Breaking out the bowdrill kit again, I arrange my instruments on a flat patch of grass, fighting myself the whole way. I’ve been complacent about starting to make fires by friction, and now that I’m in a smaller camp to begin the rice harvest and we’re determined to not use matches, if we don’t use bowdrill, we won’t have fire.

I place the fireboard in front of me, settle it under the arch of my bare foot. Tighten the tension of the string on the bow, keep my knife ready to the side. I twist the spindle into the string and meticulously adjust my posture for maximum efficiency.

I don’t want to do this, I want to be able to flick a tiny wooden stick and feel the burn of sulfur in my nose and just know that I’ll be able to have fire and cook–

The resistant chatter ricocheting through my brain fades into the rhythm of the bow, the constant flow of tiny adjustments. More speed here, less pressure there, until I hit the sweet spot, the thrum of friction that my body remembers even after two turns of the seasons, and fragrant smoke drifts into my face.

Consistency, I remind myself. I don’t need to be stronger, I don’t need to be faster, I just need to be smooth, consistent.

I stop, arms trembling, and the smoke holds, winding steadily upward from a tiny pile of black powder, its heart breathing red. Shaky, I sandwich the living ember between two pieces of charcoal and blow, watching the nascent fire spread like lava between my hands. I blow and blow and when she is ready to give birth I hurriedly set her down in the ashes of the hearth and place a bundle of tinder and blow again. A flicker of blue and yellow, then a lick of flame, hungry, reaching, consuming, crackling, fire.

This is solar power at its most basic, most powerful. Solar radiation from a fiery star reaching across the vacuum of space, filtered through a gaseous soup of atmosphere. Drinking light and carbon dioxide and water, the trees in an act of alchemy convert it to carbon, to living wood. The wood dies and ages, and a dance of friction and heat releases the very power of the sun.

I breathe one word of awe and gratitude, a reverence matches never taught me.

“Shkode.“