Thank you Prometheus, Hand drill fire

As you may know, Prometheus was the titan in Greek mythology who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the mortals on earth. His punishment by Zeus was to be strapped to a huge rock for all eternity having his liver eaten out by an eagle every day, and having it grow back every night to be eaten again. Fire is an interesting subject for me for many years. Not just the adolescent lighting of a match just to watch it burn, but a true, deep respect for fire as a whole. Before modern thought came around there were four main elements, water, earth, air and fire. Water, earth, and air just exist, they do not require some external factors to be, they just are. You can see earth and water, you can feel the air. Fire on the other hand has to be created. There is nowhere that fire just exists. Fire can give warmth and safety, but at the same time, it can destroy. It is no wonder to me how the early humans came to worship this great thing. My great admiration of fire occurred early in childhood much to the displeasure of my parents. I have always wondered how fire was discovered so I went to the internet and found the many ways primitive man was thought to have created this life giving substance. I found several methods and I am looking forward to trying the all out but for my try I will try the hand drill method. In a strange twist of fate, there is a sizable cattail swamp between the highway and the service road. I went out and cut a few straight stalks to use as my spindle.

I also noticed on a walk through my neighbor hood, some very tall beautiful Cedar trees. So I grabbed my Bowie knife and went for a hike and split off two pieces of fallen dry wood. One is sapwood, the other has a thick layer of heartwood. I found the heartwood is too hard for using so I'll just hold on to it for something else.




All this happened about a month ago, and this morning I felt like Tom Hanks from Castaway! I HAVE CREATED FIRE!!! Every couple of days I would pull out my heart and spindle and spin until my hands were raw. I'd get some smoke and some dust but my hands and arms would give out. today the planets aligned and I got an ember! Jeez do my hands hurt now...