I spent last night at Cannon River Scout Reservation (the higher-ups renamed it Philippo a couple years back, but I know the real one…) for an Order of the Arrow ritual. OA is an exclusive group in Scouting that requires getting voted in by your peers and/or cronies, but to earn each of the three ranks—Ordeal, Brotherhood and Vigil—there is a test the candidate must overcome.
I don’t want to spoil the ritual, but to reach Vigil (what this weekend was for), one part of the test is to start a fire. I was a guide for one of the candidates and… he had a rough start. I was given a box of 32 matches and a candle before we left—I used two of them to burn most of the wax off the wick. Maybe I shouldn’t have wasted the second, but there were 32 matches, right?
So we got to the site with 30 matches left. I eventually tried to help out—unfortunately, my physical efforts and verbal suggestions were all for naught—I couldn’t get the fire started either. Time ran on and the box was slowly but surely becoming lighter and lighter. He’d strike a match, but the flame wouldn’t last long enough to get anything burning. Or when he’d get a twig burning, he’d drop another piece of wood right on top of it and snuff it out. After multiple failed efforts, the kid gave me the box… it had one match inside. And he still hadn’t started his fire.
I had a map of the campsite in my back pocket, so I gave that to him and he tried using strips of the paper and small pieces of bark to light the fire. Without matches, what was he using? The candle. He’d hold some bark over the flame, get it lit, hold it flat instead of pointing downward (like I was suggesting) and it would go out almost immediately. More and more paper and shreds of bark were disappearing into the pile of charred wood and ash.
Finally, finally, he had a decent fire burning and I was allowed to leave. Just as I got back to the shelter, I saw Dad coming out of the building—he was about to call me on my cell phone to see if I’d gotten lost. I walked inside, looked at the clock, found out when we left, did some calculations—it took the kid an hour and a half, two dozen matches and the candle to get his fire started. And his test had just begun.
