I feel that the rewilding journey for me has always been more of a mental trip than a physical one. I’ve logged thousands of hours reading and philosophizing and changing my cultural perspective than I have say, flint-knapping. I can’t make an arrowhead to save my life, but I can see the world in a different way. This makes me wonder if this is like the chicken and the egg question. What comes first, rewilding your heart or rewilding your subsistence? Can they be done simultaneously?
I would speculate that mind change has to come first. It took me forever to explain permaculture to my fiancee, but once she got it, it is all she can talk about.
can’t do until you know. can’t know until you have reason to think differently. c’nest pas?
Our way of life doesn’t afford much room for mistakes.
Who wants to put their hunger to the trial and error test?
Remember both actions feed upon each other. A little knowledge allows for much experimenting, in which new knowledges, like physical memory and intuition, take the place of pneumonics and bullet points.
I would say the balance of ‘book’ knowledge to experiential knowledge should be keep to a minimum and no premium should be placed on it’s primacy. What is important that whatever you do works and can be shared with your group.
Tony
Well, personally I think I read books and look stuff up on the web all the time because I’m mega addicted and mega tired most of the time. It’s what I WANT to do. I don’t WANT to go outside. Hypothetically I do, I want to be out there learning bird language and tracking, but realistically no I want to stay inside and watch Borat or read a novel about rich people in NYC, or read a book about bird tracks or look up local wilderness schools on the computer. I spend a lot of time reading information that I don’t ever put into practice. Reading is pretty much all my mom does in her spare time and she used to work at the library whenI was growing up. So I picked up the habit and how. I’m actually find myself struck with panic if I don’t have anything good to read.
Books are my mentors. But they don’t encourage me, they don’t specialize to suit my needs, they don’t answer my questions…on the other hand they are always there, and there are lots of different ones. But we all know it’s not the same.
Having no energy is a big hurdle. I’m anxious all the time. I think that is what really drains it. I sleep 10 hours every night and am tired all day long. If I sleep less than 10 hours I’m pretty much useless. I wish I could go back to being 15 again, but with the resources I have now. When I was younger I had all the energy but no friends, no permission, no tools, no knowledge to do the awesome things I dreamed of doing…canoeing, and backpacking, climbing hills at sunrise, sleeping in snow shelters…I’m very sensitive to caffiene. One cup of tea and I’m wired for the day. It makes me happy, and makes me want to do things, but I find it unsatsifactory because it makes it difficult to concentrate and makes me more apt to clench my teeth and get a headache.
I have trouble making decisions. Too many decisions in this life. Today should I finish my reseach paper? no it’s sunny. Should I go bird watching…no, feel like moving around more. Explore somewhere new? But where? Mostly I do what I want…the path of least resistance. It’s not always that easy to decide what one wants. I usually end up reading.
Penny,
You truly are the female version of me. The no energy thing sucks really bad. I had constant fatigue for several years due to smoking the hell out of my adrhenal glads by drinking coffee instead of water for over a year while I worked at a coffee shop… at least, that’s what I thought I did. But this diet I’m on, the Body Ecology Diet, has slowly but surely brought back my energy where I feel like I’m 15 again… younger really. Caffiene still fucks me up, but I ony have it in small quantities every once and a while, just to feel some kind of buzz. I just got Sacred Healing Beers- a book all about making paleo alchohol! Uh-oh, there goes the neighborhood!
You truly are the female version of me. The no energy thing sucks really bad. I had constant fatigue for several years due to smoking the hell out of my adrhenal glads by drinking coffee instead of water for over a year while I worked at a coffee shop... at least, that's what I thought I did.
LOL…"Smoking the hell out of your adrenal glands,"you definately have a way with words, Scout.
Sacred Healing Beers- a book all about making paleo alchohol! Uh-oh, there goes the neighborhood!
:)…LMAO
Curt
Yeah I have the Sacred Beers book. Bought it for my dad actually. So far he’s made mugwort from some stuff I picked and yarrow from some I told him where to get. He claims not to have noticed any weird effects. I don’t drink much, especially beer so I’ve only tasted them. I believe your diet works, but I’m not up to it right now. I’ve been on diets before so I know all about it…the pigging out on body ecology brownies and corn chips. I went on a low sugar diet for candidiasis for a while once. I remember how sweet things like yogurt and cashew butter started tasting. I didn’t do the stevia thing. I did drink a lot of licorice tea which is really sweet tasting. I didn’t have anyone to do it with my though like you have sasha. I would be like sitting across from my boyfriend at the time who was pigging out on a burrito and just feel so jealous and angry or I’d be making like regular pasta for him and his friends and yucky spelt pasta for me and it just sucked and friends just thought I had an eating disorder because I’m so thin. and that was when I was living on my own in Vermont in the city where there was a great natural foods store and a variety of restuarants. Now I’m living at home part of the time and my mom is the kind of mom who shows love with food. If you don’t eat what she makes she gets really upset. We also don’t have a natural foods store to buy weird things like stevia and kefir and blue corn flour and only your basic hamburger and fries type of restaurants. Maybe if I get my own place stocked with my own foods I’ll try and go on a better diet. Right now the “snack drawer” would just take too much energy to resist…energy that I don’t have which is the whole problem.
irewilding needs to be more of a lifestyle than a mental or physical activity. i can learn to bust fire, flintknap and track and then i’d have a fantastic set of hobbies. i can read and philosophize about zerzan and brown and thoreau and i would have then expanded my cognitive thought and become a rather opinionated fellow on the barstool. neither of these though would have an impact on my day to day life nor how that life coexists with the world around me. we can transplant any hobby with another and once we become proficient at it we’d probably get as much joy out of it whether we were busting a hand drill or bowling a near perfect game, dude.
i’d have to incorporate both the philosophical ideals and the physical skills into my life so that they are no longer hobbies or ideas but actual means of bringing me not only joy, but comfort, sustenance and self-worth. do i bust fire for every meal?? no, i live in a house with a stove. do i pick up roadkill? yes, and it gets cooked on that stove. do i make all my own clothes? no, i’m wearing lucky jeans right now. when i am outside do i touch, taste and smell the wilderness around? yeah, thats why these jeans smell like lavender, woodsmoke and, uh, roadkill.
my world is filled with paradoxes so i am trying to become more and more accountable for these paradoxes and the idea of rewilding is helping me do that. the act of rewilding is forging a lifestyle of less and less paradox.
walking thru town find a plant you’re not familiar with and pick a bit of it. smell it, feel it and taste it. find out what it is by taking it home and looking it up online or in a book. better yet, ask someone. a friend or head into a nearby nursery and talk to someone (forging a community). share knowledge.
wow what a rant. fuck it dude, lets go bowling
I think it may well be the lifestyle change which makes the most difference. I’m currently doing a year long primitive skills course, and while the instruction is good, and I’m learning about a great many things, there’s no chance to really master primitive skills here. Classes are only twelve hours per week - eighteen for me in the plants focus class as well - and outside of that, I’ve got to work every off day to be able to do this.
This leads to three major problems: first that I have little free time to practice these skils on my own, secondly that when I do have time I’m tired as others have mentioned, and thirdly that all of these things together reinforce the civilized lifestyle and civilized means of acquiring the necessities of life.
Where are you studying scruff, if i may ask?
Earthwalk Northwest, Primitive Skills Apprenticeship and Plants and Ethnobotany Apprenticeship.
Well, Penny, I have the same problems and the opposite body, meaning that I accumulate fat instead of not being able to keep fat. I agree with Urban Scout - the solution is in diet. I would also recommend a book, “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon, which is a complete switch in a whole raft of thinking - challenging the diet dictocrats. But, the bottom line is, if you want to actually get healthy, you’re going to probably need to take some time away from both Mom and boyfriend. You said you have a tipi. How about coming to the Colorado Rockies for the summer and living in your tipi? We desperately need help this summer. We’re building a 10X10 foot straw bale chicken coop, building my daughter a small straw bale cabin, building cold frames for gardening, cutting trees and peeling them for our cabin (to season for a year.) My invitation is to come, be on your own, prepare your own food so that you eat what you decide you should eat, live in the open air away from pollution, help with these various projects as your energy allows, but not feeling like you need to push more than you are capable of (in other words, I’m not looking for slave labor and know you will need time to heal.) If you cannot stand not having internet, you could probably hook up a wireless laptop to our connection, since your tipi would be in the vicinity of our home, but the truth is you’d be healthier leaving the internet behind for the summer. How about it?
Snowflower
Snowflower-That’s a very generous offer, but I’ll have to decline for now. I’m planning on working here this summer. I’ve just graduated from college and there are loans to pay off and I want to save up for a little place of my own. I also don’t like travel at all. I’ve tried to escape before…Virginia, yoga commune, ecovillage in Costa Rica. It just doesn’t work out. I’m very attached to these hills for better or worse and become (extra) mentally unstable anywhere else. I’d rather not leave behind my friends and family either. I’m incredibly independent or to put it more accurately ultra-sensitive to criticism any always complaining about how much I hate people “looking over my shoulder” or giving me that disapproving frown but essentially they are my rock and I’m better off with than without.
I understand completely. I listen to the spirit in my mountain too.
Snowflower
yoga commune, ecovillage in Costa Rica
Now thats a story I’d love to hear! 
Urban Scout wrote:
This makes me wonder if this is like the chicken and the egg question. What comes first, rewilding your heart or rewilding your subsistence? Can they be done simultaneously?
Can you rewild your subsistence without rewilding your heart at the same time? Or rewild your heart without in some way rewilding your subsistence? I can’t seem to pull the two apart.
Well if you take a look at food I’ve read some accounts of early trappers who ate mostly wild food but didn’t seem to care for the animals. Killed more than they needed and left it to rot, killed coyotes, panthers, and snakes out of hatred and fear. “There is no reverence in what you do” as Benecio would whisper in The Hunted. haha. So while I would agree that I love and respect plants and animals the more I utilize them, that isn’t always the case.
For me it’s equal, Scout. Both sides of the spectrum are infinite for me and I believe they are for a lot of people since rewilding involves so much hands on experience and work. Earlier today I came to a massive wall of dead and alive thickets that i new I couldn’t get straight through silently like I hoped, but I tried with zero prevail . As I quietly tried to get into the experience of this bunch of thickets I suddenly became startled by something jumping out of the thickets into a creek about five feet in front me. I think the creature was a beaver because of a flopping sound it made when it enter the water and I soon after found their tracks and marks on to trees. I think the flopping sound originated from its tail slapping the surface and mud of the water to quickly thrust itself into the depths. The creature freaked me out and I probably freaked it out too. Anyway I soon came to a new idea for myself after getting spotted by the creature, which was this that “there is no such thing as a dead end in a forest. There is always some other way to go then backwards if you can find it and wield your body and mind to make it.” Soon after my realization I looked to my right and found a way that became much more satisfying, possible, quieter, and gentler.
I think it can be difficult to seperate the two, rewilding of mind and life.
It depends on your situation. If you are out on the land,mind is just as important and linked to your skill.
Its easy for a novice to think he/she can live off the land after learning a few skill’s,without ever having had to live that way before.
I have found that I have less motivation to survive alone at times because
of being alone.You can get lonely going solo.
I like to have friends to share my experiences with.
Right now Im living in the woods at the edge of a city that I have never lived in before.
And the thing I would like right now is someone who understands my life,
just to have a good time with.
So far I have provided food,shelter,water for my self,but not much companionship.
The mind and skills seem interlocked to me, it takes a mind to head in that direction…but skills provide an avenue for interest too.
Thats my two cents. Ofthewood
I tend to analyze (and over analyze) everything. So for me, the rewilding starts in my mind. I read about something, and I get excited about it, and then I start to think through the processes. Sometimes it ends there, like if I think I might have a hard time finding a certain resource. But sometimes, it leads me into a good adventure.
I wish in some ways that I could act more impulsively, jumping into projects even if they turn into failures. I think I acted that way more as a kid. Old age and civilized responsibilities have gotten to me, I suppose.