In my chapter called “Agriculture Vs. Rewilding” I wrote about how agriculture is inherently destructive. I’ve lately come to revise this idea a bit. What inspired me to do this was looking at the origins of agriculture itself, and hearing from a few people that there are still agricultural people alive today who did not destroy their environments. Most of these people I would actually classify as horticulturalists, who practice some amount of agriculture, and not “full-blown” agriculturalists.

So… When is agriculture “sustainable”?

Agriculture was born in the flood plain. This is an important marker because when you practice agriculture in a flood plain, it is more “sustainable”. This is because you are working with the forces of nature, rather than against them. Every year the river floods and brings more nutrients from above. By working on a flood plain, you do not diminish the minerals and nutrients within a soil, because the soil of a river flood plain is in constant flux anyway. You don’t have to fertilize the soil, the flooding does that. Tilling doesn’t damage the soil because the river returns nutrients every year on its own. Flood plains are naturally regenerative.

The problem is not “agriculture”, so much as the problem is exporting agriculture from it’s sustainable (or regenerative) environment, the flood plain. Only when you export agriculture do you have to mimic the natural disturbance of a flood. On a flood plain, you are working with the natural flood cycle. Out of a flood plain, you have to create the flooding yourself. Some food for thought…

(for some context read the un-edited original post “Agriculture vs. Rewilding“)

Nathan from Tranmission interviewed me the other day about my non-profit Rewild Portland and the philosophy of rewilding. Check it out here:

http://satellitepress.org/index.php/2013/04/18/rewilding/

When I saw Paleofantasy on the shelf at the bookstore, I got excited. “Finally, another Clan of the Cavebear!” I was disappointed to discover that Paleofantasy is not a fictionalized novel about paleo peoples. Rather, it is a pop-cultural, non-fiction book about how the paleo craze (that has been growing for some time now) is allegedly based on a false understanding of evolution.

The first premise of the paleo craze (of which Rewilding is definitately a relative if not, driving force) is the idea that our culture, over the last 10,000 years or so, has changed faster than our bodies (or more specifically, DNA). The second premise is that this means our bodies are not designed for the differences in culture of the modern era, but more suited to our prehistoric, or “paleo”, past. The third premise is that because of premise one and two, we should three: mimic our ancestors lifestyle to attain maximum health and well-being. This triad of premises has led to all kinds of pop cultural fads, but three stand out more than others: diet, exercise, and sex/family. Books like “Born to Run” encourage bare foot, long distance running. Books like “The Paleo Diet” inspire readers to cut out grains and starches from their diets. Books like “Sex at Dawn” have many people questioning their marriages and monogamy. These books, along with hundreds of others, posit that modern human life goes against our biological human nature.

Sixty-one pages into Paleofantasy I had to stop. I looked back at the pages I’d read, filled with highlighted sections, notes in the side margins, and folded “dog ears” in the corners. Clearly I’ve been reading over this with a fine tooth and comb. Marlene Zuk is a college professor of evolutionary biology turned decent pop cultural science writer. If you were unfamiliar or new to any of the “paleo” ideas, you could easily be tricked by this book. Quite easily in fact. It’s hard to argue with someone when they are so skillfully able to slip their subversive premises by you. It’s similarly hard to continue reading a book that bases all of it’s counter-points on a foundational strawman. If your initial premises are incorrect, than all of your points are going to reflect this. I gave up after 61 pages. Let me share with you why.

The main premise of her book is to show that humans have evolved in the last 10,000 years and that great evolutionary changes actually can happen very quickly. So when people say we have “caveman DNA living in a technological era” it’s not quite true. She presents a lot of evidence that our DNA has changed quite rapidly since the development of agriculture and civilization.

This, however, is a strawman argument against paleo lifestyle: no one is actually saying our DNA hasn’t changed. No one credible anyway. What she doesn’t understand, is that the “caveman DNA living in a technological era” comment is meant to be an anecdote. Of course DNA has changed over the last few thousands years. Anyone who would claim otherwise would be rather foolish. She doesn’t so much argue the basic premise of the paleo craze: that humans haven’t evolved much in the last 150,000 years. Her argument is more like, “Sure, we haven’t changed much, but we have changed, and more importantly, are still changing.” To this I would say, the paleo craze doesn’t disagree and it lies more in a misconception of the author, a misrepresentation of the basic premises, an unclear understanding of the full picture.

Her second premise is that there was never any time in human history where humans were a perfect spicimen of evolution. If there is no static point of human evolution, why would you ever strive to be like a previous version of yourself? Why pick 10,000 years ago? Why stop there. Why not pick 100,000 years ago? In her mind, it makes about as much sense as projecting how humans will be living in 5,000 from now, and try to eat that way/exercise that way/fuck that way right now.

This again, is a genius commentary on Paleo Diet proponents like author Loren Cordain, whose paleo diet is a one-size-fits all diet of lean meats. The reality of the paleo diet is that there is no such one-size fits all. Paleo peoples everywhere ate quite differently. There were however, basic principles of diet that are not present in modern times, and people are suffering for it. The author of Paleofantasy doesn’t really talk much about the science of why paleo is healthier though, instead she focuses on her (inaccurate) perception of the paleo lifestyle, based on specific examples of a few authors who clearly don’t speak for the evolving movement.

“The paleofantasy is a fantasy in part because it supposes that we humans, or at least our protohuman forebears, were at some point perfectly adapted to our environments.”

“To think of ourselves as misfits in our own time and of our own making flatly contradicts what we now understand about the way evolution works–namely, that rate matters. That evolution can be fast, slow, or in-between, and that understanding what makes the difference is far more enlightening, and exciting, than holding our flabby modern selves up against a vision–accurate or not–of our well-muscled and harmoniously adapted ancestors.”

“Although we can admire a stick insect that seems to flawlessly imitate a leafy twig in every detail, down to the marks of faux bird droppings on its wing, or a sled dog with legs that can withstand subzero temperatures because of the exquisite heat exchange between its blood vessels, both are full of compromises, jury-rigged like all other organisms. The insect has to resist disease, as well as blend into its background; the dog must run and find food, as well as stay warm. The pigment used to form those dark specks on the insect is also useful in the insect immune system, and using it in one place means it can’t be used in another. For the dog, having long legs for running can make it harder to keep the cold at bay, since more heat is lost from narrow limbs than from wider ones. These often conflicting needs mean automatic trade-offs in every system, so that each may be good enough but is rarely ever perfect.”

“…Wanting to be more like our ancestors just means wanting more of the same set of compromises.”

“Recognizing the continuity of evolution also makes clear the futility of selecting any particular time period for human harmony. Why would we be any more likely to feel out of sync than those who came before us? Did we really spend hundreds of thousands of years in stasis, perfectly adapted to our environments? When during the past did we attain this adaptation, and how did we know when to stop?”

Clearly she doesn’t understand that the paleo trend doesn’t reject this idea. Yes, humans with ancestors who have drank milk over the last few thousands years have evolved to digest it more thoroughly than other humans. Who cares? My ancestors have that gene. When I eat dairy and get sick, when I eat grains and feel horrible, I’m not holding an image of my ancestry up. I’m feeling like shit because milk gene or no, it’s still not there. Is she suggesting that I should just suffer through life with diahrea so that at some point in the future humans will be able to safely digest hormone and puss filled milk? Should we start eating uranium, in spite of any suffering, because in a million years we will be able to eat it without dying? In spite of the fact that humans have evolved, science still says that the paleo diet leads toward better health than the agircultural diet. Nowhere in the book does she examine the overwhelming evidence that supports this. Rather, she nit picks particular aspects of the driving philosophy behind the paleo lifestyle that don’t exactly hold up. This however is misleading. Even though the story of why Barefoot Running (for example) may not be completely accepted, it doesn’t change the overwhelming studies suggest that it’s better for you.

Nowhere does paleo lifestyle say that “humans aren’t evolving” or that there is a “perfect” state of humaness. Rather, the idea is that, we haven’t changed in a great enough way. To use her metaphor about dogs, we are like Tundra wolves, placed in the sahara desert. Or a Chiwawa in the artic. The paleo diet isn’t just good for people. Domestic cats can survive on grain-based cat food. But their health greatly improves when they are given a “natural”, carnivorous diet. Some may have evolved to digest grains better than others… But wanting to be more like their ancestors seems pretty fucking smart to me, since their bodies are still designed for the older “set of comprimises”. This is not about DNA, or evolutionary biology. This is observed science of what makes cats that are living today, healtheir. The paleo craze may have a few flaws in its story, but it doesn’t change the results.

There are so many variables that have changed and that are always changing that our bodies have come no where near adapting to these changes. Of course the author doesn’t make the leap of ecological concern: that the modern culture we are living in is insanely temporary. Our culture is destroying the biosphere at a rate of 200 species extinctions a day. I’m not worried about adapting to milk. I’m worried about humans (and all other-than-humans) adapting to the radiation that will be released into the atmosphere when the nuclear power plants meltdown during the collapse of industrial civilization. At least one aspect of her book gives me hope: according to the research, evolution can happen very rapidly.

She seems more preoccupied with understanding the timeline of evolution than the suffering of an individual. She waxes poetic about all the advancements in technology that are allowing us to see the rate of evolution. This is meaningless to me, the lactose intolerant guy, who can’t eat dairy, doesn’t want to eat dairy and has ceased eating dairy.

There is clearly a middle ground with paleo. It’s not an “accept all aspects of paleo culture” since we will never be quite clear about what that was, but an adapt the most reasonable and scienfifically-backed ideas. Like, geez. Gluten is bad for you. Of course the author talks about how there was a time when humans didn’t eat meat and were not adapted to eat meat. Those first several thousand years of meat eating were probably a bit uncomfortable as our bodies adjusted. Perhaps as uncomfortable as I am when I am hunched over a toilet (a device that has been shown ignores the posture our bodies have evolved to poop in) and shitting my brains out from a couple of beers the night before. Yeah, the bowells of people using toilets may have evolved to make them get fewer hemroids, but not by much. Squatting is still better.

The most annoying thing is that she has some really great points. Points that perhaps should be brought up more in conversations about paleo lifestyle. It’s unfortunate that she doesn’t quite get it. Her points would only strengthen the paleo community. I’m sure that it will only continue to expand and incorporate a lot of her points about evolution. Much of what she says is not contrary to the science behind paleo. This is the most ironic part of her book. It feels a bit schizophrenic.
Really though, it took 55 pages in to find the most obvious premise guiding this woman: sociopathy. While talking about the agricultural revolution, she drops these gems.

“While a larger population has obvious drawbacks, including overcrowding and high demand for resources such as clean water, it also has a sometimes overlooked benefit: more fodder for natural selection to act on.”

“What this means is that the population explosion after agriculture, despite its well- known drawbacks, also carried some important positive changes that may have been overlooked. Cochran and Harpending also believe that human intelligence increased dramatically once groups became larger, via the same more-tickets-in-the- lottery mechanism. Adam Powell and colleagues at University College London suggest that group size, not necessarily related to the birth of agriculture but among early humans in general, was the key to the uptick in cultural and technological complexity, and evidence of long-distance trading emerges in the archaeoligical record.”

A benefit? A positive change? This language reveals the authors world view. Benefits are subjective. Positivity is subjective. Who benefited and how? What makes this “positive” to the author? Who cares about so-called “intelegence”? Why should that matter to a scientist? If “Evolution is continuous, but it is not goal-oriented,” if evolution is simply a game of trade-offs then it is neither “positive” nor “negative”. It simply is… Human culture dictates world view and world view decides what is “positive” or “beneficial”. Clearly, the hunter-gatherers who were slaughtered at the hands of civilization would disagree that population growth of their neighbors was a “positive” change.

But okay. Fine. Let’s look at this evolutionary scale of trade-offs from a humane perspective. We are trading Dolphins for humans who have adapted to using iPads. We are trading the Amazon Rain Forest for humans who can digest milk. We are trading 200 species a day for humans to be able to build a resistance to the Black Death. We are trading the entire biomass of the planet for the production of more humans… “But at least um, we’ll like evolve a bunch and shit.” Whoever could think there was a “positive” side to this clearly has no empathy and is a sociopath. Clearly this book was written by a professor of evolution with a boner for civilization.

“The paleofantasy is a fantasy in part because it supposes that we humans, or at least our protohuman forebears, were at some point perfectly adapted to our environments.”

Looking back at one of her main premises, it becomes pretty obvious where her misunderstanding comes in. The paleo lifestyle does not suppose that humans were ever perfectly adapted to our environments, but rather, our culture was making a more equal trade off with the environment and this in turn was a healthier lifestyle for all. Don’t believe me? Just ask the dodo. Oh wait. You can’t.

Check out Mark’s Daily Apple for  a better review from a major proponent of the Paleo Lifestyle.

CLICK HERE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT!

Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa in the language) is the original lingua-franca of Cascadia, born out of the coming together of different cultures during the fur trade era of the early 1800′s. Part Chinookan, Nuu-chah-nulth, Salish, French, and English, this creole spread from it’s central location of Chinookan Villages here where Portland sits today, all the way down to Northern California, all the way up the coastline to Alaska, and as far inland as Idaho. The language was kept alive over the last hundred years as a heritage language of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. This language is part of the rich history of human culture here in the Pacific Northwest.

It’s a fun and beautiful language. Wawa has a very different, distinct, and beautiful sound. It’s a fun language to speak! If you grew up in the Northwest, you might know some words in Wawa and don’t even know it: Skookum (strong), “Chuck” (for water), a “Mucky Muck” (pompous person), Tillicum (People/Family), and Tyee (a leader or important person), to name a few.

Here are the top 3 reasons why you should learn how to speak it:

1) It’s respectful to the Native Cultures that still live here, to speak their language.

When you move to a new place, it is an unspoken, respectful tradition that you learn the native language. If you moved to Spain, you would learn Spanish. If you moved to Italy, you would learn Italian. During the 1800′s, if you moved to the NW, you would learn Chinook Jargon. Historically, the jargon was never intended to be a mother tongue, but it is the heritage language of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde today.  It is their language. If you live in Portland or the surrounding area, this is the respectful thing to do. It is a way of recognizing that this is their land, their place. It is part of the process of un-doing colonization.

2) It helps to revitalize the language.

As the Native cultures of this region diminished due to the on-going process of colonization, the need to speak the jargon diminished among the “bəstən tilixam” (Non-Natives). Widespread use of the language died out in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. However, the 26 different Native tribes who were displaced from their land and moved to the reservation at Grand Ronde continue to “wawa” to this day. Through their efforts over the last two decades, there has been a growing revitalization of the language, one that has been kept alive through oral tradition all this time! The more speakers of a language, the stronger it becomes. By joining the language community you help to strengthen the language.

3) Learning different languages allow you to see the world differently.

A language holds within it, the paradigm of the culture that created it. It frames how a person of that culture will see and interact with the world. It is important for people to be able to see the world in many different ways, and in particular, it is important for modern people to be able to understand the ways and world views of traditional cultures. In order for these paradigms of a more wild existence to persist through civilization, we must assist in saving the languages which carry these paradigms. Chinuk Wawa is a pidgin that has been heavily influenced through indo-european languages. In spite of this, there are still sign-posts that allow the speaker to see through a different world view.

Cultural Appropriation

It is important to talk about cultural appropriation when learning particular aspects of Native culture, such as language. To learn to speak Chinuk Wawa is not a form of cultural appropriation, it is what you do with it that can make it negative or positive. The respect you show for Native people by learning their language can quickly shift to disrespect when the language is misused. I would not, for example, teach it to my children as a first language, give myself a Chinuk name, or receive money for teaching a class on wawa (without Native representation and/or approval). Even doing those things can be acceptable in certain circumstances. While I am a fluent speaker and am a member of the language community, I generally give myself a wide birth from appropriative-seeming activities. Be mindful of how you use the language and why you want to learn it.

Become Part of the Language Community

The best way to avoid appropriation is to become part of the language community. Buying the dictionary and trying to teach yourself the language in a vacuum is not a very respectable way to learn the language. If learning the language is a way of creating relationships with Native folks, then you need to be part of the language speaking community. A dictionary is a sad replacement for the vibrance of hearing voices speak the language regularly and fluently. Staying in proximity to the language community is how you help to make the language stronger.

How to Start Learning to Wawa:

1. Every Wednesday in Portland

Every Wednesday (except regular holidays and special Native events days) there is a free language class at the Portland office for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. The address is 4445 S.W. Barbur Blvd. Portland, OR 97239. Make sure you google it first, because it’s a bit confusing to get to. Class starts at 5:30pm. The instructor is Eric Bernando. He can be reached at chinukwawa@gmail.com.

2. Lane Community College

Lane Community College offers several Chinuk Wawa classes. Read more from the Lane website here: https://crater.lanecc.edu:9010/banp/zwckctlg.P_DispCrseDesc?subj_in=AIL&term_in=201110

3. PSU Study Group

There are student-run Chinuk Wawa classes at Portland State University at the Native American Student Community Center. http://www.ecowiki.pdx.edu/opportunities/view/chinuk-wawa-language-group-psu

4. Buy the Grand Ronde Dictionary!

This dictionary came out recently and is over a decade in-the-works. The most impactful way to order the book if you live in Portland is to go to Powells Books and order it through them.  This will help encourage the store to keep it stocked on the shelves. The book is called “Chinuk Wawa: kakwa nsayka ulman-tilixam ɬaska munk-kəmtəks nsayka”  (The way our elders teach us to speak it). Otherwise you can order it through amazon.com here. But don’t just buy the dictionary, come to class and join the speaking community!

(Note: Urban Scout wanted me to title this post “Man vs. Wild vs. Rewilding”, but I no longer let him call the shots around here!)

Dear Reality Television Casting Directors,

I have received enough e-mails and phone calls from you over the years that I thought I should just write this form letter so that I could point you to my thoughts, rather than have to explain them every time. For everyone else reading this, to gain a reference for this letter, take a look at the this sampling of typical realityTV show casting e-mails I receive on a regular basis:

Hi Peter,

My name is Lauren Kalb and I am a casting director for a new extreme survival series on a major cable network.  We are looking for elite survival experts who will face situations that require intense, split-second decision-making and instinctual, laser-sharp response. It’s not enough to be a weekend warrior – this series requires experience, ingenuity, and determination. Stripped of even the most basic of necessities, participants will rely only upon their bare hands to survive. Seeking men and women, 20’s – 40’s, who are highly skilled survival experts with legitimate training and experience.

Thanks so much!

Lauren Kalb, Casting Director

Hi Peter,

I had the pleasure of finally becoming acquainted with your blog today.  I’ll admit, I have a man crush! You’re a one of a kind and I’m fascinated with your journey.  I’m a TV producer and I’m currently researching rewilder and eco-pioneer communities.

If you’d ever have any interest in exploring the world of television to bring your message to a larger audience,
please contact me.

Best regards,
Quintin

Hello! Seems like a pretty cool business! I want to go, but wouldn’t last a day. I am a TV producer at Crybaby Media always looking for new shows to bring to air. Currently we are looking for another way into survival camps. I know much has been done on this world (so your are probably tired of these emails), but do you have a new angle with new big characters that you think HAS to be on television? Looking for anything and everything but love your world of SURVIVAL.

We’d like to hear your ideas and unique approach.

First, I just want to say that I am flattered that you have found my site and think I look interesting enough to get thrown into the mix of potentials for reality television stardom. I would be lying if I said I was completely turned off to the idea of becoming the Snookie of rewilding. There was even a time when I went out of my way to create a few audition tapes. That time is past.

I feel that my days of writing under the guise of “Urban Scout” gave you (and many other people) a false perception of my identity. Producers, Creatives, and Casting Directors like you, come to this site, read Urban Scout’s words and think that I would be a great foil type character full of piss and vinegar, ready to stir shit up and “speak my mind”. I’m smart and articulate and sometimes I get carried away. But I’m not the guy you think I am. I’m not actually Urban Scout. I’m not really, as my old signature used to jokingly say, “…nasty, brutish, and short.”

I’m Peter Bauer. I’m a pretty nice guy. I worry about what people think of me. I worry that my internet past as Urban Scout burned too many bridges and that I’ll never atone for my youthful brashness. I lose sleep over it. I’m a sincere teacher, with integrity. I run a little non-profit called Rewild Portland, and I do not want to tarnish our reputation the way I tarnished my own during my twenties. As I’ve grown older I have gained too much self-respect to go on a reality show where people do things like this:

Cody Lundin, Les Stroud, and Ray Mears are at the top of my list of awesome survival show leads. I like to watch Survivorman because it’s the most “real” of the “reality” shows. I like how ray Ray Mears is more of a documentary style show, that actually demonstrates ancestral technology. Dual survivor is okay, because Cody Lundin is awesome and makes the show worthwhile. Overall though, I am put off by the way these shows use nature for its “shock value”. i.e. Bear Grylls eating a living fish, Bear Grylls squeezing the water out of elephant shit into his mouth, and Bear Grylls drinking his own piss. I have a hard time imagining how these shows can connect people to nature, or even make people want to live closer to nature, when they seem to focus more on grossing people out.

I am not an expert the way they are. At best, I’m the guy who would get voted off Survivor Island mid-season. I don’t really practice survival skills. I am a project coordinator first, and a teacher-practitioner second. I spend more time community organizing and building a culture of rewilding than I do playing in the woods. The time I do spend in the woods is not pushing the edge of survival, but working to create a lasting impact of resilient culture. I’m a nerdy artist who makes baskets and teaches children. I’m sorry, but I’m not the star you thought I might be.

In closing, let me say that I would love to bring the world of rewilding to a wider audience. It’s what I spend most of my time doing. However, I don’t think that this is possible through reality television. I could be wrong. The thing is, I don’t want to waste your time, and I don’t want to waste my own. I can’t think of a way to make this work. How about instead of asking me if I have any bright ideas, you present some to me? Perhaps my readership could come up with some ideas? Thank you for taking an interest in my work. Perhaps in the future we’ll come up with the best idea ever for a rewilding reality television show, that will inspire more people to start rewilding!

Until then,

Peter Michael Bauer

Miles Olson is an inspirational rewilder who lives and breathes the mechanics of rewilding. He has lived on the fringes of civilization for a decade. His stories have been inspiring me ever since I had the pleasure to sit around the same campfire with him some years ago. He has finally written a book that is an accumulation of techniques he has learned for what I would call off-grid, grassroots, punk rock rewilding.

Unlearn, Rewild is cleverly separated into two sections; “Ideas” and “Endangered skills”. The “Ideas” section covers exactly what you might think: all of the ideas that we must “unlearn” about ourselves if we are to live sustainably. This section reads very similarly to my book Rewild or Die, in that it covers the basic philosophy of rewilding. I was a bit concerned at first when it seemed that it was mirroring my work a little too closely. However, I was pleased to find that while the structure was similar to my book, the ideas were unique and Miles voice is different enough and intelligent enough to cover new ground. The ideas section has many gems. The chapters on being white, invasive species and the Fukushima disaster hit me on a very deep level. So many topics were pursued in brief, leaving me wanting more.

The second section, “Endangered Skills” focuses on aspects of skills that are generally not included in most field guides. This is the section that made the publisher describe the book as a “hardcore survival guide”. This was not my impression of Unlearn, Rewild. The book is less a “survival guide”, and more of a manual for rewilding off the grid: there are chapters on drying and storing food, setting traps, and folk medicine. Perhaps you might think of it as a “hardcore survival guide” if the idea of eating maggots sounds like something only a survivalist would do. But as Miles explains in his chapter on entomophagy (the practice of eating insects), “Traditionally, many cultures have relished maggots, leaving fish or meat out to become saturated with them and then eating the maggots raw. There is a logic to this: a diet of exclusively lean meat causes severe health problems, eventually leading to kidney failure and death.” This doesn’t seem like a hardcore survival technique to me–something you would only do to survive–it seems like the normal practice of everyday food gathering for a rewilder.

The “Endangered Skills” section is definitely strength of this book. The ideas are great, but without the section on the skills, many may be left uncertain as to how to go about rewilding. Miles has given people that feel inspired to rewild a roadmap. One that he charted himself through gleaning information from books and elders, and hard-won knowledge gained through his own personal experimentation. The beauty is, with Unlearn, Rewild you can jump lightyears ahead of where Miles had to start himself. This book is an essential addition to the rewilder’s library.

[Buy It Here]

The 2012 Posse

Thoughts on Lynx Vilden’s Stone Age Immersion Program

Since I dropped out of high school in 1998 and dedicated my life to returning to a more indigenous lifestyle, to rewilding, I spend my time divided between working odd jobs, reading, writing, learning, teaching, community organizing and wild-crafting. Early on I realized that primitive technology is a bi-product of a sustainable culture, but a sustainable culture is not the by-product of primitive technology; primitive skills are the superficial layer of indigenous people. I prefer the cultural, social, mental and permacultural aspects of rewilding because they are more foundational to creating culture. This is not to say that there are not important aspects of learning primitive technology that can aid in the creation of a sustainable culture. The superficial layer is still an important layer of culture. In order to fully understand this, I decided to dedicate the summer of 2012 to focusing purely on the crafting of primitive technology.

One of the most inspiring people teaching these crafts is Lynx Vilden and her school the Living Wild School. I have known about her for years and always wanted to attend her program. I signed up for her summer immersion program, a three month long program that culminates with living in the wilds for the final month, with only “stone age” gear; no metal, no plastic. I had an amazing and challenging time and I learned a great deal. These are my thoughts about my experience.

This is a fantastic program for gaining proficiency in primitive skills. Even before the classes started, I was already gaining proficiency in skills. The list of required items to bring this year made it clear that this was not a class for beginners. I had to show up with a minimum of 6 large brain-tanned deer skins. While I had tanned a couple deer skins before, I did not have proficiency. I spent about two months of preparation working on all the things that I needed to bring with me. Each week of the program had a different theme: buckskin clothes, containers, felted blankets, fishing kits, etc. Every day we would get up and begin working on crafts together or on our own when we needed space. After weeks of working on projects and crafting with our hands we became much more proficient in crafting skills.

Eating out of my clay pot. Delicious!

Practical application of primitive technology is what makes the Living Wild School unique. Learning how to craft primitive technology is only half the experience: you must learn to use the crafts in practical ways. Lynx Vilden is doing something that not many others in this country are doing: teaching and experimenting with using primitive technology on a day to day basis, deep in the woods. We learned nuances of using primitive tools that you could only learn through real world application. Things like how to make arrows for target practice, how to lift a clay pot from the coals, how to fix rawhide sandals with a bone awl under the moonlight, and how to adjust a tumpline on a pack basket. One morning after a cold night I spent the day stitching up my wool blanket to create a draft-free sleeping bag. Another day I stitched ties onto my fur hat to keep it from falling off during the night. Everyday we would spend a little time tweaking our tools to better match our needs and the demands of the environment. Crafting primitive skills is fun and great, but gaining experience in real life application completes the knowledge base. In my mind, this is the most important aspect of what Lynx teaches.

Living in close quarters with others who are enthusiastic about and experienced with primitive technology felt priceless. I consider myself an out-going recluse. I like social engagement, but often feel too much anxiety to leave the house. Meeting new people, putting myself in someone else’s program, these are things I rarely do. It was worth it. I made a lot of friends, and even when there was drama it almost felt like it was created just to change up the monotony of our lives. Having people to share knowledge with, to experiment and learn with, helped to maximize my goal of proficiency. This is the amazing power of collective knowledge and experience; you can learn a lot more from a group than from a single person. This bridged the gap between classes when Lynx was off taking care of other business.

Living outdoors for the summer changed me. There were many things that I learned that were not directly related to crafting primitive skills, but from making a transition from living on the grid, to living off the grid. For the first two and a half months we were camped in the woods. Meals were cooked over fires, food was kept cool in holes that we dug in the ground, we hauled water from the spring and from the faucet across a large meadow. This was challenging for me, particularly because of my diet and bowel problems. At first I wanted to leave, feeling very stressed from not having a system and routine that kept my body comfortable and my IBS symptoms in check. By the middle of the summer I felt like I was flying. I never wanted to live indoors or cook on a regular stove again. There was no revelation, no powerful transformation. This change was gradual, as my comforts expanded and routines strengthened and became easier. It also didn’t turn me into a must-live-outdoors fundamentalist. I really love living outdoors, but I’m not a missionary now. It just feels good and I’m going to figure out how I can continue to live in a similar way here at my home.

On the trail to paradise.

In reality, we weren’t living wild. We were simply camping, with modern-made primitive tools. There wasn’t much that separated us from other mountain back-packers other than our clothes and tools. Our stone age human ancestors lived sustainably on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, tending the wild through regenerative methods of food production. Their myths, culture and traditions passed on this knowledge and kept the land and people healthy and happy. This is what “living wild” looks like to me: people living in cooperative groups, managing the land in a regenerative manner. We did not learn cooperative group dynamics. We did not learn regenerative land management. Sure, we were hunting and gathering, but not like hunter-gatherers. This was my one caveat with the program: looking wild is not the same thing as living wild.

Looking wild has deeply subconscious benefits to rewilding. There is a reason people say “Appearances are everything.” In a recent study, volunteer participants were asked to take a test. Half of them wore white coats that they were told was a doctor’s jacket, while the other half wore white coats they were told was a painter’s jacket. The results showed that people, when wearing the doctor’s lab coat, scored higher on the tests than those wearing the painter’s coat. These were, in reality, the same coat. Their perception of themselves changed depending on what they were wearing, and how those clothes are perceived. Image is perception and perception carries the ability to alter how you think. People often act as though “superficial” things like a persons image do not effect us. In reality, it does and on a very deep level.

What Lynx has done with her programs is create inspirational imagery of white people–who have no real life record of indigenous imagery–looking indigenous, without stealing from native cultures. Beyond what Lynx’s program does for creating proficiency in her students, the imagery she creates does an amazing job of giving us back a modern, visual, indigenous identity. Lynx is an artist and her students become her models. The images strike a cord deep in people, of ancestral remembrance. They seem to say, “It is possible for us to reclaim this identity.” The photographs of the programs she runs have much more reach than the limits of her class size; viewers on her website can pour over the iconic images that sit on every page. Everyone I know who has gone to her website has felt a spark of inspiration. The dream for many, becomes actualized in these images. These images are altering the way we think about ourselves and about our indigenousity. This is huge. These benefits need to be studied and examined in depth.

My few criticisms come with an expiration date. As the rewilding movement continues to grow, it is absorbing the primitive skills community. Primitive skills are becoming a gateway to rewilding. As this happens, the principles of indigenous land management and social organization models are becoming more foundational to understanding and practicing primitive skills. As Lynx’s program grows and changes, these principles with undoubtably become rooted in the experience. The goal, after all, is living wild and living wild can only be accomplished through adapting traditions of tending the wild.

More than a teacher, a leader, or a guide, Lynx is a catalyst. Lynx is pushing the edge of primitive skills further towards rewilding, by making it about actually using the technology to live. Through the people she teaches, inspires and brings together, through re-creating indigenous identity, she plays a major role in the rewilding renaissance and I am glad to have met her and got to know her over the summer. I look forward to seeing her continue to give people the experience that I had this summer, and to watch how the larger community benefits and grows together.

I highly recommend this program. Check it out here: www.lynxvilden.com

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction.” ― Julian Assange

Will Potter is a journalist who has been writing about animal rights and environmentalism for years. He keeps a blog called Green is the New Red that catalogs the growing momentum of corporations and government creating policy in order to imprison activists. I’ve been a follower of his blog for a couple of years now and his book, also titled Green is the New Red, has been on my reading list for some time. Since I follow his work, I thought that most of the content of the book would be old material that I was familiar with. In fact, it was much more detailed and much more close to the subject than his blog.

In the early and mid 2000′s the government cracked down on environmentalists. Arrests were made, people were imprisoned and new laws were passed. For its likeness with the communist-fearing era in the United States, people began to refer to this as the “Green Scare“. Green is the New Red is Potter’s personal account of the Green Scare, as it began to unfold.

This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks of themselves as political in anyway. I became disenfranchised with politics at a very young age when I saw, experienced, and felt on a deep level the enormity of impossibility of change within civilization. While most of my life has been apolitical (although many others have dubbed me an anarchist or a nihilist–neither of which I would agree with), there was a time when I still believed in the dynamics of grassroots change of the political structure–a story I’ll share another time.

At the end of my time in politics, I came to the this conclusion: what we think is a democracy is a charade, and those in power, those with the money, they make up the rules and they really don’t care what your opinion is–unless it threatens them. Green is the New Red shows us that if your words and actions do happen to threaten those in power, they will silence you. Nowadays, this means lobbying the government to change laws and policy so that the wealthy can charge you with terrorism for things that you say, even if you never committed an actual crime (just ask the SHAC7), and put you away in one of their new secret political prisons.

The stories that are told in Green is the New Red are not surprising to me, but it still has a profound emotional effect. I have viewed the collapse more like a math problem: civilization is unsustainable and is collapsing. 1 + 1 = 2. Books like Potter’s, that chronicle the specifics of the collapse of empire (Not sure if Potter would recognize his work in that way), conjure the emotional reality that this is really happening. It feels like I imagine it would feel to watch my house burn to the ground. I know that I can’t stop the fire, but each new room the flames move to makes me realize just what I am losing. I know that we never actually had rights like freedom of speech. It was only a matter of time before the psychopaths bought them back from us. As the collapse of industrial civilization intensifies (yes, it’s already begun), we will see more and more of these corporations drawing out their deaths with the last of their wealth. Before the global economy tanks, these businesses, and the psychopaths who run them, will spend their last dollars wreaking destruction upon the earth and torturing the people who try to stop them. We’ll just have to grab whatever things we can from the burning building, salvage what is left after the fire, and move on to build ourselves a new home.

The beacon of hope is that once the fire reaches the point of diminishing returns, it becomes easier and easier to put out. Just as there was a positive feedback loop in the growth cycle of civilization, there is a positive feedback loop in its collapse. The Green Scare is the attempt by empire to curb the movement they know will inevitably be their ruin. As the environment and economy continue to collapse, the people in power will lose more of their wealth, which means they lose the ability to maintain control through violence, which means that resistance groups will become more and more effective; there is a Green Dawn rising. I just hope that it hasn’t come too late.

Up until a few days ago I believed that all humans had a conscience. That even the most disturbed, murderous psychopaths had figured out how to shut down their ability to feel remorse and guilt perhaps because of some awful childhood trauma, and given the right circumstance, they might still receive some kind of healing. I thought that even the most twisted politician or CEO or police officer could be sat down and have the falacies of our culture explained to them enough that they would be able to understand our predicament on an emotional level and then change their ways. I thought all humans were redeemable. I was wrong.

Deep into the book “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout, Ph.D., my world began to unravel. The book is about psychopathy, more modernly called sociopathy (since psychopath is too close to psychotic which is very different), and clinically referred to as anti-social personality disorder. The word psycho is so casually thrown around, that it has become an unclinical way of describing abnormal behavior, most often aggressive or violent. Most lay people like myself do not have a grasp on how disturbing real psychopathy is, or I’m sure we wouldn’t be so cavalier with this word.

The reality is that psychopathy, or sociopathy, is a real and very disturbing thing. Sociopaths are people who do not have a conscience: they do not feel guilt, remorse or an emotional, moral obligation towards anything or anyone. They can do whatever they want and never feel “bad” about any of it. While most people have constant conversations with themselves in their minds and hearts about the moral dilemas we are faced with on a daily basis, sociopaths have no such voice or feeling. Emotional bonds are built and maintained through our obligations to each other as members of a community. The most common form of this is called love. Sociopaths do not, can not, form this kind of a bond.

There have probably been more studies conducted since her book was written in 2005, but at the time of the writing, little evidence existed on what exactly causes sociopathy. Theories put stock in 50% genetics and 50% cultural and childhood development. There could be genetic precursors that are influenced and encouraged by culture, and there could be simply cultural factors through childhood development (lack of attachment parenting, childhood abuse etc.) that are the sole cause. The most disturbing aspect of sociopathy is that there is currently no “cure”. Sociopaths will continue to be sociopaths.

And why shouldn’t they? Our culture encourages, creates, protects and celebrates their behavior. For people without a conscience, without love, life is reduced to a board game of sorts: a collection of separate inanimate parts all competing to win. In a hierarchal structure, we all know that “winning” translates to being at the top of the pyramid and that the way to the top of the pyramid is to step on someone else. Without love as a guiding, emotive force, other sensations take over. For sociopaths this is the adrenaline rush they receive from exerting their power over others. This is how most sociopaths end up not in prison, but in positions of power: politics, business, military, and the police force. Of course, not all people in those positions of power are sociopaths, but sociopaths have an easier time climbing into those positions.

Another frightening characteristic of the sociopath is their ability to disguise themselves as normal, loving humans. For people who have a conscience, it is difficult to imagine how people without one could make it through life without being noticed and called out. If their callous nature wasn’t enough already, their ability to adapt and hide their inner nature is what gives them real power, is what makes them invisible monsters. They don’t live alone in the woods, hear voices or have nervous ticks. They marry, raise children, smile at all the right times, can fabricate tears, make friends and tell jokes. They blend in. In the United States, 1 in 25 people is a sociopath.

As I have a background in the critique of civilization, this book had a deeper impact on me than it might for most. While some people might be left fearful of which of their neighbors is a psychopath, I was left with a deep sense of hopelessness and dispair in knowing that the majority of those in power, those who run our culture, are actually irredeemable psychopaths, bent on destroying the world just to demonstrate their power. Just because its the only thing that turns them on.

It would be easy if we could just eliminate the threat in the style of the inuit hunter-gatherers, who would simply take a sociopath out into the world to “hunt” and, when no one was looking, “push them off the edge of the ice.” Things are much more complicated in our case. Unlike the lone psychopath living in a band of hunter-gatherers, where psychopaths are a threat to the survival of the group, our psychopaths are rich, wealthy, and heavily protected individuals. They are esteemed leaders that are protected not just physically through armed guards, but mythologically in the form of respect for “self-made individualists” and psychologically, as we are taught to respect authority. Beyond the individual sociopaths is our entire culture, which, if viewed as a person, behaves like a sociopath: destroying the planet without conscience. You can’t just push an entire culture off the ice.

And they break the rules. Unlike people who are constantly feeling the emotional weight of moral dilemas, they don’t have to follow the same rules as we do. A moral person, having pushed a sociopath off the edge of the ice so-to-speak, would probably feel guilt for the rest of their life for taking the life of another- even though it was for the benefit of the group. We do things slower than the sociopath because we have deep emotional implications for our actions. Pushing another human off the edge of the ice has life-changing emotional implications, potentially life long damage to the psyche. This makes people with a conscience less prone to take actions with such permanence as death. Our conscience also has ways of resisting large moral obligations through things like denial– further making it difficult to see the need to take extreme actions against sociopaths who are wreaking havoc to the planet. The sociopath doesn’t just not have a conscience blocking their ability to easily kill someone, something or the entire planet– they actually get off on it.

This is why all the advice on sociopaths is to not go up against them. Every bit of advice says to get them out of your life. If you have to abandon other friends who are friends with them, do it. If you have to transfer to a different job, do it. “Never go up against a sociopath because you will lose.” This is very, very bad news. I first picked up “The Sociopath Next Door” because I believed there was a sociopath in my community and I wanted to learn how to engage with them without continuing to feel used and abused and stepped on by them. What if you can’t get away from them? What if your whole culture is run by them, protects them and encourages them? How do you win against a sociopath? Now I’m feeling even more lost and hopeless than I have in my entire life. I’m looking for a light at the end of the tunnel and all I see is darkness. Like any other blow to a world view it’s going to take me some time to adjust to the realization that some people are irredeemable: they just want to watch the world burn. This breaks my heart.

Today was my evaluation for the project. Basically Lynx goes through all your gear and then asks you about your physical and social status, things like, “Are you feeling well enough?” and “How are you getting along with everyone in the group?” I’ve felt really good about my health and about everyone in the group and I have almost all my things ready. It felt like a breeze. I’m really looking forward to camping in the woods with all this primitive gear for the next month or so.

Here are all the things I have brought here or made here that I’ll be bringing on the project.

Primitive Back-Packing Gear

And here are my clothes:

Buckskin Clothes

Here are the pants I made for the project. They are a bit sweatpants-looking. I may re-stitch them after the project. Deer antler buttons on the front there.

Buckskin Pants

Here are my sandals. I made these to save the soles of my moccasins. I’ll be going barefoot mostly, but the sandals will give my feet and shoes a relief.

Moose Hide Sandals

Here is my wild harvested, natural clay cooking pot. Thankfully it survived the firing. I didn’t do any temper ratio testing before hand. There are some cracks but they are very small. I’ll cook something thick and starchy in it to season and seal the pot up nicely.

Wild Harvested Natural Clay Cooking Pot

Here is the bark-tanned raccoon fur vest I made to stay warm on the project. It’s made from 5 roadkill raccoons. The two front panels were from juvenile raccoons during the fall, so their coats were smaller and less thick. The two panels in the back are two adults from the winter. I cut a fifth adult, winter raccoon into 4 panels and stitched them on to extend the vest so that it didn’t look like a belly shirt. I bark tanned each hide with hemlock bark and stitched them together using buckskin thong. It is held together with deer toe bone toggles. The collar is made from two raccoon tails stitched together in the back. It is detachable. I wore it around the other night to test it out a bit. The bark tan job I did isn’t very great, or rather, the softening job I did wasn’t great. The bark tan was perfect. I was just too afraid of losing too much hair that I didn’t soften the hide very well. Still, it’s wearable and warm and over time it will soften up through use. I’m pretty happy with it.

Raccoon Fur Vest

Today I finished my mocassins for the project. There is a floating sole stiched between the shoe and the actual sole, so three layers total. This is a modified version of the pattern in Jim Rigg’s book Blue Mountain Buckskin. Even with three soles, I may wear through pretty quickly out in the woods. Lynx has me toughening up my feet so that I can go barefoot more and not use the shoes. I’m also going to make a pair of buffalo skin sandals to take on the project as well. Footwear ain’t no joke!

Modified Salish Side Seam Mocassins

I finally finished my buckskin shirt for the project. It started out as a tunic looking thing but I added fringe and sleeves and a colar so I could have it popped and look super cool out in the woods. Here are a few pics:

Non-Gender Specific Buckskin Clothing

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Buckskin Shirt + fringe.

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Primitive Myspace Shot/Manson look-a-like contest?

I’m half way through the stone age immersion or prehistoric project preparation at Lynx Vilden’s Living Wild School. It’s hard to imagine that I’ve been here this long. I’ve been struggling pretty hard not to run away back to my community in Portland. My girlfriend came up and stayed with us for a few days and that felt reaffirming and helped ground me to the people here. It’s weird – I feel more connected to them now that they have met my girlfriend. They no longer feel as a foreign community to my own community.

I’ve had a few problems up here. The major ones have been physical and psychological, the minor ones have been social. My diet has been amazing. Everyone here has been super supportive of my crazy dietary needs – which we’ll be having to follow on the project anyway, as we’ll be eating only wild, paleo foods. This definitely helped the group help me. In spite of all this… I’ve still been having diarrhea every time I go to the bathroom. I’ve still had bad urgency problems in the morning and throughout the day. This problem is generally not too big of a deal, but when combined with lots of wiping my ass with rough leaves and sitting on hard logs for a few weeks, I now have a case of severe hemorrhoids. I don’t usually use over the counter medicine when I get these, but this time I’ve made a new best friend in Preparation H. This seems to be doing the trick. Now if I can figure out how to get rid of the diarrhea I’ll be all set.

The psychological problems come mostly from pain and suffering from the health problems. Often I notice I’ll be super irritable, like a cat with a sliver in its paw, when I’m experiencing fatigue or pain. There is a voice in my head that is always trying to get me to quit, to go home. I know myself well enough now that this usually just means I need to drink water, eat some fatty meat or take a nap. Still though, it can be a very loud voice sometimes and I’ve come close to packing up my shit once or twice.

The social problems are more interesting to me than I thought. Lynx, and many of her former students, have said that the hardest skills are not the primitive technology and crafts that we are creating, but the social dynamics. Lynx does not give us a social model to use for the class, but rather lets the social structure organically take shape as conflicts arise. At times this feels either completely genius or like a total cluster fuck. Either way I have come to understand a lot about people who have no social structure imposed on them and how they create one from nothing. I personally would have preferred us to have a social system in place to minimize conflicts and speed up our group processes, but I’ve come to enjoy watching the drama unfold. I used to say that the interactions between people in RealityTV shows was played up and fake, dramatized for entertainment. Now I realize that, no, it’s actually pretty much real. Our group is awesome and works together fairly well… Fairly well. There are still many face-palm moments that make me cringe or feel like “blowing my brains out” – which I blurted out to the group a few days back, causing some to thank me and some to scorn me. When I run my own program, I’ll have a social governing/decision-making system in place, but this has been a great learning experience for me to see how people work together to create their own.

All in all this experience has been amazing so far in so many ways. I know how to do a lot of the stuff we are doing up here, most primitive skills are so simple to learn. The education I’m getting is in the little nuances.  The little things that come from a collective knowledge of working on these skills for decades. Accumulatively, the knowledge here is unbelievable and well worth the experience alone.

I’m feeling very ready for the project now. I was worried about the time frame and if I had time to finish everything I need for the project in just one month, but now I’m certain that I’ll be ready. I’ve been felting a blanket for the last couple days in sweltering heat. Today I hope to finish or at least get ready to roll it tomorrow morning. This afternoon I am also fleshing and scraping a sheep skin to use as a ground cloth. Tonight I hope to sew the soles onto my shoes. Then it’s on to fish camp where I’ll make fishing line from Nettle fiber and hooks from deer bones. Then I need to re-soften two deer hides and start making my pants while re-softening some bark-tanned strips of raccoon hide to make my raccoon vest longer than a belly shirt (although I am tempted to leave it that way). After that I’ll patch up my shirt and felt some inserts for my shoes and then maybe, maybe make some mittens out of those rabbit hides. Somewhere in there I’ll need to slaughter a llama and gather and dry a bunch of Saskatoon berries. Best. Summer. Ever.

If I’m not helping Lynx run another project next year, I’ll be running something similar through Rewild Portland.

My Summer Home

These last two weeks I have been settling into this little pine forest at the edge of the meadow, where our primitive camp is located. It was a surprisingly long adjustment.

All of my fellow clan mates have been furiously working on our buckskin clothes. We have two weeks to complete our full on outfits for the prehistoric project. I finished my “day shirt” which feels a bit more like an over coat. I’m more worried about getting cold than I am about staying warm. I have a raccoon hat that I may add ear covers to. I need to complete some pants, my raccoon fur vest, moccasins, rabbit hide mittens, a wool scarf and maybe even a wool vest to go under the raccoon vest. In order to get away from people and do our thing, we’ll be heading high into the mountains where it is cold. I hate the cold. This will be a great test to me, but really with the proper gear primitive or modern, cold should not bother us.

Outdoor Kitchen

Cooking around the campfire for three weeks now has been really fun. It’s been so long since my boy scout days that it’s taken me a little bit of time to remember all the tricks like cooking on the coals, using stones to hold up pots and tripods to hang pots from. It’s all so obvious I’m a little embarrassed that I have forgotten so much. I’d really like to experiment with a stone rocket stove. I’m looking forward to our container making class when we will make clay pots for cooking in. On the project, this is all we will be cooking in.

My stomach got pretty fucked up when we moved camps over the last weekend and I didn’t have a good woodsy kitchen set up. I’ve devised a plan for cooking bone broth, which is basically just having a pot on or near the fire at all times. It gets cold enough at night that I don’t worry about it spoiling, and I try to keep it cooking most of the day as we work on projects. I won’t be able to bring broth on the project, but I think the food will all be things that I can eat so there won’t really be a need for it. Although, if we kill animals we’ll be able to use there bones and make some broth, or just eat the bones.

Refrigerahole

At home, I’m used to just getting fresh meats from the store on a regular basis. Moving out here was difficult at first because there is no refrigeration and trips to town are so rare. We have dug holes to create “root cellars” of sorts and I have put a sealed 5 gallon bucket in it to keep the critters out. It works the same as a refrigerator and stays about as cold as one. Ideally we’ll be slaughtering a couple goats and drying the meat. I’d also love to learn to can meats, which is something I don’t know much about. I’m missing a huge skill set of food preservation. I’m learning a lot more up here besides primitive crafting skills. Just these wilderness camp skills that I have forgotten or didn’t know are priceless. For the project we’ll be bringing along lots of dried wild foods, so part of this process is learning the best ways to preserve things primitively.

We have to haul in our water to camp. There is a spring but it’s really funky and not drinkable. We use it to wash dishes and hands mostly. It’s not two far from the main camp. We carry buckets up and down a few times a day. We get our potable drinking water from the lodge that is on the land about a mile away or so. I really enjoy carrying the water. At first I was annoyed that we weren’t closer to water, but now I really enjoy the physical workout of hauling water, either in buckets or on the cart. For the project aspect, we’ll be drinking from springs directly up higher in the mountains.

Life here is pretty easy. If I keep to my diet for the most part, get enough sleep and water, life feels good. We basically craft all day. I’ll post a blog with my clothes once I finish all of them.

Pack Basket

Today was the last day of my basket class at Lynx Vilden’s Living Wild School. So many of us here this week are staying on for the summer immersion program and the prehistoric project as well. I have really enjoyed everyone’s company and am looking forward to getting to know everyone on a deeper level as the summer progresses. We all made the pack baskets that we will be using on the prehistoric project. It’s a simple, super light weight basket made from a frame of flexible sticks (I used Red Osier Dogwood) with a latice or netting of rawhide. It will work best with things wrapped in a blanket since there are large holes in the basket to keep the weight down. We also made Spruce Bark containers for collecting berries. After making the spruce bark container, I fixed up a cedar bark container that I brought up here with me as well. I still need to create shoulder straps for all of these baskets. I’ll use spruce root for the spruce basket (it won’t be very flexible but whatever), twined cedar bark for the cedar bark basket, and braintanned buckskin for the pack basket. I’m waiting until I make my buckskin clothes next week to use the left over parts for the straps.

Spruce Bark Container

I’ve been planning on keeping a journal and haven’t been able to decide how to chart the adventure. Lynx suggested to us that if we are going to journal to not use the “Day 1″ or “July 1st” methods of time tracking because it will lead to us experiencing the program on a linear basis and that ends up making people not live in the moment. This adds to stress and generally leads to people leaving the program. It’s better, she suggested, to mark the days and weeks and time with events and themes: the basket week, the saskatoon picking day, bitterroot harvest day, etc. I think this is genius and it’s helped me shape my experience here. I want to live in the moment, and she wants us all to do that, and by picking themes of what we experience rather than the abstraction of time will keep us rooted there. From here on out, I’ll be posting blogs here in this way. Next week we will be finishing our hide tanning and then creating buckskin clothes. I’ll also be making a bark tanned raccoon fur vest. So, next week might be the animal skin clothing week. I’m just hoping that my hemlock bark tanned raccoon hides are actually tanned all the way through! We’ll see…

Cedar Bark Container

Lynx is a wonderful teacher and facilitator. She has a perfect blend of light-heartedness, sincerity and seriousness that I feel is very difficult to find in rewilding oriented schools. There is spirituality, but not heavy handed and dogmatic. There is a fierce need and urgency to connect and teach these skills, but not in a paralyzing way. There is structure, but not in a suffocating way. There is singing and laughter and making music and storytelling. Lynx has a great way of treating you like a new friend rather than a student and I really appreciate her for that. She likes to have fun, is experienced in creating fun and after spending a short time with her it feels contagious. I’ve really enjoyed this week, and as a sneak peak of the summer its got me feeling very at ease and inspired.

“Welcome, oh traveller, to the secret Rewild Haven. Come, sit by my fire.”

Well, I sort of screwed the pooch on keeping my preparations documented here, but so it goes. I’ve been ridiculously busy wrapping up things with Rewild Portland to make us secure without my presence. As well as other random things. I feel pretty unprepared for the whole thing, but I know it will work out.

These last couple weeks I have felt super productive. My health is waxing and wanning and finally returning to near 100%. The tooth is taking (still crossing my fingers), the swollen lymph nodes are gone, but the dry cough is still around in the evening. As far as hides go, I now have three tanned & smoked hides, plus three that are softened and ready to be smoked, and two that are ready to be dressed. My plan is to dress and soften those two hides and smoke them all during the three days between the basket class and the start of the stone age immersion.

Today I am making a really strong batch of hemlock bark and hoping that’s the last strengthening I will need to do. I have moved all the hides into one bucket to consolidate all of my things to fit into my clown car. I hope that will be okay. I’m going to do a “snip” test this evening. This just means snipping a little bit off the neck with a pair of scissors and seeing if the tannins have leached all the way into the center of the hide yet. I’m hoping this will be the case. These hides aren’t terribly thick, but I won’t be surprised if they haven’t gotten there yet. If they have, I’ll probably leave them in there until those three days between classes in which I will rinse and soften them in preparation for making a vest!

I have so much seaweed it’s insane. I’m really banking on sharing this with people up there. I think it will be a real commodity. Salt is hard to find unless you are drinking blood and licking cave walls. This seaweed will be priceless. For more starchy foods I went down to the desert and dug some biscuitroot to pound into flour for calories. Not sure how much I got, but it looked like more when I dug it. After de-hydrating it and pounding the fiber out, it doesn’t look near as much as I thought.

I couldn’t find the right kind of buffalo hide, so I went with the alternative and bought 10lbs of sheeps wool to felt into a blanket.

I am showing up a little under prepared. But we’ll see what happens. Gotta run. Not much time for blogging right now.

Me and Grandma Fin and our root sisters.

In preparation for Lynx Vilden’s Stone Age Immersion program, I need to gather 5lbs of dehydrated wild plants. I know I could gather and dry wild greens (most berries are not ripe yet), but they won’t give me the calories I need out there in the woods. I wanted to get some roots and pound them into flour for a starch. For years now I have known and interacted with Finisia Medrano (aka Tranny Granny) over the web. So much so that when I hear the words “roots” I think of them synonymously with her and “the hoop”. This was a great excuse for me to stop “suckling the teet of babylon” long enough to get a glimpse of life of the hoop, as she has always emphatically encouraged all rewilders to do. After spending a few days on the hoop, I am finally starting to understand why she carries such a passion for this life.

For thousands and thousands of years, traditional “hunter-gatherer” people lived and worked in specific nomadic circuits across the land known as “hoops”. These hoops are routes on the earth with various camp sites along the way in which the people have tended the wild to create an abundance of food at each stop. Grandma Fin, as people affectionately call her, is someone who discovered remnants of the old hoops and… never left. She has catalyzed the rewilding movement to reclaim the spirit and root gardening techniques of the hoop. Her enthusiasm, passion, sense of humor and light-hearted fierceness have inspired and continue to inspire more and more people to get on the various hoops and return to a life of tending the wild gardens of native plants.

On the table, food is always underfoot.

I drove six hours down from Portland, out to the desert where Grandma currently resides. As we got closer, I noticed that nearly every house we passed is abandoned. There is no industry out there but a few cattle ranches. It is too spread out to be a “ghost town”–it’s much more a post-apocalyptic runway. We arrive at dusk. Half of the camp is heading out to set rat traps in the bushes of this wasteland. Everyone in our culture hates rats. You don’t need special permits to trap and eat them. Grandma says there are too many of them and they eat the seeds and roots of the plants we want to tend. The first part of tending our garden is thinning the over-run animal population of rats. Rats which they will skin, cook and eat if and when they catch them.

In the morning we get up early to head up to “the table”. Tables are a geological phenomenon where a hill or mountain has a flat top, giving it the appearance of a tabletop. I am familiar with most plants of the west side of the cascades. Out in the desert, up on the table, everything but the sagebrush looks foreign. Our first stop to dig is not far from camp. I learn my first plant: yampa. The peanut-sized root bulbs are sweet, nutty and delicious. We lazily gather yampa for thirty minutes, stopping to chat and make jokes. My pockets are over-flowing with them. I am begining to notice that yampa is like a ground cover up there: you can’t take a step without walking on it. Grandma says this table is around seventeen square miles.

Old School

We move on to digging Luskh (pronounced looksh), a lomatium known commonly as “breadroot” or “biscuitroot”. Then coush (pronounced cow-sh) another lomatium. Then frittilaria, various greens, and a teeny-tiny potato-like root that I can’t remember the name of. In a just a few lazy hours of digging, we had gathered enough starch for days of eating. Grandma fin is sitting by me and my friend Thor. My friend Potlatch is a few feet away, digging down deep for a luskh. The rest of the gang, the real root diggers or “hoopsters” as they are jokingly called, are scattered around with some digging, some laying on the earth and staring up into the sky. Grandma cracks jokes here and there, then lays down some heavy shit: this is a garden that is thousands of years old. The only reason it exists is because it’s too rocky to farm, graze cattle on, or build. The rocks are considered worthless. The river valley just several feet below the table is a grassy, cattle grazing field now. The whole valley was an easy to dig garden just a hundred or so years ago. Civilization’s settlers released pigs onto the land, and those pigs destroyed this indigenous garden. Grandma looks at Potlatch. He’s begun to peel the inedible bark layers off the roots. Her eyes fill with tears. She says that this is what she lives for: seeing those little piles of root scraps scattered across the Table. My eyes fill with tears of grief and gratitude. In this seeming desert wasteland of apocalyptic abandonments, we’re literally sitting on top of something more valuable than a gold mine. It’s breath-takingly beautiful, hopeful and so very sad, all at the same time. It’s lonely out here she says. Where are the women and the children?

The roots are dug with a digging stick known as a Capun. In the old days, people would make these sticks from carefully fire-hardened wood. These days, in order to dig out these hard-to-get-at roots, we’re using titanium. We live in an interesting time where modern tech is sometimes needed just to live a more simple life. If we could replant the valley, we would not need titanium capuns. As civilization collapses, as gas gets too expensive, the cattle ranches will dwindle and the root diggers will move down to replant, to rewild those valleys. At some point the titanium capuns will be buried and forgotten in an easy to dig, river of abundance. For now, we find a balance in using new tools to bridge us back to the old ways.

Here is Grandma Fin demonstrating how the titanium capuns are used:

After taking a midday nap (life on the hoop is a crepuscular existence) we head out in the SUV to scout for more locations. We stop and get out at a possible camas patch, but there is nothing. The land has been trampled by cattle. At the end of the field a single tiger lily is just starting to bud out. “Kill it!” They shout. My heart stops. Are they really going to kill a rare species like this? The tiger lily was once much more populated than it is now. It was a food source for humans, which means it grew in many places. Now, it is very rare. How could they do that? As they pull up the root bulb I feel like I should say something but I hold back. Then I see it: tiny rootlets stuck to the main bulb. Dozens of them. We dig a dozen or so holes and drop in a few rootlets in each one. Next year, there will be more than just one Tiger Lily, there will be many. At that moment, things clicked and I started to understand on a fundamental level what I already have read and know. Tiger Lillies are endangered because they are no longer eaten. If there is no one there to tend the plant, to help it along, it will die out. Just as we humans will die out without the plants to help us along. It’s not the killing that is destructive, it’s how you go about killing that matters.

The best example of this is the harvest season for most of these roots. Once the flower has gone to seed, and the seeds begin to fall, it’s the best time to harvest the root. When you pull the root out, you plant the seeds at the same time. Grandma calls this “the reach around”. Life on these hoops is defined and maintained by the reach around. This was a principle that I have read many times in modern books on sustainable hunter-gatherer land management, but reading about it wasn’t enough. There is a mindset and experience of tending the wild that needs cultivation. After over a decade of rewilding, I haven’t felt that anywhere other than on the hoop. Not at a permaculture class, not at a skill-share, not even with my friends playing out in the woods. Perhaps it’s because, on the hoop, you are not starting from scratch. You’re building on what the wild has already provided, and what the Native cultures left in the land as their legacy. On the hoop, I felt an immense support already there from the earth. You don’t find that when you’re planning your permaculture garden. The hoop is a permaculture garden. One that has been there for thousands of years and survived the encroachment of civilization by living up on the tables – the fringes, where civilization doesn’t deem important. Out on the hoop I tasted freedom, and like the roots we dig, it was bittersweet.

Click to Purchase

You really haven’t even begun to rewild until you’ve gone out on the hoop and spent some time with Grandma Fin. This story is really just one big plea for you to join up with Tranny Granny and get your asses on the hoop! My only regret was that I couldn’t stay longer. I promised Grandma that I would return, with reinforcements.

Read Finisia’s autobiography to learn more about her story: “Growing up in Occupied America.” Friend her on Facebook and send her a message.

Everyone I have talked to who has been through Lynx Vilden’s stone age immersion program has had good things to say about it. Not that it didn’t have its challenges, but that they are worth it. Ever since I signed up I’ve been having little fears pop up about it. Here is the list:

IBS
I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). As of late, I have it under control through diet, nutrition and exercise. I am allergic to most things, so I eat a very limited diet of meat, vegetables and some fruit. My diet shouldn’t be that big of a problem since it’s very close to a hunter-gatherer style diet anyway. Although I’ve learned how to predict my IBS, it can still be quite spontaneous and that scares me. One of my worst symptoms is “urgency” and lack of bowel control. Basically, when I have to go, I will go. Whether there is a bathroom or not. Now in the last few years I haven’t had any accidents, but this is always present in my mind. The nice thing about being in the woods is that you can pretty much dig a toilet anywhere. Urgency won’t be too much of a problem out there. But the diarrhea might. Since I’ve been drinking bone broth every day and eliminated pork from my paleo-ish diet, my diarrhea has all but stopped. Out there, though, I probably won’t have too much access to bone broth. I’ll also have to eat greens, and sometimes those greens go right through me. This will be bad if my body stops absorbing nutrients while I’m out there possibly going hungry a lot of the time. IBS is my number one worry because of the amount of anxiety that it fills me with. I think I’ll be okay, but the uncertainty of it is like a dark cloud looming over the other inspiring aspects of the project. If I can do this and overcome the IBS, the fear and anxiety associated with it, it’s going to change my life forever.

Hemorrhoids
One of the side effects of IBS is hemorrhoids. Generally these are also kept at bay with diet, nutrition and exercise. The less diarrhea I have, the less likely the hemorrhoids will flare up. But sometimes they flare up from things like hiking. Since I’ll be hiking around through the mountains quite a bit, I’m nervous that I’ll end up with an itchy butt. I’m going to make a lemon balm & cottonwood salve to bring with me should I need it to help out with that.

Physical Strength
I’m not sure if I’m strong enough physically to carry a heavy pack around the mountains for a month. A friend who is a personal trainer started to make me train but my immune system is acting weirdly and I can’t shake this cough and sore throat. I’m taking a couple of tinctures and am going to experiment on myself with English Ivy tea to see if it can curb my cough. I’m hoping that I’ll be well enough to continue my training through the two months of preparation so by the time the month of primitive living rolls around I’ll be much more fit. I have a good feeling about this.

Preparations
I’m sort of nervous that I only have three more weeks to prepare. The hide-tanning process is taking longer than I thought. I only need to tan three hides to have the bare minimum, since three of my close friends each gave me an amazingly soft brain-tanned buckskin. I’m planning on tanning seven myself though, since I’ll need food containers and other such things.

Group Dynamic
I’m honestly not too nervous about group dynamic, but after watching a decade of reality shows, I’m a bit apprehensive. I’m an easy going person. I can get along with most people. I feel excited by the opportunity to meet and become close with a dozen more people as serious about rewilding and ancestral skills as I am.

Sex & Intimacy
No one wants to talk about the elephant in the room, but I’ll mention it just to make it known. Sex is a human need. It will be strange to leave my girlfriend back in Portland while I travel off for a backwoods adventure for three and a half months. It’s not like anyone died because they didn’t get laid for a few months, but it is undeniably a need of humans. I am also aware of the power that camp has in creating bonds of intimacy between people. These things should not be ignored, they should be talked about. We are sexual animals. My lady and I have both read Sex at Dawn and are not particularly bound to the mainstream ideology of sex and intimacy (particularly monogamy), but we grew up with the puritanical undertones that permeate American culture and haven’t done any work to really change our reactions to things regarding sexual intimacy. This is not so much a worry for me, but more of a curious concern that is a private conversation between me and my girlfriend. However, being too private about these things is one of the reasons the broken, mainstream ideology of sexual intimacy still persists. For that reason, I feel I need to mention this – without giving too many details.

Cold/Hunger/Dark/Predators
The last thing I’m worried about are all the standard camping comforts and fears. I’ve had a fair share of discomfort, but probably not as extreme as the hunger I’m most likely going to experience while up there. I’m also still a little afraid of the dark, I hate the cold and am worried about cougars, wolves and bears… oh my!