Building a Fire from Scratch

I am a disaster in the kitchen! Any kitchen. In the past, I have survived on restaurants and I am ashamed to say, take-out food. I am feeling guilty because take-out food is responsible for so much waste. If I ever return to urban life, I will either dine at the restaurant or carry my own container for take-out. 

Living this lifestyle, I have come to realize eating is one of the most important things we do in our lives. For Eddie and I, the act of eating consumes most of our days: gathering and preparing our meals and properly disposing of our waste.  Of course, in the urban life, we rush around eating “bars” and in our cars. Eating is a nuisance in our minds. In reality, what we take into our bodies is the most sacred thing we can do. We are what we eat, what else could we be?

This may not sound like the biggest deal, and it isn’t compared to the other fears I will face, but I decided to take it on. I panic at the thought of cooking. I do, however, like the idea of preparing food to nourish my loved ones and me. I really don’t know the source of this fear or what cooking represents to me, but I fright at the thought of me at a stove. Eddie always cooks. Always. He is a delicious cook and

When I met Eddie, he didn’t mind my lack of talent as a cook and shared his gifts of gourmet-natural cooking.  Mostly he teases me or encourages me to learn to cook. I am thrilled with his delicious talents and could live happily eating his cooking and no other for the rest of my life. However, I would like to experience the spiritual element of nourishing myself. I already have grown psychologically from the act of gathering my own food. Today, I decided to face all these fears and learn to cook. I am afraid.

This morning I gathered many branches of different sizes and I built a structure that became my fire.  It is astonishing that this fire is the sun’s energy that was stored in a tree, now released. I put a pot of oats with water from our water supply and made a cereal that fed both Eddie and I. It was unremarkable in everyway, except that I had made it. In fact, it is what we have eaten most mornings, with fruit that we gather.

Eddie doesn’t like all the work involved in building the fire, nor the smoke it produces and often longs for a camping stove, but I find it a significant part of our lives down here.  I like the idea of all the time and work it requires. It feels healthy and natural, as I watch animals around us do the same thing. I watch the pelicans soar over the water, following a fish until it dives down into the water. It bobs up to float on top of the water without a fish. He immediately flaps his wings to take off in flight to try again. It is perfect.