Brooke G.
Field Instructor, Second Nature Print

I am told that anyone can bust an ember out West, but here bow drilling is an art form. It requires perseverance and it tests your character.

Bow drilling is how we make fire in the woods. Each piece of the bow drill set parallels our students’ experience here. From the fireboard (the foundation) to the spindle (the friction), from the top rock (the pressure) to the bow itself (the driving force), there is a lesson for the taking. The most potent lesson of all for our students to take is that of resilience.

This past week a student in the group I was working in said something pretty profound. She had just busted an ember on her own for the first time and said “When I first got here and I saw everyone working on bow drilling and found out they were trying to get a fire, I thought that I would never be able to do that. Now I’m four weeks in and I’ve made fire by myself. I’m convinced that I can do anything if I set my mind to it.”

Isn’t that what most of our students’ struggles boil down to? If they can learn to push through and persevere, most of their struggles at home and internally can be conquered. I consider my work done if a student I have worked with learns the art of resilience in his or her time here. Bow drilling is one major way we teach our students resiliency.

The value of the lesson is not lost on them. It can come full circle too. It took me the equivalent of twelve weeks to bust an ember when I began working at Second Nature. Every time the students pulled their sets out and knelt down to work at it, I was right there with them trying for that ember. When the spindle whipped out of the fireboard, I put it right back into the bow and tried again. Week after week, I could relate with the assertion of the students: “in bow drilling, the struggle is real.”

The day I busted, may be one of the proudest moments of my time in the woods. When I discovered that all of the ash in the trench of my fireboard was smoking and glowing red, I sat in elation. A student looked over and seeing the little smoking coal, whooped loudly proclaiming to the group that it had happened at last. They threw the same amount of excitement towards my success as I had toward theirs. They called a group and asked me to check in (say what I was feeling and why). Later in the week, a student gave me feedback about how she had learned from watching me struggle with bow drilling and perseverance. Resilience at Second Nature is not just a student thing.

A student who can bow drill at Second Nature is capable of conquering mountains. And the best part? It seems to set the heart on fire too. Making fire from scratch is exhilarating. So is learning the power of resilience and perseverance. One is very much linked to the other. When a student begins to understand this, he or she is invincible. As a wilderness worker, there is little else more satisfying to witness than a student who has learned how to set the world on fire.

For other stories from the field, read Brooke’s “Sitting in Silence”