Fire

From the first hearths to today’s wildfires, FIRE traces the element that helped make us human.

In FIRE, writer, storyteller and outdoor educator Richard Skrein explores humanity’s enduring fascination with fire- from its role in our earliest evolution to its place in myth, ritual, craft and the climate crisis. Combining history, science, memoir and practical firecraft, Skrein examines how fire has fed, protected, transformed and challenged us across millennia.

Moving through folktales, landscapes and lived experience, FIRE travels from ancient hearths and sacred ceremonies to snowy mountains, coastal fires, underground caves and modern wildfires. Along the way, Skrein reveals fire as both life-giving and dangerous: a source of warmth, nourishment, community and wonder, but also a force capable of devastation when severed from balance and right relationship.

Urgent, original and richly atmospheric, FIRE is both a celebration of the flame and a timely reflection on what we have done with it. With stories, insights and practical invitations woven throughout, Richard Skrein offers readers a fresh and compelling way to think about one of the most elemental forces in human life.

At once poetic and politically resonant, intimate and expansive, this is a book that invites us to come closer to the fire- and to see it anew.

About the author

Richard Skrein is a woodsman, oral storyteller and fire expert. He works as a facilitator and trainer to create opportunities for learning, growth and healing in the outdoors and has a particular passion for making this accessible to hard-to-reach and underprivileged communities. He believes in the power of the outdoors to educate, nurture, inspire and heal. Indeed, much of his work is centred around a fire, so he sees first-hand every day what fire offers a community; nourishment, warmth, comfort, awe and wonder. He is the author of Fifty Things to Do in the Wild, Fifty Things to Do with a Stick and Fifty Things to Do in the Snow.