A few weeks back I went to a anarchist curated fundraiser for an anti-civilization film. In lieu of my recent “fan mail” and the overall attacks I get from green anarchists, I’m very apprehensive about going to these kinds of events, but I wanted to show my support for the film and meet the filmmaker. I didn’t stay long. Why, in a room full of people who generally agree more or less with me about civilization, did I feel like I stood in the lions den? On my drive home I realized that the activist (and particularly anarchist) community that I have known and experienced has felt like a hate culture.
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This book is a 3lb tome that describes Jon Young’s mentoring model. I recommend it for any rewilding people out there, simply on the basis that it has a great collection of games and “routines” that help people have amazing experiences with the other-than-human world. The routines in this book gave me experiences that formed the foundation of my relationship with animism. However, it would be a lie to say that I recommend all of the content in the book. It’s worth digging through the domesticated outlook of connecting with nature (i.e. the feeling of schooling) for the more rewilding type gems. Very worth it, in fact. I wouldn’t have been able to really understand much of what I know now if it were not for the principles in this book. So thank you Jon and company for finally getting this work out there for people to start experimenting with!
Check it out here: http://naturementoring.com/
Whenever I get to talking about how fucked up this culture is and how much it is fucking up the planet, someone inevitably writes me off as just preaching doom and gloom without “realistic” solutions. Generally what they actually mean is solutions [sic] that will prevent them from having to fundamentally change the way they live their life.
For a long time now I’ve used this blog to post up angry rants about random topics, generally relating to rewilding in some way or other. I’ve realized something in the last few days that is blowing my mind: I’m fucking sick of “rewilding.” Yes that’s right folks. I’ve had it up to here with the word rewilding.
A beautiful raccoon heart at the December ‘09 Rewild Camp. I cut it out of a full grown female raccoon who died under the wheel of a car on Powell st. I wanted to eat it, but I don’t know about the toxicity of organ meats of urban omnivores. Especially those riffling through garbage cans in Methland, USA (S.E. Portland). I’m still debating on whether or not to eat her legs which are currently in my freezer.
Photo by Forest
I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations about the mysterious package I received. I’ve learned a lot, become aware of a lot of things I didn’t know about and thought deeply about my reactions and how I will deal with this kind of thing in the future. I’ve made mistakes in the last few weeks that resulted in a situation I didn’t know how to deal with, and so I made a few mistakes in dealing with the situation.
Hey yall, if you live in the Portland/Salem area here is a great way to pass some time in the winter days and learn some cool skillz at a super cheap rate:
This year, Echoes in Time host’s Dale Coleman, Goode Jones and Leland Gilsen will be offering a taste of primitive skills over the weekend of December 11, 12 and 13. This is a very limited class size of 10 students and 4-5 instructors, therefore the instructor to student ratio high. Lunch will be provided and the diet is Opportunivore, if you required something special, bring it. We will be able to sleep in Goode’s shop next to the woodstove, so bring sleeping bags, and personal care items. Cold running water and restroom facilities are available in the shop. There are hotels/motels close if you prefer. We usually go out to eat in the evenings. Cost for this weekend is $75.00. Please contact Dale Coleman (echoesintime [at] aol [dot] com) and send registration fee early to reserve your spot.
A power system sits in place that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. This power system lies outside of most people’s perception because we grow up in it, never knowing anything different, never seeing it articulated but understanding it down to our bones. It feels as natural to us as drinking a glass of water. This power structure keeps us as slaves, forced to continue building civilization. Without empire civilization could not, would not exist.
As some of you may know, I run a free monthly skill-share called Rewild Camp on the last Sunday. For more info and to get involved, go to www.rewildportland.com.
Raccoon season starts next week. I finally made time to prep my traps in the way my trappers education booklet told me. I boiled the conibears to get the factory grease off and then mixed in a handful of black walnut to see what would happen.
Seriously, topics like this bore the shit out of me and I shouldn’t even have to write about this. But because it happens so frequently, I thought I should. The other day some asshole posted a few comments on my blog calling me a hypocrite (among other things) for watching television. I deleted their comments. A little later they started posting comments about how I had “censored” them.
Everyone talks shit on English Ivy; its invasive behavior has given it a bad rap. A while ago I started to feel empathy for the plant and wonder what kind of relationship I could begin to have with the plant, other than pulling it off of native trees and letting it rot in an ugly pile on the side of a trail.
Hey there Scout,
I am just wondering that, while you are honing your skills to be able to create new out of the aftermath of civilization while nature is still intact, what are your thoughts about what to gather from this world (i.e ropes, tarps, rations, guns) to facilitate survival during whatever happens whenever it happens. haha the future is so wonderfully vague but extremely heavy if you have the proper amount of imagination and paranoia! also do you have a place to escape to, do you think this is necessary? a plan on how to get there undetected, other people to join? i am working on all of these problems right now but my energy and focus rise and fall like the sun and that quickly and if its a nice day outside you can guarantee i am not focusing on the warm weather clothing and wool blankets i will need stowed, mostly working working on my tan(vitamin d), muscles and ability to become nature as to remain undetectable. but i know there are things that are extremely important that will insure that the people with the right intentions for nature and the universe can prevail and that we should have these at the ready just in case anything happens. its funny because i have gone to some “survival” website with lists about what have, they will list “at least a half gallon of water per day per individual, which does not provide water for hygiene, so be sure to take breath mints and STRONG DEODORANT” seriously these people are worried about “hygiene” and its the Apocalypse?!?!? i guess if they weren’t intending to survive on MRES, which are sure to putrefy their systems, they wouldn’t smell so foul but come on, if you even wear deodorant right now i am pretty sure you have a special comet with your name on it hurling towards the earth this second..
I don’t know how well to say thanks but keep exploring and sharing,
Jessica
Continue reading ‘Ask Urban Scout: The Preparedness Question’
When I walked into the Derrick Jensen talk at the Econvergence this year, one of the organizers asked me to sit on a panel the next day at PSU for the Econvergence discussion on “Radical Sustainability”. It seems that another speaker who was to talk about primitivism didn’t work out and they needed someone. Of course, I engage in rewilding, not primitivism and I don’t consider primitivism and rewilding to be synonyms for each other, since rewilding is a much more modern, better understood and culturally sensitive approach to indigenous living. Therefore, I don’t consider myself a primitivist. However, they knew of my differences and we’re still enthusiastic about having me aboard to talk about rewilding, so I said yes.
Today I finally gathered some Black Walnuts. I’ve been watching them for weeks now, ever since I got my traps. I never really thought I would get into dyeing things but then when I got my traps, I read online that I should dye them first, with Black Walnut husk.
I went out the other day with Willem and harvested a whole bunch more fireweed as well as nettles for this next year. I’m going to process even more for my own projects but I want to save a bunch and do another cordage skill share at Echoes in Time next summer. I’m going to save some nettle for that too. I generally cut the stalk as close to the ground as possible and then strip the leaves off by running the stalk along my hand, either with a bandanna or wearing gloves. I do this with both nettles and fireweed. Once they dry I will put more pictures up on how to process them into fiber that you can spin into cord.
A couple months ago, while traveling to a friends property in the early morning, I came across two roadkill raccoons within a few hundred yards of each other. One female with a light tan color, the other a male with a darker grayish tint. Each one small and juvenile, and not even a shred of a winter coat. Poor little creatures most likely died instantly since they both lay in the middle of the road. I picked them up and took them to my friends where we skinned them and ate their meat. Raccoon legs taste amazing, if you ever get the chance, seriously try it. I don’t quite know what to do with organ meats yet, so we left the rest of the carcasses for the coyotes or other scavengers.
I remember learning the figure-four dead fall and a simple snare close to a decade ago. When I learned them, I simultaneously learned that the law does not allow them unless you stumble into a real survival situation. This really put me off from ever trying them out or experimenting with them. So the art of trapping fell by the wayside to edible plants and other ancestral skills.
Dear Scout,Who gave you the authority to define rewilding for everyone, everywhere? Just because you keep a blog and prance around in a loincloth doesn’t give you the right to tell us what rewilding means! Go fuck yourself!
I didn’t really define rewilding. I took the definition I found on the internet.
But for the sake of it, let’s do some word play here. Rewilding, the slang for re-wilding. An obvious premise sits in this word: giving something back its wildness. Of course, “wildness” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But let’s go with Dictionary.com’s definition of re-:
a prefix, occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition, or with the meaning “back” or “backward” to indicate withdrawal or backward motion: regenerate; refurbish; retype; retrace; revert.
and wild;
1. living in a state of nature; not tamed or domesticated: a wild animal; wild geese.
2. growing or produced without cultivation or the care of humans, as plants, flowers, fruit, or honey: wild cherries.
3. uncultivated, uninhabited, or waste: wild country.
4. uncivilized or barbarous: wild tribes.
If we look at the first definition list above, the subtext of the definition of rewilding that I found online “to return to a more natural state; the process of undoing domestication” makes practical sense as the definition of rewilding.
Why do definitions matter? People must have a shared reality in order to work together in that reality. I once got into the most insane arguments with a man who refused to share reality with me, claiming that “nothing is real” and that “there are no such thing as facts”. These arguments looked like little more than philosophical masturbation to me, than practical thinking for taking actions to create a sustainable planet. While I agreed in the philosophical sense with him, it didn’t help anyone to make choices in the real world. While I don’t believe in the concept of “facts” I do believe that we need to have shared observations of reality. We can observe that agriculture destroys the soil. If we can’t have that shared reality, we can’t work together to change our subsistence strategy to one that builds soil. Similarly, if we can’t have a shared reality of what it means to rewild, the word might as well mean nothing at all. The more we clearly define an idea, the easier time we will have using it for practical purposes.
In a sense, I will claim ownership of the term rewilding, in that my life’s work centers around caretaking the idea of what it means to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, in its wholeness. I don’t think of rewilding as some new buzzword or some small scene of people or a wildlife conservation tactic. I see it as a complex lens through which I view the world helps me to make decisions about how I want to live my life.
Now, some contention may lie in that I strongly advocate against running away to the wilderness. While I strongly advocate against it, I still see it as part of rewilding. Because my focus lies in fostering as much rewilding as possible, running away to the wilderness doesn’t effect much change. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own merit, it certainly does! I also advocate for creating “rewilding havens”; land where people can work together to rewild. This differs from running away into the wilderness because people still focus on creating an interface with civilization to draw out its members, rather than shunning all of it and living as a hermit (which I believe also has its own merit).
When it comes down to it though, I don’t see one “right way” to rewild. Everyone has their own limits and passions. I will continue to do what I can to build a cultural momentum of rewilding, using the fullest extent and articulation of the practical, shared definition.
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