Playing with Fire

Of course fire is dangerous. It's an elemental force. 'Don't play with matches', we tell children. 'Don't light fires' say the landowners to the public.

And yet the use of fire is the clearest, and perhaps earliest element of human culture that distinguishes our learned behaviour from that of other animals. It is ubiquitous, from the internal combustion engines that power our cars to the proposed 'biochar' technology of the future.

Our control of fire may even have fast-tracked the evolution of the rest of our culture: an evening fire providing warmth and focus for conversation, music and ritual after the day's work. And we remain fascinated by the flicker and glow of real flames.

The paradox is that beyond our own property, it is now hard to find places where open fires are allowed. This fuels a vicious circle: without opportunities to make fire in the public landscape, we lose our ability to do so, and it becomes yet more risky to allow fires to take place.

I would argue for the need to reclaim this quintessentially human activity. By playing with fire, we learn how to control it, and it connects us with the elements of our world - fuel, air, heat, light and cabon.

Children will always want to start fires: why not teach them how to do it safely? On the family bushcraft course I co-created with Andy Noble www.naturescraft.co.uk , children as young as 5 learn about selecting fuel and kindling, fire-starting by spark and friction, and campfire husbandry.

I'm very much a beginner in bushcraft, but I regularly make and enjoy fires when wild camping below the tree-line. A well-managed fire poses no real danger, and enables us to stay outdoors longer, enjoy the night and connect more deeply with wild places. People will only value what they know and love. It's time that our national park authorities and other stewards of the natural landscape took a longer view of this issue, with a policy to tolerate responsible use of camp-fires coupled with a drive for better public fire-literacy.

This is my personal practice:

1. Use a firesteel - it's an alloy rod that produces hot sparks when struck with a steel striker or knife. Easy to use, never runs out unexpectedly and works in the rain.

2. Carry dry tinder - bushcrafters may sneer but cottonwool is cheap, light and effective.

3. Take a folding saw, and use it to trim timber to size. No point burning more than you need.

4. Find an existing fire ring or pit close to running water, which you need anyway if you're camping. Have a container for dousing close to hand. If you can't find an existing fire ring to camp by, you can cut an area of turf that you can replace the next morning.

5. Locate the landowner and secure permission for your fire (could be tricky!)

6. Gather yourself some bundles of progressively thicker twigs. You're looking for twigs about 12 inches long, initially the thickness of a match, ending up with logs as thick as your arm - a small fire won't need anything bigger. Gather dead wood from live trees (no leaves or buds on what you remove) or from the ground, but only if standing on end or resting on other timber: sticks lying down absorb misture from the ground. This will take about 45 minutes.

7. Ignite your tinder on a small twig platform and lay the bundle of thinnest twigs on top, followed rapidly by two bundles of slightly thicker twigs, etc etc until established.

8. Get dinner on the go.

9. Crack a beer and watch the stars come out.

10. In the morning, scatter any unburnt wood and replace any cut turf so as to leave no trace of your fire. If you cut more wood than you used, hide it out of sight for next time ...

Andy Noble's next family bushcraft course is on 19 and 20 September 2009. For info on this and other course, visit http://www.naturescraft.co.uk/ Mention Outdoor Culture and you get a discount ...

Fun in the Sun

A few pics here from a recent 2-day trip to Ennerdale, in the North West of the Lakes.

I'd been told that Ennerdale was the most beautiful valley in the Lakes.

Not your average Lakeland weather.

Climbing the ridge up beyond the tree line.




Ennerdale Water, from near the summit of Haycock - the hills of Galloway just visible across the sea.

Me on the summit of Steeple, with Great Gable on the left horizon.

Shadows descending to the valley floor.

Home sweet home down in the forest.

I couldn't resist a morning dip in the lake. It felt fantastic.

A special trip to a special place.

Echolocation

Outdoor Culture's first music event took place at BBOWT's Chimney Meadows Nature Reserve in Oxfordshire this month. Over two nights, 'Echolocation' was a twilight walk by the Thames featuring sound installations by Robert Jarvis, and was co-promoted by Oxford Contemporary Music.

60 local children came to the reserve a fortnight before the gig, to learn about the ecology of the site and listen to its soundscape. Robert helped them compose two pieces that we installed for the public show - one inspired by badger calls and the other by slowed-down birdsong.

More than 50 of the children had never been to the nature reserve before, despite living in the nearest villages. The site is beautiful - wetlands, riverbank and wildflower meadows re-seeded only this decade in one of Europe's largest arable reversion projects.

The Outdoor Culture mobile production office.

The Friday of the first show brought some freaky weather. At 9am I was laying power cable round the edge of the field while hailstones crashed around me. By 2pm I'd bent a pole on a borrowed shelter, and the high winds had crumpled a gazebo and blown a stage weight into the river. Robert fished it out with a boat hook.

The winds dropped and the skies cleared to blue before the audience arrived at 8pm, and as the sun set a golden moon rose behind the river. People milled around the tea tent and strolled between the installations. Children made bat masks, gathered natural treasures and listened to stories.

We gathered by the river after dark for the live performance of 'Echolocation', as Robert's electronica began to be triggered by the ultrasound of bats emerging to hunt.

'The main piece itself was haunting, in an incredibly beautiful location'

'The sounds were beautiful and there was a real sense of marvel'

'The lighting of the tree across the river, where the music took place, was magical'

'a memorable, inspiring and touching piece of work that connects profoundly ... and encourages much thought and reflection'

'It was a magic evening, with so many small touches'

'A really unusual and interesting evening'

'All the various activities led up well to the bat music. All in all, a great evening!'

'...unlike anything I have seen or heard of before'

By midnight on the second night, we'd packed up all the sound systems and the lighting, and the audience and crew had all gone home. I sat up outside my tent watching the moon arc over the trees.

Outdoor Culture is grateful to the PRS Foundation for new music for supporting this event.

My heart belongs to Dartmoor

Sunday 15 March. I left the Warren House Inn around 10pm and set off across the moor. You can't beat a night walk for a start to an adventure. I set the tent up just within the ruined walls of Grimspound, and reflected on the space around me. 24 hours previously I'd been jammed into the front of Wembley Arena with 10,000 other people all loving Elbow. Now I felt like the last man on earth.

This is where I woke up.

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I followed the ridge south over Hamel Down and popped into Widdecombe for lunch. Then it was back up onto the moor and eventually down to the River Dart, where I found a flat pitch next to a fire ring.

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I woke at dawn, the tent stiff with ice, and packed up briskly. The lichens, epiphytes and mosses reminded me of New Zealand.

I walked upstream to Dartmeet, spying wild swimming spots for warmer times, and then climbed over Huccaby Tor back onto the moor.

Bellever Tor looked like a good spot for lunch.

Beyond the tor, the dry grasslands and weathered trees could have been Californian, but the standing stones gave the game away a bit.

Wow.

Outdoor Art for HP16

I recently ran a creative consultation project as part of a project called Destination HP16, which is using the arts to help regenerate the villages at the heart of the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Other partners in the project include Artworks for Business, Creative Bucks, the Roald Dahl Museum, One Church Street Gallery, Misbourne Abbey, Chiltern District Council and Bucks County Council.

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My role was to produce a short artist's residency to generate ideas for public art in outdoor locations near Great Missenden, and to offer these ideas for public comment. I recruited the artist Pippa North and the mixed-age Eco Club of Great Missenden Primary School.

Pippa and I introduced the group to the concept of public art, and we discussed the ways in which art and the natural environment can relate to each other. I gave my slide show of pictures from the Lascaux cave paintings to Mark Wallinger's proposed Horse, and Pippa brought in an amazing range of sustainable and recycled art materials for the children to choose from.

Having taken a tour of some possible sites for public art within walking distance of the school and made an ephemeral nest-like piece for the village green, the children began to discuss and refine some ideas for more permanent art.

The children mostly proposed large structures that they would be able to climb around and occupy. They wanted to make art from environmentally-friendly materials that they could interact with and use as personal play spaces, and that could also provide habitats for wildlife.

The den concept seems to have a timeless appeal that is possibly even stronger in these times of adult supervision and indoor play: a recent survey by Natural England concluded that ony 10% of children in the UK play regularly in green spaces, compared to the 40% of adults who did so in their own childhoods. 81% of children and 85% of parents agree that they would like to see more unsupervised outdoor play, and yet it is a struggle to reverse this very recent cultural shift.

Of course, this issue is at the heart of what I'm trying to achieve with Outdoor Culture: a re-wilding of humanity that I believe to be crucial to the health of our children, our environment and our society. As Simon Barnes wrote in the Times earlier this year, 'Without non-human life we are less than human'. Our need for wildness in our tamed lives is as 'colossal, sinuous, sensuous' as the tiger who came to tea in Judith Kerr's story.

Back in Great Missenden, the children of the Eco Club made fantastic models of their ideas for outdoor public art (the tiger never made it past the first sketch), which we mounted as an exhibition at One Church Street Gallery. Pippa and I then spent a Saturday in the gallery showing people around the work and seeking their views on the concept of outdoor art in local woods and fields:

'Fascinating show - such imagination! The children's ideas are wonderful.'

'Lovely pieces, really stimulating. Would love to see them realised full size.'

'We really liked the Head and the Pirate Ship. Great work'

'The giant's head is a beautiful idea. I can imagine a big giant wandering around the Chiltern Hills ... his head sticking out over the tree line.'

The artist Pippa North found the project very fulfilling emotionally and professionally, and was particularly impressed with the children's focus and skills. The teachers found that the project has helped them re-think their approach to teaching art, and plan to create more time and space for processes that are child-led and less directed by adults.

Outdoor Culture continues to campaign with Destination HP16 for the development of a local outdoor gallery where artists, learners and audiences can connect with wildness through experience as well as imagination.

Many thanks to Pippa North, Nicola Keating, Lyndsey and Dennis Keeling, John Scrimshire and Malcolm Godwin.

Beech Life

Over the last month, works of art have emerged from green oak, forest sounds and the imagination of Nick Garnett, Gina Martin, Dan Cordell and Duncan McAfee, to form the new Sensory Trail at Burnham Beeches.

I first came to Burnham Beeches as a child and I've never forgotten it. Now it's the site of Outdoor Culture's biggest project to date, completed on 27 March 2009 just before my company's first birthday: six permanent sculptures, one temporary installation, one poem, six episodes of audio guide, made by four artists and sixty children.

The artists were asked to make work that reflects the spirit of this ancient woodland; to create tactile interest; to sculpt on a human scale; to bring a focus to specific sites without competing with their existing beauty.

There are lots more images on my website at http://www.outdoorculture.com/.

To find Burnham Beeches, go to http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/burnham . From there you can also download Duncan McAfee's sonic art and the audio guide he made with the Year 6 pupils of Farnham Common Junior School.

Enjoy!

White Rabbit

The problem with making art for the natural landscape, says the artist Nick Garnett, is the degree of beauty that's already there.


These photos were taken within an hour's walk of my house in the Chilterns AONB on Sunday 1 March 2009. I think they underline Nick's point!

These lines on the stump of a felled tree tell a story I can't quite read.

The art of geology - chalky brush strokes.

Just a few gorse flowers out so far. I'm looking forward to that sweet smell they pour out.

Bluebells pushing through the leaf litter. In a few weeks this forest floor will be luminous with colour.


Of course art and nature reflect one another. To talk of human artifice as something separate from natural ingenuity, to see the man-made as unnatural, masks the truth that we are every bit as wild as the bluebells. That's why they move us.