Hi, im new here… I strongly believe that in order to really change, you must change both physically and mentally. Not to criticize, but how does sitting on a computer every night have anything to do with rewilding? Sure, the internet is a wonderful source of information, but lets not forget nature is too! Get out there, improve yourself and the area you live in!
True dat.
Hi folks 
Well I’m new here but here’s my 2p worth 
It needs the mind before the body, as you need to be prepared with skills and to be honest have a radical change in perspective compared to the “real” (lmao) world…but then you need to bring in the body too.
Catch is, you need a community (real world) to re-wild properly as it takes a bunch of people supporting each other to be anything other than a lone nutter with a bow!
hides bow
…and to stand a chance of survival (and keeping your sanity).
puts 2p in the pot
Cha-Ching!
Thanks Pooka. Welcome to the forum!
Just paying attention…to what my body and mind say works for me. When I slip off into a daydream that tends to weaken my paying attention and my posture begins to slip (go bad) and my mind’s remembering ability begins to forget things that I think I should alway be aware of. Thinking anything can happen, MY priorities, paying attention, having fun, day-dream control, processing into the rewild cultures, and trying my best.
Though I’d like to be more of a physical rewilder, I’m inevitably in the mental sphere most of the time. Rewiring for rewilding, neurologically speaking. Flushing out a lifetime of civilised prejudices is a full time job for me. But philosophy alone won’t put dinner in the tipi, so I’d say the ideal rewilding state works on equal amounts of thought, action, thought-supported action and action-supported thought. Yessir.
Catch is, you need a community (real world) to re-wild properly as it takes a bunch of people supporting each other to be anything other than a lone nutter with a bow!
Hear hear! You can say that again!
Catch is, you need a community (real world) to re-wild properly as it takes a bunch of people supporting each other to be anything other than a lone nutter with a bow!
Um. I didn’t mean that literally. But I have to say I still agree.
I like to call non-community oriented nature types “mountain-men/women”, rather than rewilders - civilization has a long and illustrious tradition of sending its members out into the ‘wilderness’ to harass and abuse the living community there. Sometimes these people look like they’ve gone native, but they’ve really just gone nutty. Hence the living in the log cabin all by yourself. With your bow that you’ve named “Wilson”, and that you use to hunt “long pig”.
Good luck hunting long pig in the wilderness. I understand they mostly live in cities now days.
I don’t engage in any mental rewilding at all, anymore. Or maybe I am, but if any is taking place it’s subconcious.
I used to take rewilding VERY seriously, thinking that there was something very important about consciously trying to alter my thoughts in such a very contrived manner - the contrived aspect is really my main issue with it now. I wasn’t fond of trying to set myself up against this preconceived notion of what “rewilding” supposedly means - it just seems counterintuitive.
you can send a business man to a class to learn how to flint nap, or to start a fire with sticks. but he is still a business man. you could send your son to boy scouts to learn how to build a shelter. i would hardly call a boy scout or a business man who took a class ‘rewilded.’
it must be more mental than physical. i know for me if i could weigh the physical and mental changes i’ve gone through on some type of scale. my mental changes have been far greater than my physical.
which comes first on the path of rewilding? its probably different for every person, for me it was mental, i read ishmael. that changed the way i saw myself in the world, it destroyed what i thought the world was and how it worked. something profound changed in me. no longer was i a person in this civilization, bounded by the laws my leaders before me past. this was no more, no more was i bounded by their laws, i was bounded by natures laws i realized as is every organism. no longer were they ‘my leaders’. no longer did i see myself apart, or somehow different than the rest of the creatures on this planet, i was apart of it. i had reconnected to the world in a different way a natural way. i didn’t see myself as a member of civilization but has a member of the community of life.
the physical skills came after.
One aspect I was thinking about this is that by being more physical than mental and living in the moment, relating through sensual experience is rewilding, wether you flint knap or whatever or not…
I just thought about something that sounded fucking terrific to my ears: Rewild the body, the whole body, so that the mind can grow in something balanced, sturdy, flexible, strong, reconditioned, and on on.
Mod: trying to embed something. Oh well.
I don’t know. I think the mental part of it is a bit of a crutch, a thing where planning and knowledge collection take the place of experience. I know it is in my case.
Point: When I first started learning parkour, I got really involved on the parkour forums. I made like a dozen posts a day. I argured philosophy, legality, motivation, fitness, anything except proper technigue, because you can’t put a physical practice into words. I did this because I was stuck in an office all day, and they discouraged running, jumping, and climbing in the building. i woudl go out on my lunch breaks and exercise, I would work on it at home. I talked about it and learned about it only when I had no opportunity to DO it.
I think rewilding is like this. We’re in a situation where it’s artificially difficult to actually do what we talk about. We talk, we study, we get second or third hand experience because first hand experience is difficult to obtain. This is not a bad thing. Or rather, it’s better than nothing. And we sorta need to ease into going feral a bit at a time anyway, because doing it all at once might be fatal.
For some, it’s definitely a crutch. And easing into it is precisely as you say. But ultimately, look at what wild human life is about. The technology has more to do with elegance than complexity, so it’s of the “easy to learn, lifetime to master” class. Hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering … these things don’t take any great amount of time to really learn, but you can spend the rest of your life practicing them and getting better.
But how to relate to other human beings, how to relate to a more-than-human world, learning how to listen and hear the stories of the land around you … that’s truly difficult. The parts of wild living that are most difficult are the “mental” aspects, or I would say, how to relate. The mundane, “physical” elements like tool-making, hunting, gathering, etc., those, by comparison, are easy.
I think we have a tendency, as products of civilization, to think that if it’s not a physical thing then it must be a mental thing. This is really a civ. way to look at things. A lot of the shifts that need to happen for us might be neither one.
The other mode of thinking that we need to unlearn is the idea that these things are separate and can stand on there own.
We are heavily weighted to the physical and mental. A lot of the medicine wheel teachings that are used in addictions and wellness programs talk about a circle with four quadrants. Mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. A person who neglects one or two of these quadrants in their wheel is like a flat tire. Going nowhere.
This circle operates on all levels from the cellular level to the level of civilization and even the universe. But intellectually analyzing the crap out of this concept is missing the mark too.
A lot gets said here about the person who goes off on their own and how that is not what rewilding is about. I think there is a value in anything that helps us de-program. Maybe some of us will spend our entire lives working to do that. When we die our only step toward rewilding that we have accomplished might be de-programing.
For me, that de-programing is the biggest thing I can do, whatever form that takes.
Funny, that’s how I tried to design this site.
Philosophy section is for mind (the grief/praise section for emotional)
Subsistence/Tools is for physical
Invisible technologies are for emotional and spiritual (and social).
A few years back I went on a medicine wheel study binge. I must have filled half a dozen note books with notes and clues and ideas. You know the mayans dilineated like 280 directions on the wheel? I guess that’s what Civilization can afford you to do. Of course, in the end it doesn’t really help you live the medicine wheel all that much. I like four directions myself. A lot less to think about. Of course, not forgetting the dark wheel (pain, fear, guilt & grief)… I’ve already said too much.
Anyway, in the end I figured out if I just shut the fuck up and spend time outdoors, with a mindful, respectful attitude, the world will open and you don’t need to think too much… life just happens. Deer walk into your path, raccoons climb over you, you stumble into the nettle patch you were looking for, etc. etc.
Right on US.
I can see your design. Cool.