Why ‘Groundfire’?
Groundfire Counselling & Community Work draws its name from a type of fire that burns under the surface of the forest floor. Ground fires move through thick layers of decomposing vegetation and can go undetected for a long time, as they produce little smoke and spread slowly. If there is enough fuel, these underground fires can burn through the winter and resurface into ‘surface fire’ come spring.
Like these fires, Groundfire is a practice of keeping sparks alive even underground, even through the winter. We do this by building relationships within community, passing sparks from person to person, to keep ourselves and our communities strong.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that all three founders of Groundfire live in areas that are intimately familiar with history and consequences of forest fire. Witnessing the pervasiveness of uncontrolled fire on these lands as a direct result of colonization and subsequent climate change both terrifies and inspires us to be difficult to suppress. We look to fire as something to respect and tend, and if our fires (metaphorically speaking) are safer from extinction underground, so be it.
