Come for the Skills, stay for the Ego Death

Cameron and I kneel next to each other to practice friction fire on the shop floor. We're both taking a break from endless hours of rasping and hatcheting on our bows--a project we've been working on since November.

My spindle goes flying out in a random direction and, in the resulting loss of leverage, I crack myself in the head with the stick I'm holding in my left hand. I sit down with a thump, eyes watering, glasses akimbo. Smoke pours off my spindle and board, sweat drips down the small of my back, but as of yet--no coal.

"It's just so easy, isn't it? Like all the skills we've learned this year." Cameron smirks a little at me, his own lack of success evident as he packs up his bow-drill kit, minus a coal. Cameron knows this magic, though. He earned himself a couple of coals the week before. Still, this work is humbling. He might have turned the trick once or twice, but he hasn't achieved consistency--yet.

I grunt in response. I make one more attempt, then pack up my own kit. I wasn't trying to make a coal today anyway--I was just practicing. I'm not working, I'm playing.

I don't know if I'm avoiding frustration with this attitude, or not creating enough need for myself. If I were out in the middle of a snow storm, freezing to death, and this were my only way to create fire, would I be able to do it? I just don't know.

I can't be attached to the outcome--of anything. There are unknown forces at work here, with this bow-drill kit (the pieces of which I have changed a couple of times), with my skill (steadily improving), with my own internal mastication. There's a secret combination of the three I have yet to unlock.

Rev furnishes me an explanation for my difficulties. I have been giving my fire away to others, he proposes. Or others have taken it from me. I agree with him, in part. If I don't have enough energy, even physical energy, to practice this or any skill, I can't expect to get better at it. And I have been ignoring bow-drill until this month, neglecting it as I desperately tried (and failed) to weave who I'm becoming at Trackers into my "real" life.

Still, it's not just that. It's that...I am, still, invested in the outcome. My mind isn't quiet enough. A coal is earned with a still mind. Detachment. Incremental improvement. Proper application of weight. Endurance. Patience. When I started, I couldn't saw back and forth more than 30 times in a row before I collapsed in exhaustion. On Wednesday, I count to 75 before I give up. Practicing on my own on Friday, I do two rounds of 100 strokes, separated by mere minutes. The pile of resulting dark charcoal dust is two inches high. The coal will come--it wants to come. I just have to be worthy of it.

***

On a frosty, snowy Wednesday, when every other Trackers program is cancelled, we trek down to Oaks Bottom. I've never been here before, even though it is a stone's throw from Trackers HQ and they use it for programs all the time. The park is quiet, bright, a crystal Narnia broken by the sounds of nearby traffic and the calls of Pileated Woodpeckers, Spotted Towhee, hummingbirds, and Canadian Geese. I crouch by a tree, enthralled with the flashes of orange on the Towhee nearby. I have never seen this bird before--or I have never noticed this bird before. It is so beautiful, that bright orange against the perfect white snow. I'm in love. I want to cry. I tell Grey he can just leave me there for the rest of the day.

The birds alert on something we can't see--not us, they seem to be perfectly content with our observation--and disappear into the bushes and trees. We move on.

Grey is ahead of me by about 20 feet. He stops, suddenly, makes a "be quiet" motion. He tells me to avoid looking directly at the deer. They can sense my gaze. I creep up on him. kneeling in the snow with a hand on his back. There are deer. Two deer, then three--a mother and two yearlings, we think.

I take out my phone. I'm hunting--with a camera. I leave our little grouping and move around the edge of a thicket of brambles, approaching the deer from a clear path up to the trees and grass they are nibbling on.

Momma deer stops her munching and looks at me as I crunch my way towards her through the snow. I freeze. I avert my gaze, I look off, indirect. I quiet my mind. I'm in plain sight, but I'm not here. I'm not a person. There is no me. I'm not here. I'm trying, of course, to minimize my obtrusiveness, so my sublimation isn't perfect. I'm aware of the act of trying. But there is a softening, a fading of the edges of my consciousness into the pool of life around me. I smooth out, I don't stick out like a sharp spire in an otherwise flat landscape.

She goes back to eating. I move again. She looks up. There is no me. I'm not here.

Two, three, four times, interspersed with the silent snap of photos of momma and her yearlings. She looks at me as I'm mid-step and I freeze, right foot growing roots, left foot hovering with my knee in front. Five, ten, fifteen seconds. I'm not normally capable of this kind of balance, especially not on an uneven surface like this snow-over-mud. But there's no wobble. There's no me to wobble. I'm not here. I am not I'm.

If there is a me, then I'm the deer, or the snow, or the cedar tree, or the blackberry brambles, or the cold, pointy air.

I get within fifteen feet of momma before she wanders off into the trees, taking her yearlings with her. I turn around and make my way back to the group. I can't speak. I have no words. Grey asks me how that was. "Terrible, right?" This is the week for smirking sarcasm, apparently. Maybe this is the way we can process the depth of what we feel. I head butt Grey's upper arm with my forehead, silently screaming, mouth agape, white clouds of water vapor streaming up as I hyperventilate and tremble a little--but no sound. There are no words. I'm not here.