Introductions

**READ HERE FIRST**
#948

Hello,
I found this site bc I searched for “graduates of Bolad’s Kitchen” on Google. I was looking for more specific and personal info about the school, as I seem to be headed there. I have never heard of this re-wilding. The more I read of this site, the more it seems to be describing the alternate life I’ve lived for years in my imagination, which, though I’ve caught glimpses of a few people managing to live it in physical reality, I’ve felt stumped as to how to shift my own life into this alternate reality. And here are all these people on this site, apparently full of ideas and experiences of doing just that. Cool.

I am a 54 yr old mom of 6 grown children. Over 20 yrs ago, I followed my husband’s work trail from pastoral Northern Idaho to urban New England, where we still live. Ironically, I grew up in the Alaskan bush, in a subsistence lifestyle, and New England was only the stuff of stories to me. Literally. I read lots of books, and many of my faves were historic tales of the European colonization and settlement periods of NewEngland. The consolation “prize” for having to live in a place where my patch of ground is actually the size of a patch, was being in the midst of all this history and story.

I did not know I would put down such deep roots to the land itself, or fall so deeply in love with its plants, water, and bones. I have no desire to ever leave here, but I very much want to live more simply, with more rhythmic connection to the land itself, and less pavement, gasoline, and hustle.

I practice a form of healing the soul, which some might call “indigenous”, though I’m not at all sure I understand all the ways that word is used. I wish to remain accessible to as many needy, lost, and hungry souls as is best, to offer the medicine of the beautiful and noble “weeds” that grow in our vacant lots, neglected bits of dirt, or out of cracks in the concrete skin of urbanity, to all who feel the call to it. If I tuck myself too comfortably out of the way, as I might like to do, those who most need what the plants so generously offer, might never find it. So I’m looking for a way to be here, and not here, I suppose. I’m deeply interested in the experiences, questions, and knowledge the people here have to share.

#950

I’m Oliver I live in Missouri, which Kevin Tucker called a “shithole” in his podcast. I believe Missouri is beautiful. My past formal education is in advanced heterodox economics and according again to Kevin Tucker’s podcast with Pete, all economists are sociopaths. Even though I feel I have a lot to offer and have been a practicing anarcho primitivist for over 12 years, I’m not sure I feel those who put themselves at the apex of A/P (primal anarchy) are in favor of being inclusive.

#951

Howdy, Oliver. Welcome to the camp. I’m sure if Kevin & Peter suspected a friendly economist was listening, they’d have chosen better words. To be fair ‘though, it’s an interesting & seemingly paradoxical combination (heterodox economist & anarcho-primitivist I mean).

I wouldn’t call economists sociopaths, but the vast majority of them do tend to have very skewed perceptions of the world that, frequently, lead their good intentions to have disastrous results. The holy grail of conventional economics, perpetual growth, for instance, is a physical impossibility only acknowledged in obscure subsets like ecological economics.

But, of course, economies have existed since way before the Austrian school or even currency. And I’m all for any info that’ll help the tribe prevail in this peculiar, money-hungry Rube Goldberg machine we find ourselves in. I think you’ll find we’re a pretty receptive bunch :slight_smile:

Oh, & I haven’t been to Missouri (yet), but I hear it’s great!

#952

Heterodox economists are almost always anti capitalist, but at least half or more follow commune style economic old marxist type use value theories, and the other are radical across the board and even include anarchist economics. Thorstein Veblen is America’s only great economist (from America), and his “institutional economic theory” is essentially that institutions have power for better or worse of society and ultimately they control markets not prices. To which he is mostly correct, even now his theories are proven by current behavioral economists. I suggest you just look into Veblen’s “Conspicuous Consumption” - just check out a synopsis of the book and it should be enlightening.

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#953

Aaaaaah, my mistake. I somehow read heterodox as “orthodox”. That makes much more sense. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll check it out.

#954

Hello Iam Dale. Im a 49 year old woman living off grid in east central Illinois. I am still learning and when I came across rewild I was so thrilled to finally find like-minded folks. Hi Scout I am always glad to meet other females that are strong .

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As a millennial raised in urban environments with technology always close to me: how do I start the process of rewilding?
#955

Desperate Days - 7/27/2020

 My name is Daniel, a young aspiring woodsman learning more and more over the past years, of the different ways in which people have sought to get back to better times. I first learned of prepping / survival (where I began in my teens), then nomadic hitchhiking across the US (which I did for a time after high school), homesteading (which I hope to achieve one day), and now primal living / rewilding (which I aim to live in the near future).

 I have as much as possible acclimated myself to wilderness living and skills on weekends when work allowed. I learned how to set up a camp far off the trails around a small fire with a hammock and rain fly; alternatively sleeping on the ground over debris.
 I have sterilized my water from the brown and amber Florida swamps, and almost caught snakes a few times, trying to determine if they really do taste like chicken. Not too bad for a lone city slicker, I think.

 I'm only 20, and have been on this learning journey since 2017. I have not had much opportunity to learn uninterrupted over the span of weeks, much less months, and no one to teach me beside books and Dave Canterbury (books / YouTube) .

 On the way to detaching myself from the system, I became a car - dweller mid way through 2019, sleeping in my 4-door sedan in front of Planet Fitness while in the city, or in a camp of my making when in the disturbed and heavily logged woods I had to drive an hour away to reach. All closer locations were smaller, heavily visited, and heavily regulated, not to mention paid entry or paid camping.

 Given the Covid-19 onset, I have been gracefully invited to stay with family until further notice, given that until recently gyms had been closed for months. I've spend my time in this fancy paper mache box thinking what it is I want to do with my life. Being in the city, and with family, I can eat to my hearts content to the extent of kings, have all manner of entertainment at my fingertips, and never have to drip a drop of sweat in this air conditioned, sterile place. Yet I am miserable. I long for the cold nights I spent in the swamps near the Florida - Georgia border in december. I miss the smoke in my eyes, the flies in my ears, the spiders on my gear, the strange sounds in the middle of the night while tending my fire. I miss the weight of my pack, walking through the brush in the rain, beneath the walmart tarp I used both as a rain fly and a poncho. I reminisce of boots failing me, and filling with water; of my car getting stuck, and asking kind country folk to help pull my car out of the mud (a great failure and memorable lesson). I miss all the suffering, and loathe my present comforts. Would to God I knew one other soul mad or perhaps same enough to venture off into the woods! Then again, being as solitary as life has shaped me to be, where do I find such a person? How do I trust them, or prove myself to them that I can be trusted and relied upon?

 Just wish I could disappear into the mountains, perhaps Tennessee, and live in some form of debris shelter, learning to hunt and survive self-sufficiently, perhaps working at a day labor place two weeks out of the month to supplement my food with rice and beans, as well as saving to buy land. There seems to be some invisible wall, separating me from that dream. Is it my own doubts and insecurities? Is it the life long domestication? I don't know. I only know that I certainly hate the way I feel in society, and I lovingly recall my days in lost ignorant, yet blissful learning, in the wild.

 May that night sky beneath the stars, beside my fire, that I dream of and have before seen, come quickly again.
#956

I’m Kelly, 38, from California and now living in the PNW. I’ve been rewilding in one form or another for about 10 years. I work in IT, professional data privacy nerd running a holistic healthcare cybersecurity company. (Side note: This site definitely has some security issues, but not sure how much of a priority that is for admins.) I spend most of my free time enjoying the outdoors and studying plant medicine. I’m psychic, into spirituality and tarot and enjoy conversing with my ancestors.