MIDDLEBURY — Picture this: 12- and 13-year-old boys heading into the Catskill Mountains to tend a fire alone for 24 hours.
It might sound like a rite of passage from an earlier age, a challenge set for boys who might one day live on the animals they trapped or the edible plants they gathered.
This scene, though, takes place in August of 2009 and forms the central narrative of Peter Ferland’s documentary “Tending Fires,” which he will screen at Bridge School in Middlebury this Saturday at 7 p.m.
