingiting a fire inside of my soul, even.

I remember making a fire with my friend Craig Boynton, in the woods during a youth program, where we had fifteen sixth graders sitting around a bow drill fire we had made, with a large tipi fire (flames about three feet high!) watching a deer walk right up to our fire, our group, just curious about what we were out there in her woods! It was magic to us, to the kids, and we all felt blessed by that moment, touched by something bigger than us, our worlds changed and new and amazing.

Today I got to know our new Earth Skills Spring Semester students. We made a fire in our woodstove, starting it with a hand drill of horseweed and aspen, each taking a turn spinning the stalk, getting it warm and making a beautiful coal. The dry woodshavings caught, and the barn began to warm up. We talked about learning to live so close to the earth that we needed nothing from the modern world... living full survival, living on the gifts of our mother earth.

It still feels great, even now, twenty four years later.

Amazing. Magic.

Now that’s power!