You are not allowed to help me, the child said.

Lordy,

what involuntary trace had betrayed me? I mean, the girl hadn’t even been looking at me! I must have accidentally exuded the scent of unwanted intervention, of meddling. I must have shifted molecules unconsciously, disturbing her purpose.

I wasn’t going to, I said. I was just watching.

And I really was - couldn’t take my eyes off it all - but now I knew that I needed to be more vigilant and thoughtful and still. She continued, with purpose, satisfied that I now knew the parameters.

All of a sudden she stood up and walked off. I turned and watched her go. Was she still engaged here or off on a new adventure well away from my presence and inevitable intrusions. But she soon returned and with fistfuls of a pale cotton-like substance which she immediately started to arrange under the slivers of kindling. I was desperate to connect; I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but I suppressed the impulse to do so and just watched carefully.

Small slender fingers, dirty at the edges, set to and nimbly organised the thin snappy sticks, dried grass and the unfamiliar white fluff she collected from the reeds by the pond. It was delicate and precise work: she knew what she was doing and exactly what she expected of the individual parts. She then took a flint and steel from a black plastic toolbox and attempted ignition.

A friend now joined her - unbidden but welcomed in with a shuffle to the side to make space - and they worked silently and swiftly and smoothly together. They came across all sorts of problems - I could see them materialising - yet these were all addressed in the order that they presented themselves and without any fuss and nonsense. And thinking about it now, I doubt they would even have thought of them as problems or of their tackling them as problem-solving. They were simply way-points on the journey to ignition, heat and light and thence a couple of servings of piping hot popcorn.

Within a few minutes a spark had made contact and spread. This was a moment of wonder for them and for me - it’s a phenomena that will always enthral - but it wasn’t chance or accident or magic. It was understanding and tenacity and purpose. It was solid science. I was particularly impressed by the way that they incrementally adjusted their technique with the flint and steel, eventually discovering - through visible trial and error - that to provide a solid base to push the steel against enabled effort to be shifted away from keeping that steady as they struck with the flint to maximising effort into the scraping action. This massively increased the amount of sparks created leaving the fluff and kindling defenceless to the relentless barrage and guaranteeing its quick combustion.

They had obviously done this before, but that in no way diminished its power and testament, and it was a marvel to watch. I guess we would call it learning, or certainly compelling evidence of such. I’m sure they couldn’t have cared less what we called it.