One mother realizes that protecting her children too much can harm them in the long run. In teaching her children to build a fire, they learn beautiful life lessons.
Can we make a fire and then can we make s’mores? Please Mama, please, Mama, pleeeeeeease?”
Kai and Leo stand before me, shoulder to shoulder, with bright, open, pleading eyes. It’s summer. The air is warm. The light is pink and low. We’re camping in the Olympic National Park. Time to reconnect with the environment, fantasize about what it might have been like to be living off the land thousands of years ago.
My own experience with camping taps into my cavewoman brain. I enjoy gathering berries, looking at leaf shapes, settling into camp, and telling stories. Kai, Leo, and Keith utilize their caveman brains by starting a fire and being totally mesmerized by that fire. I am no dummy. It is not the melty treat they’re after. It’s fire. They want to light it, watch it, stick things into it, and watch them burn.
I imagine Smokey the Bear crying at the devastation that we singularly inflict on the planet. Not to mention the burnt appendages of my two beautiful boys. I clenched. I stalled by sending the boys off with Keith to get fresh water. As I fretted, I gazed at the plastic bag of marshmallows. I spotted the warning right away: WARNING: For children under six, cut into bite-size pieces. Children should always be seated and supervised when eating.
What have we become?
If we eliminate every danger from children’s lives, when they inevitably come into contact with something dangerous, they’ll surely do damage. We need them to discover, create, fail, try again, and interact with the world.
I didn’t want to be the parent that minced marshmallows, then observed my kid chewing each morsel. I didn’t want to be the mom that hovered. Yet I carried a pail of water with me wherever I went in our campsite.
Fire is mysterious, magical, scary, delightful, friendly, and fierce all together. Maybe that mystery is only revealed—as many things are—to those who play with it. Those who respect and learn how to control it.
“You guys are going to start the fire tonight, and yes, we can have s’mores.”
“YES!” they both shrieked. They darted over to Keith, who was looking at me with surprise.
“Dad, Mom said we could light the fire, so where is the lighter fluid?” Kai asked.
“Hang on, fire boy!” I clarified. “You will light the fire from scratch.”
“You mean like rub two sticks together, like the Flintstones?”
“Well, no—maybe someday we’ll try that. We’ll use a match, but here’s the challenge. Only one match. We pretend we need to survive, and we only have one match to do it. You ready?” Kai and Leo looked at each other and grinned.
“Okay, so what do we do?” Kai asked.
“You have to feed it. Technically it’s not alive like you are, but it’s a smart idea to think of it as alive in some way. It has power. It can even get out of control and destroy and kill.”
“I don’t want to light a fire,” said Leo, suddenly sheepish.
“It’s okay, Love. If you treat it right and respect it, the fire will be your marshmallow-searing pal. First things first. We need fire food. What does it eat?”
“Wood!”
“Yes!”
“Sticks!”
“Yes!”
“Dried leaves!”
“Yes!”
“Marshmallows!”
“Not at first, Leo, but soon.”
We spent a good hour gathering fire food. We arranged it in a small pile with bigger sticks and firewood leaning in to a point, like a tepee.
“Why a tepee, Mom?”
“It’s about the dry stuff to burn, but it’s also all about the air. It’s a triangle. You need air, food to burn, and heat.”
We were ready. Kai struck the match and ignited the dried grasses. Leo cheered. The two boys wriggled with expectation. Keith leaned over and watched.
“Needs air,” he said, and blew gently. It took! The twigs were engulfed, and finally the small sticks lit up. The boys carefully put small twigs on until the tepee of twigs caught.
“Now add a small piece of firewood.”
Kai gently placed a piece of wood on the fire. It was a good fire.
“FIRE!” Leo shrieked and danced around it, whooping. “My turn to put a piece of wood on it!” He gently placed a small log.
They had risen to the challenge; for hours, they cared for their fire as if it were alive.
The next morning, we weren’t done with fire. Are we ever done with fire? As we sipped our assorted hot beverages around the campfire, Kai piped up. “Mom, we made that fire yesterday on our own.”
“Yeah, we did.”
“But people made the match, right? So we didn’t actually make that fire on our own.”
“Yeah, we cheated,” added Leo.
“Can we do it on our own?” Kai asked.
“I guess so…” I spotted Kai’s backpack with his notebook, crayons…and a magnifying glass.
“Grab your magnifying glass, get some dried grasses, and follow me.”
We went to a sunny spot, made a ring of stones, and put the grass in the middle. I aimed the glass so that the sun shone through and made a small circle of light on the grass. “You guys have the power to change sunlight into fire.”
“How?”
“You’re taking its energy, and kind of smushing it together and focusing the rays in one section. That’s a lot of heat. Hold it steady and see what happens to your dried grass.” It wasn’t done in an instant. It took several stops and starts; but eventually, there was smoke, and then there was fire.
“I like camping.”
“Me too.”
“Can we have s’mores tonight? Pleeeeeeease!”
“If you make the fire, I’ll find the marshmallows.”
From Mama Gone Geek by Lynn Brunelle, © 2014 by Lynn Brunelle. Reprinted by arrangement with Roost Books, an imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA. roostbooks.com
