THE CRAFT OF FIRE

Today marked the final step of the Conservation of Fire workshop: conserving the coal and transporting fire from one place to another. We gathered in my backyard, made a fire in my bbq and then "stole" a coal to put into our mud pots. From there the trick was to see how to keep it alive inside the pot, burning slowly and smoking gently, feeding this "seed fire" occasionally. The other trick was to see how to carry the pot, which eventually gets quite hot. I made a carrier with my neighbour's vines that hang over our fence; others fashioned different ways. Once we had our fires going more or less, we started off on our walk to Dufferin Grove Park (about 20 mins away). Two of the five fires went out along the way, and then a third died in more spectacular fashion... At the Park we were able to start up another fire using one of the remaining "seeds", and there we stayed for a few hours, happily enjoying the Park and the fire and yes, some marshm...

"People did not know how to produce fire themselves. But it was produced in nature. So then that fire was like a gift, coming from the volcanoes, from the fire in the forest, coming from the fire in different places... But before it could be considered a 'gift' it was recognized as threatening and dangerous. Here is the first difference between hominids and other animals… All of them flee before fire, but the hominids move closer to the fire. That is something that marks a historical difference. Because in these guys' circuitry there is sufficient capacity to oppose their own reflexes. Nature says, 'escape'; but they go against this and say, 'move closer'…" - Silo, The Talk of 'The Stone' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A little less than a month after we made our mud pots, we arranged to fire them in a firepit in a nearby Park. We built up a small fire and put our pots around it so they would heat up very slowly, until the point when they...

Long before the human being could produce fire, they could only "steal" it, and then conserve it. This period of learning how to conserve fire before knowing how to make it lasted hundreds of thousands of  years, maybe even a million... We started our conservation of fire workshop this weekend with a trip to the Don River near Old Mill Station. There by the river's edge we dug up mud and proceeded to make little pots that we'll use later to conserve fire. The idea was to make a little mud "oven" with a hole towards the bottom for blowing in air, and a hole up top for the chimney.  Mixing in dried grass helped to keep the mud strong and flexible, and who knows what else got mixed in there along with it (geese and duck crap for sure).                                       Making Mudpots Now we'll let these dry for a good while and then the next st...