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Tim McWelch, Earth Connection -- I know this is kind of random, but I was thinking fondly of some old friends the other day. I remembered a very fun little contest we used to have. It was the "Mini Tinder Bundle Contest".
You probably have already gotten an idea of how it works. Who can produce a flame with the most tiny tinder bundle possible?? We all got quite good at working small bundles of premium tinder. It was typical to see one little spurt of flame that lasted about 3 seconds from a cotton ball sized tinder bundle.
What's the point of playing such a game??
Well, foremost is the practice of frugality. There are usually many fires contained in the wood of the average fire kit. But there are only so many fires in a bag full of tinder. We always had plenty of fire kits laying around, but we made so many fires that we were always running out of tinder. That's how the contest was born.
We made lots of coals, and couldn't bear to just crush them out or let them starve. So we always made a little flame somehow, before letting the coal go out. Call it an offering to the Creator if you need to qualify it. We rarely spoke of such lofty things.
It just never seemed right to try too hard to explain the Chain of Fire Command. Which is, if you were wondering:
- God - or fire gods - or whatever your Faith tells you,
- the wood made by the guy or chick mentioned above,
- the moisture in the wood,
- the level of decomposition in the wood,
- the general luck of the day, if you believe in luck, and
- the beggar... YOU!
Two of the most important are luck ["Do you feel lucky, punk..." are you feeling the luck of the day?] and the very bottom of the totem pole, "US"... the paupers begging fire alms from all the entities and conditions higher on the Chain of Fire Command totem pole.
Some days, when the fire won't come, all those entities and conditions above are really just letting us know where our place is - we are at the very bottom of the Fire Totem Pole.
See, it's just too complicated to really explain very well, and frequently it's quite a personal matter how we feel about all this stuff. But, it just didn't seem right to make coals and let them die. So, that's why we made the Mini Tinder Bundles. Mostly out of respect for the fire and the Gods that gave it to us.
Regardless, I'm uselessly pontificating here...
So, try this mini tinder bundle trick just for practice, make a cotton ball sized bundle of really fluffy stuff. Pound out a coal on your favorite hand or bow drill kit. Then see if you can get it to make a tiny flame with the mini tinder bundle. If you have success make the bundles smaller, and smaller, and smaller. See how small you can go and still get a flame.
This is a resource saving technique for use when there is no emergency. Just starting a little fire for no special reason. If you really are in trouble, use an armload full of tinder. Make sure your bundle of fire has no chance of going out before the sticks light.
"Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?"
The Mini Tinder Bundle by Tim MacWelch, Copyright © 2008 in Earth Connection Handout Series 2, Used here with permission
ALL TEXT, PHOTOS, AND GRAPHICS ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. NO PART OF THIS ARTICLE MAY BE COPIED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF EARTH CONNECTION, LLC.
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