The Tom Brown School

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Other students are at the edge of a cornfield, practicing the graceful, excruciatingly slow movements we've learned for stalking. Still another is down on all fours, notebook at side, imitating the basic animal walking motions Brown has taught us. "You can't track an animal if you don't understand how it moves," he says.

A shrill squeaking sound—wood rubbing against wood—comes from behind me, and I cringe. I don't have to look to know that it's a student working a bow drill, the basic survival fire-starting apparatus consisting of a notched fireboard, a dowellike spindle, a handhold, a small bow and a tinder bundle. Making one, then starting a fire with it, was our first workshop. In typical Brown fashion, we were provided a chunk of cedar, the least desirable of acceptable woods. "If you can get a bow drill fire going with cedar," Brown says, "you can get one going with any of the better woods."

I'm embarrassed to be one of the few students who have yet to succeed. I sigh. What the heck, I'll try again. I get the drill I've made. I fluff up the tinder bundle and lay it on the floor, place the fireboard over it, wrap the bow's cord around the spindle, position the spindle's bottom end on the board, put the handhold on the top end.

OK. Left foot anchors the fireboard. Right knee behind left foot. Chest down tight against thigh, left arm braced across shin. Start sawing with the bow, easy at first, back and forth. Now pick up a little speed. Back and forth, back and forth. Faster. Push down harder on the spindle. There, some smoke. A little faster, bear down a little harder (I'm running out of breath, my arm's cramping). More smoke. Good, faster now, faster; push down a little harder . . . pop, clatter . . . the spindle flies off the board and across the room, just as it has countless times before. Feeling beaten, I walk over and pick the spindle up, forgetting that the end is hot, and burn my hand—injury added to insult.

Just then Frank, one of the school's instructors, comes around the corner. "Did you get your fire yet?" he asks jovially. I grimace. "Look," he says, "let's get together after tonight's lecture and see if we can't figure out what you're doing wrong."

"Nah, thanks, that's OK," I say, shrugging. "I'll just practice when I get home. It's not that important, no big deal."

I lie.

The afternoon's tracking lecture, like those before it, is electrifying. When Brown talks tracking, his voice shakes with excitement, his eyes burn with intensity, he paces back and forth, his hand flies across the blackboard to illustrate a point. He is obsessed with tracking and admits it. As a child, he developed a callus across his lower chest from spending so much time crawling on the ground poring over tracks.

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