After our night of bonding over garbage, Michael and I became pretty much inseparable. He started teaching me everything he knew about traditional skills, which was a lot. The first skill I needed to learn before the kids arrived for camp was how to make fire from sticks. Right, seemed simple enough, I thought.
I did arrive at Rivercamp with my own little knife and sheath, so at least I somewhat looked the part of a survivalist. I believe it quickly became obvious that I didn’t really know how to use it though, as my only proof was a spoon I had carved previously that looked more like a flat, misshapen garden spade than a spoon (I still dutifully used that “spoon” however at every meal, even if the indentation could barely hold any soup because it was virtually nonexistent),
The first thing I needed to learn was a “bow drill fire,” which is essentially cutting a long stick and attaching a string to each end (like a bow) that you smoothly twist around a smaller stick which you then place on top of another, you guessed it, stick. It was hard, and awkward, there was no “smooth twisting” of the string around the stick — in fact it often sprang out of the twisted string and hit me in the face and many times I had the middle stick upside down and my arms kept getting too tired to pump the bow back and forth long enough to actually create any friction. Michael would set me up with supplies and leave me to practice for an hour at a time, coming back to check on his new student to find me sitting with a pile of discarded sticks on the ground, cheeks red in frustration and embarrassment.
But, as all things go, two days of enough practice led to a smoothly twisted, right side up middle stick, a properly placed elbow with all my weight leaned into it, and enough arm strength to draw the bow back and forth enough times to make a small coal. It was a little pile of embers that was sitting on a base stick, glowing red and smoking away. How exciting! I did it! And my teacher was here to witness my success! But as I dropped my smoking coal into my carefully constructed nest of grass that I in theory would then blow on until it burst into flame, apparently I didn’t have the grass tight enough so the coal that took me literally thirty minutes to make immediately went out. As Michael watched me desperately puff air into a handful of loose grass that was one hundred percent not going to catch on fire, he tactfully said, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t get a fire once the coal was in the nest.” I glared at him, my cheeks burning much hotter than my failed fire attempt, but found myself laughing anyway amidst the frustration and annoyance. “Too bad my teacher sucks,” I said, a poor attempt at a comeback, and he laughed as I threw one of my sticks at him.
I did get my first fire a few days later, after hours of trying, and it was immensely satisfying. I had accomplished quite possibly the most important, albeit long forgotten, human skill of our existence. A skill that our people, no matter where they hail from, have been doing since the very beginning. I was sweating, my arms burned from the repetitive pushing and pulling, my back hurt from hunching over, and my brain hurt from the focus and unwavering determination, but right in front of me sat a beautiful, red smoking coal — the coal that could keep my family warm through a dark and frigid night, the coal that could cook all of our food, the coal that could boil our water. I ever so delicately placed it in my (this time) properly bundled nest and held it up like a taco, then blew on it lightly from underneath, just like I was taught. The grass began to smoke, then smoked a little more, then really got going, plumes of smoke coming from the magic I held in my hands. “Keep going,” Michael said quietly next to me, “It’s gonna go any second now.” I kept blowing on it, not too hard, and the smoke billowed out until one more deep breath and the wad of grass in my hands gloriously burst into flames.
“YES!!” we both yelled, ecstatic. Michael beamed as he quickly showed me how to put the burning ball of grass in the fire pit before I set my hands on fire and how to add small sticks to it to build it up and keep it going.
“I made fire! From sticks!” I exclaimed to Michael, as he supportively nodded in celebration. I had tears in my eyes, feeling emotionally overwhelmed from my huge recent life changes, from sleeping on a bed of straw in a tipi in the middle of a field in Montana, and from the innate feeling of belonging you get from making fire from sticks. I’m hoping Michael didn’t notice, and as he held out his hand for a high five I think electricity shot between our palms when they touched.