In the Fall of 2022, I participated in the Wilderness Awareness School’s Wild Women’s Retreat. It was two days filled with learning skills from fire-making and plant medicine to building an awareness in the outdoors and nature play.
While the entire weekend was inspirational and beautiful, and above all, super fun, one of the sessions that stuck with me most was the fire-making class. So much so that I wrote a whole story about it a few months after the fact. I was also so inspired by our teacher, Marina Rivera, who brought beauty, grace, and a spiritualness to the act of fire-making. Not to mention she taught us how to chop wood and that was a lesson in feeling like a true badass.
Because of that session, I’m so happy to bring Marina on to the podcast this week.
Marina Rivera is from Ciudad Obregón Sonora, a little city in el Valle del Yaqui. Known for its agricultural lands and the best tacos and hotdogs in the world. She spent her teen years attending several different rite of passage programs and apprenticing under two indigenous elders who stoked and tended her budding curiosity for nature connection. As an adult she dedicated her time to studying in several different schools learning survival, primitive skills, ethnobotany, and other complimentary skills. For the last five years she worked as a wilderness skills instructor teaching these skills and guiding kids, teens, and adults in rite of passage experiences and expeditions. More than anything she loves her dogs, a good BBQ, sitting by a fire, and throwing sharp objects at stumps.
Marina is currently living in Western Montana and is working towards launching her own company teaching wilderness, bushcraft, and fire-making skills. You can follow Marina and her adventures on Instagram @apocalypseflower.
Resources from the episode:
And for those interested in knowing how a bow drill works, here’s a short video that shows the basics:
Credits:
Cramming for the Apocalypse artwork by Amanda Burnham
Music by DayFox
Fire Making with Marina Rivera - Ep. 5