My formative elementary years were spent at a camp and conference center in the middle of Minnesota. Lots of outdoor activities. One of which was campfires.
My brothers and I made lots of fires, kept fires going, we were around lots of them, campfire donuts, smores, entire meals made over the campfire.
So now, years later, when I’m doing a fire in our backyard two things come to mind…
-I know how to build a fire. I know you can’t just throw logs on top of newspaper and expect results. But rather, there is a process. Simple but important.
-Perhaps more importantly, once the fire is going, there’s an intuitive sense of how to make very slight adjustments that cause meaningful results…how to move stuff around to get more flames or less flames while keeping it hot. The adjustments are hard to explain but easy to see once you can see them.
With most of the things we do, it’s partly built on learned process and partly built on developing intuition and artistic skill.
It’s those insightful slight adjustments that make all the difference.
