To build a fire

Learning the art and skill of using a bow drill
By Sean Reagan

Like many people, I have always loved fires.
I love the warm flames of winter fireplaces and wood stoves, the smell of leaves and brush burning in fall, and the cozier smaller camp fires of spring and summer.

Fires have kept me warm after the sun has fallen and have helped feed me when the familiar kitchen is miles away. Freshly caught trout and perch, over- (and under-) cooked hot dogs, potatoes roasted in live coals. Even s’mores taste better over an open fire.

I was young when I learned how to make a fire. Crumpled newspaper or brittle leaves, atop which you stacked thin kindling, then larger logs. But every fire I ever made had one thing in common – it was started with a match.

Recently, I have wondered about the fires made by people who didn’t have matches. How did they do it? Was there any point in learning to do it that way myself?

Absolutely, says Frank Grindrod, an Ashfield-based teacher and mentor, whose long list of survival skills runs the gamut from ancient fire-making to hunting with homemade bows to finding and preparing wild edible plants.

Grindrod runs Earthworks Programs, a school that teaches a host of outdoor survival and adventure skills to children and parents, fostering a deeper appreciation and awareness of the wilderness both outside and inside. Under his tutelage, students learn everything from how to track deer in winter to how to tell a good story.

And he believes deeply in the art and skill of fire-making. Indeed, it verges on a spiritual practice for him.

“You have to ask for fire,” he says as we hike into the Ashfield forest off Williamsburg Road. “It’s really important to have intention — a sense that you are a part of what is happening.”

He waves a hand at the trees that surround us — Eastern hemlock, birch, beech, sugar maple. “Think about the sun’s energy and how it helps to create these trees. What you’re asking for — just like your ancestors did — is for the sun to be released from the wood.”

We hunker down on a small rise beside a fire pit that Grindrod has used in the past. Dark rain clouds race overhead. Owls hoot deeper in the woods. Grindrod pulls out a rabbit hide and gently lays each piece of hand-crafted bow drill set on it.
The bow drill is amongst the earliest technologies for creating fire. It consists of five basic pieces. The hearth — a strip of wood about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide. The spindle — essentially a narrow dowel. The handhold — a rough square of wood that you use to hold the spindle in place against the hearth. The cordage — a string or strip of plant material that joins the bow at either end. And finally, the bow itself — a long strip of wood which resembles something a miniature Robin Hood might have used.

Grindrod’s set — which he carved himself — is elegant. But I cannot imagine how anyone ever makes a fire with it.

“Every fire is different,” says Grindrod. The moisture content of your fuel changes, the light you have to work by changes, the pressure to have a fire changes.

His first fire, he says, literally took him three weeks to build.“You have to want it,” he says. “There’s something about doing it that’s powerful and you can’t get that feeling doing anything else. But it starts with wanting it — wanting it and asking for it.”

We get the bow drill in place. I’m used to simply squatting by whatever pile of kindling and leaves I’ve collected. After all, the position of your body doesn’t have a whole lot of impact on how you strike a match.But the bow drill is different. It reminds me of learning how to ride a bike. I have to kneel. I have to apply pressure to the top of the spindle in order to hold in in place against the hearth. Then I have to saw with the bow. I can’t jam too hard on the spindle or it won’t turn. And I have to saw with a smooth rhythm. It can’t be a jagged hacking motion.

It’s really hard to do it and keep your balance. My first effort topples the spindle. The second time, the cord — which helps create torque — loosens. I feel a deep wave of gratitude that I ate before entering the woods.

Grindrod tells me the story of a fire he was asked to make for some Native American elders. It was an honor to be asked. But he was nervous, too.
He collected his materials, arranged them just so, and started sawing. And nothing happened.When it works, the heat of the friction between hearth and spindle creates dust that eventually ignites. You use the resulting coal to get a larger fire started.But after half hour, Grindrod had no coal.
“And I remembered that I hadn’t asked for fire — I had skipped that step. So I took a moment and I asked for fire. When I went back to the bow, it took about 30 seconds.”

I have a hard time thinking in terms of of ancestors — most of mine that I knew or know of were Irish men and women who lived and worked in large cities. But then I remember where they came from in Ireland — tiny fishing villages on the southern coast.
I closed my eyes. It felt silly, but I asked them for fire.I balanced carefully on my knee. I started slowly, letting the saw build momentum. It felt oddly comfortable, kneeling in the dark, my whole body focused on this simple yet primal task. I forgot about the goal and let my body work. A moment later, I smelled smoke rising from the hearth.
And — I kid you not — I literally had tears in my eyes.

“No matter where you are from in the world, your ancestors had to live close to the earth,” says Grindrod. “It was what we did.”
He describes making fires as being in part about recovering an almost cellular memory. We may not remember the details of making fire, but our bodies do. They slip easily into the process.

When Grindrod brought his daughter, Maya, now 11, home from the hospital after her birth, he built the two of them a small fire. He laid her beside it. Her eyes opened and in them he saw the reflection of the fire he had made.

Fires, he says, can keep us warm and safe and fed. They are intensely practical. But they also connect us — to one another and to the world. We gather strips of birch bark, bunches of stripling hemlock and it nurtures us.

“You now have a thread of awareness that’s now attached to that tree,” says Grindrod. “There’s a relationship. If you do a thread a week, in five years you have a web.”

As a result, he says, the forest changes. It’s not longer filled with objects that you identify by shape or color. Instead, you have relationships. It’s closer to family. Nature stops being something external — mountain peaks to be bagged, say — and something more integrated.

Fire, says Grindrod, connects us to the spirit of the men and women who have gone before us. The ones who wandered our forests and mountains, who learned to make bow drills and start fires. Little physical trace remains, but what was human about them remains human about us. We contain the same spark.
Walking home in darkness, I ask Grindrod about his students — what they like about making fire, what they find challenging about it. He thinks for a moment.

“I like seeing the character that develops and who they become,” he says at last. “That’s so much more important than getting the fire started in that moment. That’s what can last a lifetime.”
Sean Reagan is a freelance writer living in Worthington, Mass.

Photographs courtesy of Frank Gifford:
1. Frank Grinrod blows into a flame to get the fire going.
2. Using a bow drill to create a fire takes a smooth, steady sawing motion.
3. Earthworks campers practice building a fire.

Photograph by Carol Lollis:
Families gather around a bonfire in Westhampton.