This story took place at the Girl’s Teen Rendezvous at the Vermont Art of Mentoring in 2015. The above picture was found on this website. Other resources for creating your own bow drill kit can be found here and here.
“There’s a tradition that the Girl’s Rendezvous has done on their first night, ever since they first started wandering these lands.”
I’m still just a little out of breath. Figures, I just hiked up a mountain with enough gear for a wandering week in the woods on my back.
“There are two parts you’ll have to accomplish, though.”
I stretch out my back. The joints cracks, three in a row. I let out a long breath of satisfaction and refocus on Monique, the Teen Rendezvous’ lead instructor for the week.
“To unlock the second level, you’re going to have to pass the first.” She pauses and looks around at us, meeting all of our eyes in turn. It’s a trick of Monique’s when she’s talking, pulling every member of the group in, making sure each person is equally included. “You guys ready for the first challenge?”
I look around at our group in the light of our headlamps; Grace and Lucia and I, who have all been here before, and Kathrynn, Sage, and Francesca, who are all new. The six of our faces are a mixture of determined, apprehensive, and raring to go.
There’s a rather sparse chorus of nods and quiet “yeah”s. Despite our apparent lack of enthusiasm, there’s a determined glow in every pair of eyes; all six of us want this. Three of us know what we’re unlocking and three of us don’t, and every single one of is ready to do whatever Monique suggests to get to part two.
“We need a fire.”
There’s a single, silent pause before we all jump into action. Despite half our group being completely new we work together like a new machine; there’s a hitch or two but we learn what kind of oil we need to keep our gears turning smooth and before five minutes have passed in the darkness we have four people gathering firewood, one person making tinder and building a fire structure, and two working on the bow drill.
What’s a bow drill, you say?
There was a time before matches, believe it or not, and yet fire was still present in our ancient cultures. When I was a little kid, I thought Native Americans conjured flame out of the magical rubbing of two sticks together; my friends and I would play endless games of pretend and those two fire sticks had a leading role in many of them. My assumption was very wrong.
Bow drill takes the same principles; rubbing two sticks together, although it’s far more complex than just a couple twigs and a pair of hands. Instead it uses an arm’s-length contraption rather like a bow (of the kind that would normally go along with arrows) giving the kit its name. A long piece of soft wood, usually the same diameter as a grown man’s thumb, is wrapped in the bowstring and secured with its bottom end in a fire board of the same soft wood and its top in a handhold of the hardest wood you can find. I’ve even seen handholds made of stone. The bow is, well, “bowed” back and forth as pressure is applied to the handhold from above and if you’re strong and persistent you’ll get a coal.
To get that coal you need to produce 700 to 800 degree Fahrenheit dust, which then clumps together and lights. From there on out it’s a matter of transferring the coal into a bundle of dry, fluffy inner bark of a tree and blowing it into flame. It’s a delicate procedure, but all six of us have been part of it before.
Grace and I stay back at the fire pit and I unpack my bow drill. I’ve been honing this kit since I was eleven and, although I’m still perfecting it, I’ve lit many fires with it already. It’s a collection of red cedar, white pine, basswood, aspen and maple, all carved into the pieces their wood is best suited for, all collected from the forest. We get ourselves into position and before a minute’s past we’re getting smoke, but when we pause to take a look there’s no coal.
This procedure then repeats itself over about six times. It is frustrating.
At least two of us had matches in our packs; easy flame. We knew it was there, we knew it was a possibility, and yet we persevered. We forced tired arms to keep working, we kept conjuring smoke and dust from four pieces of dry, precious wood, we trade out hands and equipment and finally, finally, there’s the tiniest red glow and the faintest plume of smoke in the midst of a mountaintop night.
We have two tinder ingredients we’ve carried with us and one we’ve collected off the land. Alone, none of them can carry that coal into flame, but together, they just might get us a fire. We wrap cattail fluff in paper birch bark before nestling it in the driest pine needles we can salvage from the pine forest we’re camped in. Everyone speaks in whispers; everyone tries to help. Right now we’re standing barely balanced on the center of a set of scales; too much or too little action will tip them the wrong way. We need to keep everything poised and perfect. Right now is a moment we can’t mess up.
When I first began blowing coals into flame, I thought it was purely a solo activity. Oh yes, you could collaborate on making a kit, you could work together to get the coal, but once that coal was in the tinder, the life and death of the fire was in the hands of whoever held it. As I’ve grown older, worked more with fire-by-friction, and been in more and more survival situations, I’ve learned that a fire is not a solo endeavour unless you make it so. When there is a team working towards flame, that team works on every step together.
Grace cradles the coal, nested in the best tinder bundle we can create, and blows. It flares, dies down, and flares, the smoke feathering from it growing thicker and more copious until it’s flooding from between the needles and Grace has to turn aside to cough it out of her lungs. “Someone else, now!” she chokes out, and Lucia jumps in, carrying that light on her breath until Grace can return to the task.
It flares up into flame after a desperately long, heart-pounding minute. It’s dropped clumsily into the center of our fire structure and Francesca cradles the tepee shape in her hands while Lucia and I coax the birch bark into flame, trading off breaths until the sticks are snapping with heat.
We sit back and there’s a soft, quiet moment. All eight of us, six teenagers plus two instructors, reflect on the fire burning before us and I don’t know about the other seven, but in that heartbeat I was so quietly grateful for everything around me that it felt as if my heart would just about burst. I know, I know, attractive imagery, but the power of the thanks I felt in those three seconds is too much to put into words.
And then we’re whooping, yelling, and high-fiving, celebrating the light we’ve just brought to life. There’s a smile on every face as we settle down and our gazes gravitate towards Monique, waiting to be told what new level we’ve just unlocked.
She’s smiling too as she looks around at us. “That was freaking awesome!” she tells us, and there’s a brief circle of realization. She tells us exactly what we’ve done and we silently marvel at ourselves; someone mentions how it didn’t even cross her mind to use the matches she had in her pack and we marvel at that. And then, one by one, we all ask what part two could possibly be.
There’s a devious grin on our mentor’s face as she tells us part two of our challenge will take a pond, and the stars, and a whole lot of laughter to accomplish. “You guys in?”
This time, our chorus of “Yes!” couldn’t be stronger.
the forest speaks 