Yesterday afternoon I found myself watching a DVD of the old Bill Moyers Skywalker interview with Joseph Campbell. I’d just met some new friends and it turned out that we are all Campbell fans, so, crammed on a couch, we watched the interview start to finish. One thing I always take away from Campbell is the idea that myths are a necessary part of what it means to be human, and that specific myths are central to every culture – that if they don’t exist at some given point in time in that culture’s history, they will eventually because they must.

So true. There are two boys in my wilderness school who brought this home last week. Thirteen year old John, a severely ADHD tactile kind of person, and Ivan, fourteen, a boy of precocious genius and a profound thinker. John is an extraordinary fire-starter and can get a roaring fire going within minutes using nothing but a bow-drill and some tinder, a skill admired openly by his peers. Ivan constantly amazes me with his insight and depth of thought.

Wednesday morning Ivan came to me and said:

“Mr Krupp, I had an amazing dream last night.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Okay. We were all in the cabin and we were wet and freezing cold and it was snowing. We tried and tried to start a fire but the wood was all wet and everybody was freaking out and thought they were going to freeze to death. Then John said ‘don’t worry’ and reached up and took a piece of the sun and got the fire going and we were warm and okay.”

“Wow,” I said, “Prometheus.”

“What?”

“You never heard of Prometheus?”

“No.”

“Oh, double wow then.”