Transforming the energy of the sun into a fire
Camping at Pfeiffer Big Sur and Jalama Beach
We stepped away for a weekend camping trip last week, and it was just what I needed. I always feel this when I drive away from Los Angeles. Just around the bend, after we pass Ventura and our highway scenery transforms from suburban to Pacific Ocean, I get the sense that I'm out of the urban bubble, and that openness awaits. We camped for a few nights amongst the redwoods up in Big Sur with our friends, followed by an overnight family camp at Jalama Beach.
This camping trip was extra special because it was the first time the kids and their friends built a campfire using the friction-fire skill, one of the very important ancestral skills they learned in school this year. It sounds so simple when I put a sentence together about the act of making a fire without using any modern tools, but it’s so much more than that. It requires intricate knowledge of the materials they gather, the timing of each step, and patience and resilience to work through the physically demanding process of creating enough friction between a wooden stick and the board they use.
I love what Coco’s beloved teacher told her when she created her very first “solo” coal (meaning that she started the fire all by herself) during this past school year. On one of the weekly canyon days, when students are immersed in nature-connection learning, Coco was struggling to get through the final push to ignite the fire. Her teacher, who was patiently cheering Coco, advised her to call upon the spirit of the sun within her and transform that energy into fire through her hands. As I watched Coco and Satchi make one last friction fire at Jalama Beach as the sun sank on the horizon, I felt the transformation of the energy. As they kept taking turns to maintain the frictional motion going without stopping, the last push right before the flame required pure determination and resilience, and I could feel the blaze in their eyes. When the fire finally burst inside the carefully collected and bundled grass in Coco’s two hands, gently held like Calcifer from the movie Howl’s Moving Castle, the collective awe filled the air.
I’m grateful for the time in nature when I was able to awaken and revive the sense of the tree and the ocean within me and to witness the kids’ strong connection to their own flame. I am also incredibly grateful for the time spent with friends and family, being fully present, exchanging stories around the fire, and sharing our collective and deep love for the natural world.
