The Still Fire
Held on the threshold of the Hunter's Moon
There is a fire that is not for warmth.
Not for cooking, not for comfort, not for tending to our own nourishment alone. A fire — whether a glowing ember or a single lit candle — that is a door held open into the village.
Into Community. Into Brotherhood.
The fire re-m-embers us: that the entirety of our life is a ceremony. An offering.
But there is another fire, and we do not arrive at the first without it. The hearth fire. The fire of food and gathering, of preparation and integration — the fire brothers have always circled to become familiar with one another before the deeper silence comes. We arrive at the fire of the hearth to be brought into the fire of the heart. One tends the body and the belonging; the other tends the depths. This gathering is held between them.
And before we can gather at that deeper fire, there is something quieter that must come first. Before intention can take root in movement, there is awareness. Awareness is the still point that precedes all expression — it travels into the relational field without agenda, comes through the senses, deepens into the world of the seen and the unseen. It plumbs the depths, where our being remembers itself as fully relational.
Where we remember we belong to a village.
The world is always inviting us into this remembrance. The trees. The waters. The birds. Even the stones.
And the fire.
There is a stillness that comes in solitary silence. And there is a stillness that arrives in collective silence — men, together, saying nothing, tending one flame. Most of us have never known the second kind. It is what we are gathering for.
Here, our breath softens. Our heart smiles. Our awareness becomes intention becomes prayer — held in the silence of a village.
This is an invitation for brothers to gather in willingness. Willingness to come back to the fire. To come back to awareness. To travel the depths of silence, and remember the village to which we have always belonged.
Two days and nights
on the threshold of the moon
We will gather on the threshold of the Hunter's Moon — October 23–25. In the forest, but not far. The darkness and the fire are our wilderness here — and the Hunter's Moon, rising soon after sundown and setting near dawn, will tend the night alongside us.
Arrive. Settle. Prepare. Converse. Become familiar with the fire, and with each other.
Solitude. Wandering. Returning. Nourishment. And then… the Fire — held through the night, sundown to sunup. In silence. Together.
Rest. Nourishment. Integrate. Depart… for now.
This invitation is nearly all signal. Only a few details ask to be named.
- Close to Portland — 30 to 45 minutes away.
- Tent camping. (I can help source gear if needed.)
- This is not a wilderness expedition. Stay close; the container is the fire, not the forest.
- Everything held with intention.
Not just fed. Nourished.
Can we remember that life is not here for us as resource — but in relationship?
Everything within our time together is held with the care of relational harmony. Nothing separated. Nothing given over to the seduction of utility. So the food is not a passive participant — it is an active ally. The what and the how of our eating becomes as central to our awareness as the silence of the fire.
Know that you will be nourished. Not just fed. Nourished — to remember.
One of the gifts of solitude and contemplation is remembering — what was left behind in haste or confusion. Somewhere in the last century, we forgot that food isn't just about fuel for the machine. Some of our time together will be dedicated to remembering that our bodies and senses are multi-dimensional, and good food can nourish them all.
In slowing the process of cooking into awareness we can discover a two-way communication. We come to the realization that all the ingredients are offering a conscious gift to our total nourishment — including the plants — not just satiating our stomach. That gift is honored through attention and gratitude. Choosing and consuming food in this way provides daily strengthening of our health to keep dis-ease at bay, and even lends a positive mood. Come sit in community with your brothers, where nourishment is redefined.
Raised in a family that owned one of the earliest organic farms — little sugar, no soda, no breakfast cereals, no processed food — Daniel came to food with a perspective most of us were never given. As an adult he carried that understanding into the restaurant world: kitchen manager, executive chef, and eventually running a cooking school.
But being a chef, he'll tell you, doesn't guarantee knowing how to be a cook. After learning the craft, cooking became an improvisational act — the food itself telling him what it wanted to become. That turn brought an understanding that intention can alter the energy of food as much as the quality of the ingredients; that intuition matters as much as skill; that a cook's love of family or guest is literally imbued into the process, the ingredients, the meal.
All of this was poured into a concept he calls Colors of Taste — a small example of which we'll share together during our time at the fire.
The Fire of the Heart
Brad guides boys and men across the thresholds into manhood through immersive time in wild places — through presence, not instruction. His stance is simple: boys and men need to be met, not fixed. To be listened to deeply, held steady beside, and trusted to remember who they are.
"I came to this work the way most of us come to what matters — through living it. Through seasons of forgetting and the grace of return."
He tends this fire the way he tends every threshold: with honesty, with care, and with the quiet conviction that remembering is possible — that a man belongs to a village, and always has.
Always in nature. Always in service of what's real.
There is a number, and there is what moves beneath it.
The range holds the real things — the land, the food prepared by hands that listen, the days, and the tending that follows you home. Named because the world is real and asks to be met. Where you land within it is yours to feel, not to justify — an act of reciprocity, not calculation.
And beneath the number: this is not a transaction. Nothing here is bought. The number names a cost; it does not name your worth, or the worth of what wants to move through this fire. We are practicing, together, an older way of exchange — one that remembers we were never separate, never even, never square.
So if the signal rings clear but the finances are what stand between you and this fire — say so. Simply. It will be met, with no story asked and nothing to prove. There is room here, and there are ways, and we will find them together. A man belongs at this fire because he heard it — not because of what he can bring to it.
Venmo @Brad-Korpalski — full payment, or a deposit of $150 to hold your place. If you place a deposit, the balance will be asked of you by September 23rd.
If you hear the signal, come to the fire.
Reach Brad →Come as you are. Leave what's ready to be left.