Braiding Sweetgrass

arm pushes and pulls in one smooth draw without breaking the
plane of the upright shin. So much depends on the architecture,
stability in three dimensions and fluidity in the fourth.
So much depends on the motion of the shaft against the board
so that movement becomes friction, heat building and building,
spinning and spinning the drill down on the bowl, burning its way
into a black and shining space so smooth the pressure and heat
burn from the wood a fine powder, which gathers together in its
need for warmth until it forms into a coal that falls under its own
weight through a notch in the board onto the waiting tinder.
So much depends on the tinder, the flyaway bits of cattail fluff,
the softened wads of cedar bark rubbed between hands until the
fibers are loose and mingled with their own dust, the shreds of
yellow birch bark torn like confetti and all formed into a ball like a
warbler’s nest, a rough loose weave, a nest for a firebird where a
coal will be laid, the whole wrapped in a sleeve of birch bark open at
the ends for the entrance and exit of air.
Time and again I get to this point, where the heat has built and
the fragrant smoke from the burning cedar bowl begins to rise
around my face. Almost, I think, almost, and then my hand slips
and the spindle goes flying and the coal breaks apart and I’m left
with no fire and an aching arm. My struggle with the bow drill is a
struggle to achieve reciprocity, to find a way that knowledge, body,
mind, and spirit can all be brought into harmony, to harness human
gifts to create a gift for the earth. It’s not that the tools are lacking
—the pieces are all there, but something is missing. I do not have
it. I hear again the teachings of the seventh fire: turn back along
the path and gather up what has been left beside the trail.
And I remember shkitagen, the firekeeper fungus, the holder of
the spark that cannot be extinguished. I go back to where the