Of Fires and Aches

Lighting the fire this morning proved tough, everything was soaked through, but I did finally get it going.

Journal Two. 8th November 2010.

Fire lighting is a hugely important skill, and one that builds morale when you succeed. So much of it, as in any skill, is in the mind. If you think you cannot light the fire in certain conditions then your chances of success are slim. If you know you will light it, no matter how long it takes, then you are half way there, even before you start.

Since I started heading out into the hills and woods, many years ago now, I have never failed to light a fire when I have tried. I attribute much of this to my sheer bloody-mindedness, which in this scenario is a bonus (and to lots and lots of practice) and, as a case in point, on the morning of the 8th it took the best part of an hour to get the fire going to the point where I could safely leave it, knowing it would not go out. I did not give up, despite my firepit being finger-deep in water—I merely laid a number of oak logs over this and built the fire upon their raised platform, the eventual fire boiling away the water below.

I suppose the moral of this piece is this—if you are interested in anything at all, you need the correct mental attitude and the willingness to put in a lot of practice (and failure, that really helps you learn, too—you can fail to light a fire, over and over, right up until you succeed, and there’s no other feeling like that). Reading about skills can only take you so far, you need to actually do them.

I had arisen from a night of storms to find the mountains gaining an increasingly white cap. The wind, I later discovered, had been a steady 80kph (50mph), with gusts topping 160kph (100mph). As someone who had grown up in Orkney, this was not a big, big wind—but Orkney is not wooded. The crack, the snap and the boom as branches broke and twisted, accompanied by the shift and flexing in the ground, where the matted roots were shaken and pulled, was rather exciting and, at times, frightening.

The only damage to my shelter was a small, forearm-length square of moss covering, which was lifted and turned over. I replaced it, pegging it down with a twig or two and my home was repaired, just like that.

Strangely, despite the storm, I had slept straight through for ten hours, without waking.

Out of my shelter, leaves that had seemed lustrous and glowing only a day or two before now seemed dull, lifeless and dead. Everything began to be tinged in sepia, as the sky stayed dark, all colour apparently blown away by the storm.

I worked hard again this day, gathering many logs, carrying them back to my shelter and sawing them up into 6ocm (2’) lengths. As I worked, the wind continued to lash the trees with an angry ferocity and, sometimes, a branch would fall near me. I was thankful nothing larger than an acorn hit me directly, although even that, wind-thrown, hurt.

My woodpile grew and grew. Despite the freezing temperatures that day, I kept shedding layers as I sawed and split wood, until I was topless and still somehow too hot.

As the day progressed, my muscles and joints began to ache. I put this down to all the hard work I had been doing, and the headache which appeared towards dinner time due to the dim light in which I was working on gifts in the shelter.

Bedtime was not the most fun that day. I was feeling very tired and sore, my eyes and head hurt more and more, and I had begun to feel cold inside.