One of my favorite things about living is the starting and maintaining of fires. I have set the goal of starting at least one fire a week. As much as I end up enjoying it when I do it, it is amazing that I am not always great about starting that weekly fire. I suppose if the issue were more pressing, I would systematize my compliance -- such as putting it in a calendar, or putting it in my daily tracking system, or even setting something up on beeminder, but I like having some things that I do by feel.
It seems that when it comes to self-reliance skills a great many people are trapped by one of these two prongs: 1) believing a skill is far simpler than it in fact is or 2) a contempt for these kinds of knowledge, thinking “I can just pay for someone or some manufactured thing that can do that, so only a fool would do it.” If I and others are correct that our civilization is headed for collapse, then that attitude really needs to go.
The first step to building a fire is get the materials, and this beautifully engages my hunter/gathering instincts. It’s fine to pick up sticks of the right length and bring them into neat piles, but I particularly love cracking sticks to the right size, first trying to do it freehand, and then progressing through my knee, and series of little ad hoc arrangements of bricks and rocks. The crack of wood in these moments is almost -- almost -- as beautiful as the crackle in the fire. But the satisfaction of living up to that dream of working with my hands and the sense of accomplishment from the stack more than makes up for the gap in auditory pleasure. Besides, no crack of sticks, no crackle later.
The first mistake I made with fire is in retrospect dumb, but I’ll admit it so that perhaps others won't be embarrassed by bonehead moments as they learn homesteading and survival skills. (Also, aren’t nearly all mistakes dumb once you know better?) When I lit my first pieces of kindling paper, after getting my match lit -- which in itself took some time to develop the muscle memory to do consistently correctly -- I would take another piece of paper and a stick and just smash it on the kindling, as though a fire once started would just magically attach itself to whatever was put on it. I did this several times before wising up and thinking “oh, yeah, air flow." And that’s how learning happens -- one mistake at at time. This is especially true when you don’t have a mentor and you are learning so-called physical skills.
I work in a kind of rocket-stove, though I must admit that I have often struggled to get enough air flow to have the fire make the suction sound that gives that kind of setup it’s name. At least with my set up, moving the coals made by the fire around and adding new fuel in are both arts.
This video on the primitive technology channel made me realize that you could add air in various ways. I tried to made a kind of spinning fan thing like his but . . . I broke it. Now I use some old workbooks with grammar sheets as my fan. This is really convenient because I can pull out some of the perforated sheets to use as kindling and then have the rest of the workbook as a fan. This really helps me start the fire off right nearly every time.
This kind of fan billowing is itself a skill. It used to leave my abs sore, by I have learned how to do it with the right amount finesse to get the job done but not overexert myself. Also, I have learned ways to alter the stroke to engage either the forearms, or the wrists, alternating between styles. Lastly, I have learned how to restart a fire by adding new kindling to hot coals and billowing correctly.
Nothing I have learned about fire is a unique discovery, but rather a re-discovery from humanity’s past. No one taught me it. In future cultures around the world, it will be better when it’s taught. But in our moment and our culture, I must admit the satisfaction from learning it on my own. Nonetheless, all of it took time, and I would hate having to make these beginner mistakes under the pressure of trying to survive. This is the reasoning behind John Michael Greer’s phrase “collapse now and avoid the rush.” Many skills take time to develop, and you want to be able to use the privileges of being a petro-human to cushion any impacts of the mistakes you are making while you learn.
Now that I can start a fire with matches and lighters, I am going to start working on other methods, from using a lens (or coke can), and even being able to start by rubbing sticks. I expect these processes to have their own frustrations and discoveries. But I also expect that with enough time and attention, their secrets will belong to me.
Once you have fire, you have heat, the ability to boil water, and to cook. This gives you many important pieces of critical infrastructure. This could be very useful in a situation as simple as a multi-day blackout, but if you believe in long descent, then you see that the next generation will need such skills more and more regularly -- and you can be the one to teach it. But first you have to learn.
I highly recommend periodic practice with fire as an important survival strategy. Besides that, it is fun.
