Building a campfire is a pretty simple task now days. Considering of gathering a few logs, some lighter fluid, and a lighter. You douse the wood in accelerant and spark the match. When the fire reaches the right temperature the flames climb high, and you grab your favorite roasting stick. Then the s’mores and stories get passed around through the night.
This simple approach of fire making however removes the connection to the fire. It’s this connection we can adapt to our healing journey in a way that helps us to understand how these adventures truly work. The wisdom to see how we are fostering this connection with ourselves and the wilderness lays within the timeless arts of fire making. An art that is available to us.
The beginning stages of this art comes in the form construction and gathering. No fire can be born without a spark or a receiver. The spark can come from many places. Everything from a store bought flint and steel, to a hand made bow drill, and so on.
In pursuit of understanding our ignition source becomes the stonewall moment. Which much like a bow drill consist of only a few simple parts. That stonewalled moment dose the same. The spindle of that drill represents all the forces that play around you. It feels like nature is playing an unfair joke on you. Everything is going wrong around you or life feels like you can’t take anymore. Let alone ever standup again.
It’s in the mist of this upheaval that you discover the fire board. Where you find yourself staring into the review mirror feeling the calling to find a new path. This moment is the board because you have just made a comment so strong and firm to yourself. That it’s has firm has the board we will turn that spindle on.
To work the bow drill and earn the ember we desire with a place to nurture it would be a waste of energy. There for before we put our spindle upon the fire board we must build a tinder pouch. Which will become the very first fuel for our fire.
All of the elements to construct this tinder pouch lay all around. The wildness is plentiful with dry grasses and twigs that can feed our ember. All we to do is simple gather them and assemble these things in a way to give life to our ember.
So too are the peace’s of the healing journeys tinder pouch. Nature gives them to you. All you must do is compile and fashion the pouch. Just like walking through the tall grasses to find the handful that would an ember, there is nothing to fear while you work to gather your fuel.
Perhaps it’s just something as simple as a feeling of stubbornness. That motivates you. Or the realization that you need to find a way to live more in tune with your values. Every peace that you allow the ember to touch will cause this journey to grow. You will need it all.
Once the pouch is formed and the ember is born you must now nurture and provide it with the food for growth. To grow a fire that includes breath and patients. In return the ember returns to you the gift of witnessing the wonder of birth and change of a living breathing force of nature it’s self. This too is the Beauty of the journey your breathing life into. By blazing a trail into the Forest of the unknown within you. It gives birth a form of energy that is untapped inside of you.
So the next time you light the campfire don’t just settle for the lame man’s fire of light lighter fluid and a match. Tap in the labor of love that is the fire making arts. Allow that connection of this act to both inspire and spark your path of healing.
All of the elements to construct this tinder pouch lay all around. The wilderness is plentiful with dry grasses and twigs that can feed our ember. All we have to do is simply gather them and assemble these things in a way to give life to our ember. -Mike Martin
Tweet
Project Mindfully Outdoors 
4 thoughts on “The fire making arts”