Hot Coals Really A Walk On Mild Side

The night is black. The coals are red.

A 12-foot glowing carpet stretches out before me. The coals, freshly raked from a log bonfire set earlier, resembles an aerial view of some city ravaged by a World War II bombing raid.

Like Hindu mystics of yore, I am about to walk barefoot across a 1,200-degree trail of terror.

I am not insane. I am not nervous.

I am not afraid that Col. Cinders will be my new nickname. And my peaceful easy feeling isn’t due to the New Age malarkey I’ve been listening to for the past three hours.

I just know the cold reality of physics will spare me from a hotfoot.

Science, alas, is not on the menu at the Saturday night firewalk seminar, held at the Scabrock Garden restaurant west of Spokane. This is a place of drum-beating mysticism, group hugs and wishful thinking.

Please, don’t confuse the well-intentioned people here with rational explanations. That would take all the pizazz out of a coal stroll.

“I’ll tell you right now,” says Kevin Hooey, “I have no idea of what makes it work.”

Hooey is our certified firewalk instructor. That’s really his name, Hooey. It’s Hooey’s job to help this group of about 30 adults and children obtain the “life-changing transformation” that results from a firewalk.

We are told this over and over: Firewalks help people stand up to the boss, drop emotional baggage, ascend to a higher plane … But how does it work?

Some rely on God or an elevated spirituality to protect their feet. Others are more from the mind-over-matter school of anti-thought.

Whatever the source, Hooey wants us to channel our collective energy in support of those who will “walk across 1,200 degrees and get a new life.”

Hooey would make a good Boy Scout leader. The portly, affable man is pretty good at getting the ol’ motivational juices going.

A pilgrim, you see, doesn’t just go straight to firewalking. We first must have a go at some minor miracles such as breaking arrows and bending 7-foot pieces of steel rebar with our necks.

One by one, most of us attempt these challenges and succeed.

The metal arrow point is placed in the hollow of the neck. The feathered end rests on a piece of wood held by Hooey. The idea, he says, is to thrust your neck forward without fretting about the arrow.

It looks like a sure way to imitate Gen. Custer’s last stand, but there is little danger to these mind games.

The arrows are brittle. The leverage between neck and feathered end concentrates at the arrow’s mid-section, which snaps like a stale breadstick.

Ditto for the rebar. Steel is much stronger than flesh, but leverage is bigger still. The forward forces of mere necks bend the rebar like a noodle.

Yet as each arrow breaks and each rod bends, the audience members act as if the person doing the bending or breaking just set a new record for the mile.

Why some people fall so easily for these parlor tricks is the mystery to me.

And that’s what firewalking is: just another parlor trick.

“The laws of physics are what’s operating with a firewalk,” says Joe Nickell, a columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer, who explains firewalking with a simple household analogy.

Heat an oven to 350 degrees. Bake a cake. When it’s done, everything in the oven will be 350 degrees. Yet you can touch the cake gently with your fingers without getting burned. Grab the pan and it’s Blister City.

Why? Because cake doesn’t conduct heat the same way metal does.

Coals, too, are rather inefficient heat conductors. Don’t get me wrong. Stand in the coals too long and you’ll barbecue like a slab of sirloin. Keep your feet moving and you, like me, can be a firewalking phenom.

And so, with no spirit guides to protect me, I step forward. The hot coals crunch under my weight like Styrofoam popcorn.

Six or seven steps and it’s over. The coals felt cooler than a barefoot hike over hot cement on the Fourth of July.

Piece of cake, Mr. Hooey. Hooray for science!