Fire Drill

This week Native Eyes and RDNA journeyed down the San Francisco Peninsula to Pescadero.

We arrived at Venture Retreat Center in late afternoon, greeted by the heavy smell of the nearby creek and an overabundance of housecats.

Our first job, as usual, was to start a fire to cook dinner. One of our number suggested we make a new bow drill kit from the land to get our fire. We scattered and returned with a motley assortment of sticks as well as some kits others had brought with them, just in case. I whittled down the spindle from a dead limb of Alder while another person fashioned a board from a conveniently flat chunk of Box-Elder. We found a bow from one of the other kits, and began burning a well into the fireboard.

After all that, though, the resultant powder was tan, not black, and not a wisp of smoke showed itself. By now the sun was low, and bellies were growling. Jon Young meandered on over, sat down and began questioning us about what we were doing.

At Jon’s instruction, we switched kits and became a five-person fire team, two people pulling the bow, two steadying the board, and one helping to apply extra downward pressure to the spindle. The twist of the spindle in the socket now ground out a fine black powder and emitted tendrils of smoke. The tempo increased and smoke billowed, then main bowman lost his grip and the spindle flipped out of the socket. We sat back to see if the powder would become a coal. Dying smoke then gave out totally, revealing a pile of dead black powder, no spark of life left in it’s heart. We heaved a collective sigh and prepared to try again.

Before we began Jon spoke, “did you give thanks or ask permission?” We all looked at eachother. “No.”

As we fitted the spindle back in the bow and set it in the socket, we said a prayer aloud, asking humbly for fire to help us cook our food tonight. Strokes of the bow soon brought smoke billowing from the hearthboard. Renewed hope fueled our bowstrokes until again the spindle flipped away. And again no coal.

“Ok, time for the Mulefat!” We switched kits a third time, and began again, this time with a mulefat spindle on a cedar board. Two strokes and we had smoke curling around us. But in ten strokes the string snapped, and we all sat back, chagrinned at the idea that we might not be able to cook tonight.

The smoke, however, didn’t die. A red coal appeared in the powder, breathing smoke fromwithin the little pile. We had our first successful fire from friction.

Our second lesson of the day: punky spindles and Box-Elder boards do not a fire make. Our third lesson: just get a mulefat spindle. In the words of one of our team, "Mulefat: as good as a lighter."

And I'll let you figure out the first lesson.