Braiding Sweetgrass

in the woods were spent felling, hauling, and splitting. “Firewood
warms you twice,” he would always say as we emerged from the
woods hot and sweaty. In the doing of it, we learned to recognize
the trees by their bark, by their wood, and by the way they burned
for different purposes: pitchy pine for light, beech for a bed of
coals, sugar maples to bake pies in the reflector oven.
He never said so directly, but fire making was more than just a
woodscraft skill—to build a good fire, a person had to work. There
were high standards; no piece of half-rotten birch was permitted in
his woodpile. “Punky,” he would say and toss it aside. Knowledge of
the flora was a given, as was respectful treatment of the woods, so
that you gathered without doing harm. There was always plenty of
standing dead wood there for the taking, already dry and seasoned.
Only natural materials went into a good fire—no paper or, heaven
forbid, gasoline—and green wood was an affront to both aesthetics
and ethics. No lighters allowed. We earned high praise for the ideal
one-match fire, but plenty of encouragement if we needed a dozen.
And at some point it became natural and easy, no feat at all. I
found a secret that always worked for me: to sing to the fire as I
touched the match to tinder.
Woven into my dad’s fire teachings was appreciation for all the
woods gave us and a sense of our responsibility for reciprocity. We
never left a camping place without leaving a pile of wood for the
next people on the trail. Paying attention, being prepared and
patient, and doing it right the first time: the skill and the values were
so closely entwined that fire making became for us an emblem of a
certain kind of virtue.
Once we mastered the one-match fire, then came the one-match
fire in the rain. And the snow. With the right materials carefully
assembled and respect for the ways of air and wood, you could