Fire. Traveling on your own, you create companions. As the I-Ching says: He who travels with two, lessens the party by one. He who travels alone finds a companion. My most pleasing companion is a small, friendship fire. Except in rare pockets of micro climate, there are no trees in the tundra. In certain protected places grow tall shrubs, clusters of willows, that can hide a sleeping bear. Otherwise, there is nothing taller than I am. Willows provide the wood. On early trips, I brought an ax and a saw. Later, I only brought clipping shears. Now I just walk near camp and pick up dead wood. No bark, just lovely silver/white twigs the girth of a finger. It takes time to gather enough wood. I pile the sticks beside a small stone circle where I will build my fire. Some dry moss, several sheets of toilet paper, laid under a few first sticks is enough to start. Holding a stick, I adjust the burning ones, pile on more, or a lot more. I spend hours feeding a fire, poking it, staring into it. Some pieces of wood flare up green, or blue, but it’s the constant flames flickering, the red coals pulsing, the heat, that mesmerize. The next morning, a kick or two scatters the rocks, the ash, and the small, charred ends. Another person would have to look intently to detect there’d been a fire.
On one trip, in the early 1990s, coming down the Contwoyto river into the Great Fish River, I found plenty of wood. I came across a failed forestry project. Numerous small, dead trees stood upright along the river, four sided pines that had failed to germinate. Each dead tree had attached to it a metal label with stamped numbers. I puzzled over it, eventually pulling up a bundle to burn on my trip. Only later did I learn these were part of the largest land claim rush in North American history. The Northwest Territory between Hudson Bay and the MacKenzie river were staked in the hope of capturing a diamond pipe. The land rush was for industrial grade diamonds discovered by Charles Fipki. A Canadian geologist, he secretly built on the knowledge of his geologist father who speculated decades earlier there were diamond pipes in northern Canada. By the time Charles proved it, the discovery equipment was capable of the divination. He worked in secret knowing ‘the big boys’ like DeBeers, or HP, would overwhelm him, if they knew what he intended to find. After his discovery, for a few years, he was the wealthiest man in Canada. Early on, penny stocks for exploration companies made and broke numerous people. Monster dwellings of those who did well line the southwest skyline of Yellowknife like Monopoly houses.
Sitting with a fire is one of the oldest things homo sapiens have done. Tonight, in company with my small arctic fire, I touch a past happily left behind by many. When we lose our kith with the natural world, what happens? The cross currents and the tidal pulls from what’s ancient vs what’s modern, lead me to feel our scientific and biblical stories about the natural world have to change. If everything comes from mother earth: cars, cell phones, houses, nuclear reactors, ships, coffee cups, coffee, clothes, our food. If everything does derive from her, it’s time we stop treating the earth like dirt.
Sitting still. Watching a fire. Not moving. The sun won’t set, I have 6 hours of twilight before dawn begins. Down a slight incline is the water. Over the water comes a little breeze, ruffling the glassy surface into an incoherent mirror. From under the water appears a loon, most ancient of birds. A red throated loon, only a dark profile, but her haunting cry gives her away. I’m lying prone, one ankle on top of the other, facing the smoke to keep the bugs at bay. I feed the fire, keeping it alive like a conversation. On the other side of the fire appears a weasel, thin as a pencil. Then he’s gone.
