Circle of the Seasons

New blog!

2011-01-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

I'm upgrading to wordpress because blogger has always been a pain uploading, formatting pictures and text. If you're interested you can follow my new blog at naturalskills.wordpress.com

Some Projects

2011-01-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

Been working on a few things before I leave for San Diego on Sunday. I've mostly been working on this Moose hide. Several things have to happen for an animal skin to turn into soft leather but when it's done right, buckskin is softer than any leather you can by in a store. First everything has to be scraped clean, the hair, flesh and a layer under the hair called the "grain". The grain is the shiny part that you see on commercial leather. Next the hide has to be soaked in lye to remove the glues inside the skin, then it is soaked in an emulsified oil solution and then as it dries out the fibers have to be stretched. Finally if you get some smoke into it it will turn brown and stay soft even if it gets wet again.

The frame is too small but we'll see how it works out.

This is a non-returning boomerang made from live oak. It is a very deadly weapon and was preferred over the bow and arrow for open grassland small game hunting.

Here is a little adz that works really well. Just needs some rawhide lashing.

This is my flint pile. I need to spall up the big rocks so I can bring them to San Diego.

I cut down this Elm for a bow. My ax worked better than I expected. It probably only took 15 minutes of chopping.

Here is the stave roughed out for drying.

Use Nature

2011-01-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear is that to save the environment we need to leave it alone. This idea would be bizarre to a native person because they understand that its through our use of nature that we learn to respect and care for it. Consider the difference between a person who lives in the city and goes hiking on the weekends versus a person who is required to feed, clothe and shelter themselves indefinitely off of 100 acres of land. The first person appreciates nature from a distance while the second is inseparable from it. They know each plant and animal that occupies the land like members of their own family and they are deeply grateful for how their deaths allow life. This is the level of nature connection that is required for humans to live sustainably on Earth because it is the truth of our interaction with the natural world.

I'm reading an excellent book about indigenous land management called Tending the Wild - Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources. Most people don't realize that natives were the masters of permaculture. Here's an excerpt from Tending the Wild:

"Growing alongside the many kinds of crop plants were a variety of native herbs and trees. Insects buzzed and clicked, and birds chattered. The land smelled good and radiated beauty. The farmer was using the land quite intensively, yet much of the natural plant and animal diversity remained. He explained to me the importance of diversifying crops, using locally available resources, retaining overstory trees, and planting vegetation that harbored beneficial insects that would feed on the 'bad' insects."

It is important to realize that many plants actually rely on human harvesting for continued growth and reproduction. This is why I think learning about wild edible and medicinal plants is one of the best things a person can do for the health of the land they live in and their own health. I also think that hunting is one of the most beneficial things that can happen on a piece of land when it is done in the right way.

I've been working on getting a good flake pattern on my arrow heads. Of course deer don't care if all the lines are parallel but flint knappers do. I'm getting closer but still have much to learn.

A few arrows

2010-12-14T18:46:00.001-08:00

Here are some arrows I made this week. The padded one is for practice - bopping deer on the butt before I start trying to kill them. Luckily there's no season on harassing wildlife so I'll have all year to work on it.

Hawk eats squirrel

2010-12-14T18:24:00.001-08:00

I got back from a run the other day and sat down by the window in my room to zone out for a while. Then I started hearing a screaming animal and looked outside to see a Red-tailed hawk with a squirrel in its talons. I got to watch the hawk eat this squirrel for nearly three hours. That might seem like a long time but it was fascinating to watch something clean and devour an animal without using hands, all balanced up in a tree. Plus I had nothing better to do so I made a snack and relaxed for the show.

I think people should know that they don't have to go anywhere to reap the benefits of nature connection. Its happening all around us everywhere you look. All you have to do is look down at your own hands to see a masterpiece of evolution formed over millions of years. And to actually get to control these things is really something special.

Times that I turned invisible

2010-11-24T16:23:00.001-08:00

I've used this line before to get kids excited for a story. You guys want to hear about times when I turned invisible? It works pretty well.

I've said in previous blog posts that I think animals are drawn to meditating humans. However I think that when that has happened to me I wasn't really meditating because I was paying attention to everything. I think when people meditate what they are really doing is tuning everything out. I like to sit in the woods and tune in.

Here are three examples of times I "turned invisible".

The first happened when I was living in Colorado. I was sitting on the intramural sports field at CSU watching the moon rise. It was a huge beautiful yellow moon coming up on the horizon. It was pretty late, probably 11 or 12 at night. As I sat there taking in the colors of the moon and the sounds of the night and feeling the wet grass on my legs I saw something bobbing out of my peripheral vision. I realized something was coming towards me but I didn't want to look over. I sat there watching the bobbing get bigger until it was right in front of me. A long legged, scrawny red fox. It came right up to my outstretched feet and started sniffing them. I sat there watching. It felt like meeting a celebrity or something. To have a truly wild animal right there sniffing my feet was awesome. After a few good sniffs it had enough and continued on its way. I watched it trot off and went back to my moonrise, totally blown away by what just happened.

One morning in New York state I went for a walk. It was early summer and the grass was all covered in dew. Up ahead on the trail I saw two baby bunnies playing. I stood very still, relaxed myself, opened up my peripheral vision and all of my senses and just waited. I knew from experience that animals are just drawn to this kind of energy. Ten or fifteen minutes later the bunnies were at my feet licking my toes and chewing on my sandals. Eventually they must have picked up my scent cause they took off in a flash all of the sudden.

Another afternoon in New Hampshire I was sitting in the backyard flint knapping. I thought this experience was interesting because I wasn't being still or quiet at all. I was banging rocks together. However my energy was the same. I had no thoughts in my head. I was totally absorbed in a peaceful state of trying to make something beautiful when I heard fluttering and felt something on my head. I waiting, wondering if that really just happened when a little tufted titmouse flew off my head, down to my feet and started hopping around.

All of these experiences are very special to me but I don't think that I'm special because I get to have them. Nature opens up to anyone willing to be patient and pay attention and no matter how long you have to wait, its always more than worth it.

Bear trailing

2010-11-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

This is another story that I feel was a spiritual experience.

I was tracking behind my house in New Hampshire a couple months ago at the sand pit I would go to nearly every day. In all of the times I had gone there I had never seen bear tracks or heard of bears being in the area. On this particular day I decided to go check out a road that bordered the sand pit that I had never been to. On the road I found fox tracks and as I bent down to see if they were from a red or gray fox I noticed right next to them a faint but clear line of toes and a big heel pad. It was a fresh track of a small black bear. I felt a buzz in my body which I have felt many times before when I was about to have a spiritual experience. I took out my camera to get a picture of the tracks. Being in the sand pit all the time takes a toll on my camera and often when I turn it on it will read "lense error" and turn itself off. That was the case this time so as I searched up and down the road for more tracks I repeatedly turned my camera on and off over and over again praying that it would work and I would have proof that there really was a black bear in our backyard.

Miraculously the bear left no other tracks besides two or three clear ones in a line. The road was surrounded by sand which I searched with painful scrutiny for tracks but I couldn't find anything. There were deer tracks, turkey tracks, fox tracks but no bear. I slowly became obsessed with finding and following the trail of this bear so I started combing larger circles around the original set of tracks on the road. Hours passed and my circles grew to be miles. I was tracking the entire landscape in my head thinking of the most likely route for the bear to follow. I found a river that would definitely funnel the bear one way and I gained more inspiration. I found many other exciting things like the kill site where coyotes took down a deer and the feather of a red-shouldered hawk. I had never found a hawk feather before so that was really cool for me.

Eventually it started to get dark and I reached the end of the sand pit two or three miles from the road where the tracks were. My camera still refused to turn on and I finally admitted defeat. I took the lesson from this experience to be that even huge things are going on right under my nose that I don't know about. Big animals can sneak by without me ever knowing because I wouldn't even have seen those tracks if I wasn't bent over looking at fox tracks on a road that I never go to. As I turned to make the long walk back to my car I looked down and saw them. A long string of beautiful clear tracks from my bear. I had walked right over these tracks a few minutes before without seeing them. It was almost dark now but deep down I knew that if I gave it one more try, my camera would turn on. And it did- just long enough for one picture before going back to the lense error.

My first fire

2010-11-24T15:17:00.001-08:00

When I was first learning how to make a bow drill fire it was a long and painful process. I would practice in the backyard but I would always hit a dead end and give up frustrated. I practiced nearly every day for a long time and I would learn a little more about how to make it work better each time I failed. A year went by and I felt pretty confident with bow drill despite the fact that I had never gotten a fire.

One day, after another frustrating practice session I went inside and saw a blog post about a guy who wanted to learn how to make a fire with bow drill. I read his blog and saw his pictures and criticized everything he was doing. His drill was way to skinny and his form was terrible. It was obvious that he had no idea how to do bow drill. However, after three days of practice he was able to get a fire.

I was pretty torn up about the whole thing. I had been trying for a year and I probably did know more about bow drill than this guy and yet he could get a fire and I couldn't. I left the computer and drove over to my friend's house. As I was driving and thinking about this whole thing I really got upset at myself for being so critical of this guy and then this word hit me: Arrogance. Immediately chills ran down my spine and I knew that if I went back home right then I would be able to make a fire. I didn't know why but I knew something had changed in me and that I could do it now.

The entire evening hanging out with my friends I was distracted and couldn't wait to go home and see if this was true. When I got home around 1am I went upstairs to the third floor where I would sit and practice hand drill (hand drill is more difficult than bow drill - generally people learn hand drill after they have gotten a fire with bow drill). I could practice on the third floor because there had never been any risk of me actually getting a fire. I rarely ever made smoke for that matter. Well I sat down to practice and I got a coal, blew it into fire and had to throw it out the window. I was overwhelmed with adrenaline and amazement that it actually happened. The next morning I went outside and got a bow drill fire on my first try.

This experience could be easily written off as coincidence or some little psychological thing. But to me it was magical. It felt like I was given a gift from a different world. And also a story that I can share with people as they are struggling to get their first fire.

Ropes to God: the bushman spiritual universe

2010-11-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a book about Bushman spirituality and it has reminded me of my own spiritual life which I don't think should be something that I keep to myself. Even if its misunderstood or dismissed I think my own experiences were given to me with the agreement that I would pass them on to other people. So I'm going to make an attempt to share more of my "spiritual" beliefs and experiences.

Whenever I read about indigenous spirituality I see trends and similarities to stories from other native people and also nature connected people. For instance in this Bushman book they talk about the trance dances and that when they are a strong dancer they start to see lines of different colors that connect things. One of the lines connect them to the animals and they run all over the ground to different animals and when they need meat the "Big God" shows them a line to an animal and they follow it to hunt. I've heard trackers in North America talk about these lines that they follow and the feeling of being pulled along a trail of an animal even when they can't see any tracks.

There is something about all of the primitive skills that makes me feel very spiritual. The reason that I do them isn't because its fun or because I want to be an indian. It is because they make me feel like I'm growing closer to God. I don't know why they do this and it doesn't really matter to me why it makes me feel that way but it does. And all of those feelings kind of get stuck if I'm not passing on what I learn to other people. That's something the Bushmen talked about too.

My next several posts will be about some of my "spiritual" experiences. I put quotes on spiritual because I don't want my experiences to be lumped in with some other definition of spirituality. To me they are just things that happened that seem to be connected to things greater than what goes on in every day life.

Nature defined

2010-11-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

I think humans are strange in many ways. One of the strangest things to me has to be the fact that humans (an animal on Earth) one day forgot that they were an animal on Earth. They seem to think that they stopped being like the plants and animals and rocks and became something totally different. I think it is a result of being able to make such neat things. If a bird makes a nest, the nest still looks like mud and grass which is obviously nature. But cell phones and planes don't look at all like nature. The truth is that they are natural. They are just things that an animal made. Of course an airplane doesn't biodegrade like a bird's nest does but there are lots of natural things that mess up an ecosystem if its in the wrong place.

There are some natural laws that humans ignore. But the laws are still there and these are the things that I'm most interested in tracking. Economics for example has been around long before humans. Feathers on a bird are a huge energy investment that pays off through flight. Just like the way we pay lots of money to fly places, as long as its worth it. Animals get fat just like we do if they have the same food surplus and sedentary lifestyle.

Another natural law is evolution. Evolution creates perfection. Or as close to it as possible. Once something stops evolving then its practically perfect. The bicycle for example. Its not going anywhere. Its a super efficient, fun way to travel. The evolution of computers is really cool and the evolution of our culture is very interesting to me. Its when things are restrained from evolving that I see problems occur. Religion, politics, and education come to mind. They all evolve eventually but it feels like they are treading in molasses sometimes.

All of the pure truths of the world can be found by tracking nature. This is a very comforting thing for me because society is a confusing place sometimes.

Tracking defined

2010-11-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'm always trying to define just what exactly a tracker is. My best current definition is this:

A Tracker is someone who searches for the origins of things.

Tracking definitely isn't about footprints because I spend plenty of days tracking without seeing footprints. I see feeding sign, scat, trails, beds, etc. And often I'm tracking things that aren't animals. Like seeing lines made from grass or leaves blowing in the wind.

I think tracking is a essential part of being a human being and I think that the happiest people are the ones that track the most. They seem more engaged, curious and satisfied with life. Doctors track their patients, comedians track their audiences, authors track whatever they are writing about, coaches and athletes track everything about their game and so on. I think its important for people to track themselves too. I know I'm always searching for the origins of why I feel a certain way or why something is hard or easy for me. One pattern I definitely see in myself is that I'm happiest when I'm tracking nature. But I have a pretty broad definition of nature.

Update

2010-11-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

Well I had an excellent road trip through NYC, North Carolina, a bunch of other places, topped off with a hotel stay on Bourbon street in New Orleans before we made it to Austin the next day. Many thanks to my first mate Chris Galis and our excellent gps lady, Bandy.

Next I went to San Diego and met Barry Martin who started the San Diego Tracking Team. I'm hoping to move out there in March and do some work with him. I also took another eval with Jonah Evans as our evaluator. I squeaked out the highest score with a 96. I do a lot better when I'm not attached to the outcome.

Jonah invited me to come out to Big Bend in a couple weeks and take answers for an eval out there. I'm excited for that. They have a bunch of weird animals out there.

For now I've got a moose hide that needs softening, flint that needs knapping and lots of animals that need to be tracked. Here are some pictures from San Diego: Kangaroo rat tracks, big male bobcat tracks and my moose hide.

Vermont Art of Mentoring

2010-09-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Well it was another powerful week at the Vermont AOM last week. Below are some pictures of the event. I'm always struck by the teens that return every year- some of them since they were little kids. They are such uninhibited, powerful people. They speak in front of the entire community with total confidence. And they are always well mannered and offering their services to the elders or little kids or anyone else that needs something. Nobody tells them to act that way, they just do it on their own. I think this is a natural result of being brought up in a loving community.

A take home line from the AOM that better shows how I believe our culture should reflect nature: Highly resilient systems have short feedback loops from highly specialized parts that keep the whole in mind.

A short feedback loop in nature happens when song bird fails to hear the other birds alarming a Cooper's hawk. But a person might say something that really hurts another person and not hear about it for years, if ever. Short feedback loops are one of the things that they really encourage at the AOM.

Blue Jay tracks

Here is my friend Jay Gardoqui playing a song he wrote on Ukulele. The lyrics are as follows Listen listen listen to the bird song
Listen listen listen to the birds
They will tell you where your enemies are
They will tell you where your predators are
They will tell you where you are
.. and back to the chorus

Oidorne point at sunrise. I love living by the ocean.

Coyote Trailin'

2010-09-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've been having some wonderful full days of tracking lately. Spending so much time in nature makes me think about how many ties each organism has to everything else. The fact that one individual grass species is growing at the edge of a swamp means so many things. It speaks to the process of evolution, many years of competition forced that grass to adapt all of the necessary traits to live right there. It is tied to the soil, the climate of the area, the winds or animals necessary for seed dispersal. The lack of grazers or voles coming by to eat that blade of grass. The beavers that created the swamp which opened up sunlight and enriched the soil for that grass to grow. So many things are connected to that single clump of grass. Everything in nature is interacting and participating with everything else.

Tracking forces a person to acknowledge all of these connections and interactions. I find the way mammals shape a forest to be really cool. Squirrels dispersing acorns, moose browse altering which tree species grow where, moles aerating the soil, and so on. And then there's the way predators shape the territories of herbivores with their daily routes through the forest. And how birds and chipmunks report on all of this as its happening. Unfortunately most people don't get the joy of interacting with this incredibly complex and beautiful system. For me, tracking brings me into this system on a daily basis. I get to see many of these processes going on as well as my own impact on them. Survival treks bring a whole different level to the experience. Where tracking is fun, insightful and often profound, being in a survival situation closes the circle and makes me a total player in the system.

Yesterday we had some afternoon rain so when I went tracking in the evening, it was easy to tell the tracks that were REALLY fresh from the ones that weren't. I came across some really fresh coyote tracks and decided that I had to try and follow the trail. Trailing is very difficult but also exhilarating. After trailing an animal for even a short time I feel a real connection to that animal. Like it is a close friend and I can feel its hunger, the spring in its step, its fear of humans, etc. I was having a really fun time trailing this coyote for a couple hundred yards when the trail turned back on itself and headed into a thick brushy area. It was getting late so I decided to abandon the trail and go watch the sunset on a hill that looked over the entire area. Ten minutes later the coyote came trotting out of the brush and back along the trail that I had followed. It stopped every 20 feet or so and looked back over its shoulder like it thought it was being followed. I had a perfect view of where it was going and got to watch it trotting and loping along for several minutes. Another magical experience as a result of paying attention to the little things in nature.

The human world is so different compared to the natural world. Everything in nature has its place and makes sense. Everyone plays by the same rules and gets a fair chance at survival. When something dies, every cell gets used and is returned into the system. At some point we stepped out of that cycle and stopped following those natural laws that have worked so well for the past several billion years.

The Art of Mentoring, Ontario

2010-09-12T13:34:00.001-07:00

I was lucky enough to be a part of the first Art of Mentoring in Toronto a couple weeks ago. It was a very educational experience for me so I want to share some of what I learned. It is hard to describe what exactly goes on at an Art of Mentoring. It is a week long workshop that has been going on for 15 years or so that was started by Jon Young.

There is a specific community that I'm a part of that has a philosophy based on nature connection and awareness and I think the Art of Mentoring was first designed to try to bring more people into that community and clarify what it is that the community stands for.

Specifically there are things that happen during the week. The entire group of 200 or so sings a lullaby to all of the children before they go to bed. The teens are honored and sent off for a 4 day survival trip. The elders are always taken care of and asked for advice. The adults sit in on lectures about nature connection then experience the games and activities that we do with the youth. They also have a day to wander the land, swim, make friction fires, play in the mud etc. Everybody gets a free pass for the week to be silly, get dirty and be themselves. Everyone is supported, complimented on their gifts, challenged on their integrity and held to their commitments.

We take hard looks at ourselves and our conduct and we look to nature for guidance when things aren't working right. One of the big points at the Art of Mentoring is that for most of our history, our culture has reflected nature and that was good. Nature works really well and we are supposed to be a part of it and work in the same way. But they don't force anything at the Art of Mentoring. Its all a big experiment. Nobody tells anyone how they should act or feel or anything. Its an invitation to try something and see if it works and if it doesn't work or feel good everyone is encourage to speak up about it and it will get changed. That way it evolves like a natural system and gets better and better.

There are ceremonies too. They are really simple and lighthearted but we do them because it feels healthy psychologically. We stand in a circle and share something we are thankful for before meals. This makes us constantly think of all of the gifts in our lives and we act more consciously as a result. We are more intentional about the things we use and the cost of where they come from. There is lots of music and celebration. Everyone is encouraged to share their own music because we think one of the special gifts of humans is that we can express beauty through art. So we're encouraged to do that a lot.

The result of doing all of this for a week for me is that I'm much more intentional about the things I say and do. I have a strong image in my head of how healthy and happy a group of people can be and I carry that around with me along with the tools I learned of how to share that in different ways. I also have a renewed passion and spirit. Like I was able to plug my soul into an outlet and fill up the battery.

There is also a lot of grief that I feel when I leave an environment like that and return to a colder world where everybody is a stranger. Its a struggle to not go up to every person I know or even people I don't know and shake them and tell them that they are sacred human beings and I want to celebrate their gifts and support them with whatever they are going through. I don't think that would go over well.

The other weird thing is that its all such common sense. Its not rocket science to realize we would all be happier and healthier if we did the things that made us happy and healthy. But as Ingwe, one of the elders of this community who has since passed aways says (in a thick south African accent) "common sense isn't so bloody common now is it?!".

We have another big Art of Mentoring in Vermont next week. A lot of people come to this one and its been going on for several years now. I'm looking forward to it and I'll let you know how it goes.

September update

2010-09-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

High time for an update. Summer camps are complete. Four weeks of camp with White Pine and then I worked for two weeks with Johnny Pazdon and Mary Mazur who run Coyote Club in Dover, NH. It was rewarding work and I feel good about all of the connections I made with the little people this summer. Since camps ended I've been spending time in various places around New Hampshire and a week in Toronto at the first Canadian Art of Mentoring. I'm going to do a separate post about that.
I spent a week with my friend and White Pine co-worker Hillary Behr in her cutsie hometown of Tamworth, NH. She lives in black bear country just south of the White Mountains. We took a 5 day camping/backpacking trip in the Sandwich range. I climbed a mountain in flip flops and camped alone for a couple days. It was my first time to do so in a place with bears and it was a little scary.
Now I'm living in an animal house in Madbury, NH. I slept in at least 14 different places this summer so it feels good to be a little more settled for a couple months. I'm spending most of my time studying for the Specialist tracking evaluation coming up in October. After thats over I'll be driving back down to Texas and moving on to new things. Or more accurately, similar things with new people in a different place.

Here are some kids shooting freshly made bows and arrows.

Here's Hillary standing in front of her entire hometown.

This is Hillary's garden at sunrise where she grows flowers to sell at the Farmer's market.

Here is my new favorite sandpit, just down the street from my house. Following that are caterpillar tracks and Mourning dove tracks.

White Pine summer camps

2010-07-25T09:01:00.001-07:00

We're entering our fourth week of summer camps this week. The past three weeks were the best that I've had so far in my experience working at summer camps. Hopefully we can top it off with the final upcoming week.

White Pine Programs was founded by Dan Gardoqui and Matt Wild about 10 years ago. They run very popular summer camps for kids between the ages of 7 and 14. I've been working with older boys - ages 11 to 14- in the camp titled "Bush Craft". We've been doing a lot of flint knapping, arrowhead making and stone tool work. One group was able to finish their arrowheads and make really nice arrows from blueberry shafts that we gathered in the swamp. The arrows were fletched with turkey feathers.

Last week my group was challenged to make a bowdrill kit using all natural tools. Most of the time bowdrill kits are carved with knives and they string is a shoelace or nylon cord. Its much more challenging to use just what is found in nature. We used white pine for the kit and a fresh hemlock rootlet for the cord and we used chert rocks that I had brought up from Texas. We had great success with this kit and got a fire on the second day of the challenge.

Here are some pictures of White Pine, the nature museum/classroom and our bowdrill kit:

Cyber Tracker Evaluation

2010-06-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

We had the real evaluation this past weekend led by George Leoniak. What an experience! It's a real treat to get to see what a master tracker sees when he's in the woods. Besides being evaluated on your own tracking abilities, the tracking evaluations are the best two day tracking workshops that I know of. Anyone that has an interest in wildlife or ecology should definitely try to volunteer at or participate in an eval. Its a pretty awesome experience.

I was a little nervous going into the first day and I over thought some tracks that I should have gotten right but the second day I only missed one and I got one bonus so it balanced out. I ended up with a 93% and a Level 3 certification. My name is on a website which is cool too: http://wildlifetrackers.com/evals/qualified_trackers/

Despite what the Dans told us, the real eval was much more difficult than the practice one. There used to be 40% easy questions on the evals but now they've changed it to be 25% easy questions, 25% medium, and 50% difficult questions to simulate a specialist eval where people are trying to get a 100%.

I'll share with you some of the more difficult (and more interesting) questions.

We had many Coyote vs. Dog questions. These are some of the trickiest questions because there are a lot of lean, fit dogs out there. One major clue is the size differentiation between the front and hind feet. Coyotes have larger front feet than hind feet and in dogs this is less obvious.

We had beaver stripping on a hemlock tree which I thought was porcupine since they eat hemlock bark. I didn't know that beavers will go around to all the conifers near their pond and strip a ring around the base in order to kill the tree and allow trees with more nutritious bark like maples and poplars to grow in.

There was a hole in a tree with a half eaten acorn in it. The two questions were: 1. who made the hole in the tree? and 2. Who ate the acorn? I correctly guessed that a Pileated Woodpecker made the hole but I called the acorn feeding flying squirrel sign. It was actually mouse sign which could only have been known by a little scat buried back in the hole.

We had a partial track in the mud where only the bottom edge of a heel pad was showing. I called it a Gray fox but it was Actually Bobcat. The lower part of the heel pads of these two are very similar but there are little differences that I didn't pick up on.

There was a really cool site of two little jaw bones, a weird elongated scat and little tufts of gray hair. The questions where "who's scat is this and why does it look this way?". It looked weird because the scat was still in an intestine when it was left there and it was known to be a gray squirrel by the jaw bones and hair.

Another neat question was the end of a fallen tree that was about 12 feet up in the air and had beaver chew on the tip. The question was "who did this and why is it so high?". The answer was that before the beaver chewed the tip of the tree off it was laying on the ground, then after it was chewed off the balance changed and the end of the tree went up.

One more question that I liked was on a set of bobcat tracks and the question was whether it was a male or female. I guessed female because it seemed small but it was actually male because of distinctive things in the heel pad and toes.

Pictures:

Turkey dust bath

Bobcat scat and scrape (look closely for a track near the bottom of the scat)

Giant toad scat

Jumping mouse tracks

My certificate:

Tracking Apprenticeship Complete

2010-06-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

The 9 month White Pine Tracking Apprenticeship had its last meeting this past weekend. It was an amazing learning experience. We completed the journey with a mock evaluation, simulating the Cybertracker evaluations, except the Dans say ours was a bit harder. We also did some really cool bear sign tracking and we got to hear people's presentations of their projects that they chose for the course.

I'm sad its over but I feel great about meeting all of my goals in this apprenticeship. I'm pretty sure I learned as much as I possibly could have. I completed all of the journals, met all of my project goals, and scored 98% on the evaluation - best in the class. The real evaluation is coming up in a couple weeks so hopefully I can carry my momentum onward and score well on that one.

Check out this sweet short-tailed weasel track. D'Arcy and I found this track under I-95 in Portsmouth, NH.

Here is some of the intense black bear sign that we found this weekend. A territorial male just smashed this living maple in half.

Here is another tree destroyed by territorial bears. They bite and scratch sap trees (Red Pine is a favorite) until it looks like this.

Here is an example of an eval question. It was actually three questions: 1. what animal made this track (in the big circle)? 2. Which gait is is using? 3. Which foot is this (little circle)?

This one I got wrong but I'm ok with that... its a toughy. Answers:

1. Frog (I said toad)

2. Hop (other options are bound, gallop, lope, trot, walk)

3. Hind right.

Bear tracking

2010-05-18T09:13:00.001-07:00

D'Arcy and I drove up to the White Mountains this past weekend to a spot where we were told there were bear tracks. I have only seen bear tracks once before in New Mexico on a Boyscout trip so it was good to see them again. I have often heard bears, mountain lions, and wolves referred to as the Sexy Megafauna. This is sort of a joking term used to poke at the fact that land managers give an unproportional amount of attention to these exciting animals and overlook how important something like moles, for example, might be to an ecosystem. I however, love tracking the Sexy Megafauna. Here are some pictures. We also found some very nice Mink and Beaver tracks.

Having found and journaled black bear tracks, I only have one species left (Ruffed Grouse) for the advanced completion certificate of the White Pine Tracking Apprenticeship. Here are the ones I've journaled: Virginia Opossum, Eastern Coyote, Red Fox, Gray Fox, Domestic Dog, Black Bear, Raccoon, River Otter, American Mink, Bobcat, Domestic Cat, White-Tailed Deer, Moose, Beaver, Groundhog, Muskrat, Porcupine, Snowshoe Hare, Cottontail, Red Squirrel, Grey Squirrel, Chipmunk, Mouse, Meadow Vole, Mole, Shrew, Wild Turkey, Great Blue Heron, Mourning Dove, Rock Dove, Robin, Sparrow, Crow, Raven, Frog, Toad, Striped Skunk and Canada Lynx.

"Nature does not stagnate. It is a flowing river. We seek to ride down this river. To surrender to its speed and direction. We do not want to hold our position, standing in or wading across the river. Or worse, to deny its existence. For where the river of nature flows, also flows the river of spirit." -anonymous tracker

Herps and Invert tracking weekend

2010-05-09T16:21:00.000-07:00

We had a good tracking weekend with guest Charley Eiseman who is the author of the new book Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates. He gave us a great slide show the first morning with pictures and stories of some of the fascinating creatures he learned about as he wrote his book. Here are a few of the more interesting things that I learned this weekend:

Texas leaf cutter ants use bits of leaves as a medium for a fungal growth that sustains them. There are several different duties that the ants take responsibility for. Some ants cut the leaves, others protect the plant, and other ants act as "quality control" and send back leaves that aren't best suited for fungal growth. There will be piles of these rejected leaves a hundred feet from the ant mound. And the mounds can be 40 feet wide with the fungal gardens 20 feet under ground.

Leaf miners genetically engineer leaves to create a growth that encapsulates their larvae by inserting their DNA into the leaf. This also happens in many other galls. There is a theory that the origin of fleshy fruit is from wasp DNA interacting with a plant to create a gall, which eventually proved beneficial to the plant and turned into its fruit.

Slugs poop out of the side of their heads.

17 year cicadas suck on roots under ground for 17 years and then pop out to reproduce. Millions of individuals are perfectly synchronized to do this in 17 year intervals. Different species do this too, almost always in intervals of a prime number so that their pop out doesn't coincide with another species.

We saw some ants that were farming aphids. Aphids eat more sugar than they can digest so the ants protect them and eat the excess. They shelter the aphids in poor weather and take them out to graze in good weather.

There are 1600 species of caddis fly, each with their own specific casing. Some create casing out of pebbles with two bigger pebbles on either side for better balance in swift streams. Some are perfect rectangles, other are a mess of debris.

How all of these tiny creatures "know" to do these things is beyond me. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Resin midge larvae (the red spot) and faint beetle tracks.

This is a "Bee fly". It looks like a bee but its harmless.

This is the web of the "bowl and doiley" spider.

Eggs.

Wood turtle and tracks from the Center for Wildlife. This one was hit by a car (note the pins holding its shell together).

Caddis fly with casing.

A Good Morning

2010-04-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Boy do I love tracking. I went out this morning not expecting to find anything crazy and ended up seeing so much cool stuff. I found the spot where a hawk killed a Blue Jay, which I recognized from the scat spray- a thing that only hawks do. I found the tracks of a mother red fox bringing her pups down to a pool to drink. I caught an American toad and got it to make tracks for me. Found some nice Raven tracks and some really nice duck tracks. I thought they were grouse tracks which was very exciting for me because grouse is one of the last species whose tracks I need to find for the Apprenticeship but it turns out that the tracks were from some weird duck wandering around in the forest.

I also got to trail a Coyote, Gray fox, deer and Moose for a long distance in the sand.

Here is the blue jay kill site. The white stuff is scat sprayed out by a hawk. Could be a Buteo (Red Tail, Red Shoulder etc) or an Accipter (Sharp shinned, Cooper's). Its most likely an accipiter kill, since blue jays are hard for a Buteo to catch. Owls don't make the scat spray.

Size reference on the toad:

Forest duck and toad tracks.

Red fox puppy. This is known by the size (which might suggest Gray fox) and the caloused ridge at the base of the heel.

Collection of Tracking Quotes

2010-04-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of my favorite quotes about tracking. Hope you like them.

Tracking is like dancing, because your body is happy. It is telling you the hunting will be good. You feel it in the dance. It tells you when you love tracking and dancing, you are talking with God.
- !Ngate Xgamxebe, Bushman Tracker, from the documentary The Great Dance.

Never forget the trail, look ever for the track in the snow; it is the priceless, unimpechable record of the creature's life and thought, in the oldest writing known on earth.
-Ernest Thompson Seton

The tragedy in life is not what men suffer, but what they miss.

-Thomas Carlyle

Jungle lore is not a science that can be learnt from textbooks; it can, however, be absorbed, a little at a time, and the absorption process can go on indefinitely, for the book of nature has no beginning as it has no end.
-Jim Corbett, Jungle Lore

I'll add more as I come across them...

Small Island Ecology

2010-04-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

For this past Tracking weekend we took a ferry out to Ragged Island about 16 miles off of the coast of Maine. The only mammals on the island are Snowshoe Hare, Muskrat, and Norway Rats. So we studied their tracks and sign closely and also did a lot of bird tracking. We found Bald Eagle tracks, crow, pheasant, seagull and many other bird tracks. It was a great weekend spent on a very unique and beautiful island. Here are some pictures:

Stone Knife

2010-03-16T11:04:00.001-07:00

I've always wanted a stone knife that I could use to carve friction fire kits or whatever else I might need it for when working on a program. I like how this one turned out. Its very durable chert from Texas and the handle is Paper Birch. It works great for wood working and the blade is big so I hope it will last through many resharpenings.

Lynx Tracking Expedition

2010-03-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Had an amazing weekend tracking Lynx in the very northern tip of Maine. We stayed at a remote French-Canadian logging camp. Here are some pictures. I got to drive a snowmobile and check/reset a trap line with the head biologist. Also had some fun moments getting separated from the group without a radio and having to track them down, riding in the back of a 1970s Land Rover, getting pulled over by Border Patrol with a Canadian in the car that didn't have her passport, and other similiar adventures. It was a fun trip.

Hawaii Pictures

2010-03-04T11:29:00.001-08:00

Good man Andy sent me a disc with some more pictures from our trip. Here they are:

Kamana Program

2010-02-22T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Kamana Program is something I've been working on for nearly three years now. It has been very rewarding and very educational. Half of the program is book work, researching plants, mammals, herps, natural hazards etc. The other half is awareness training in nature and cultural training.

For example, my current research project is to list all of the valuable non-woody plants within 100 miles of where I live. By a "valuable" plant I mean that it is either edible, medicinal, poisonous, an ecological indicator, craft value or ethnobotanical uses. This project is comparable to a masters program in botany. It was a lot of work.

This is my current awareness assignment, along with sit spots and field inventories. It's to create an introduction of myself and where I'm from in a Native way, being sure to hit on several main points and fluff it up with lots of imagery. Here it is so far:

Greetings,
I lean against this glacially dropped boulder of mica-granite, reminded of the power that the Laurentide Ice Sheet brought with it as it carved out huge ridges, polished mountain tops and left behind lakes and boulders like this one. Slowly the bare soil of glacial till gave way to wind dispersed plants later to be succeeded by Hemlock, White Pine, Birch, Oak, Hickory, Beech, Elm and American Chestnuts. Over time and Native American influence these trees grew to amazing heights of more than 200 feet and 8 feet diameters. Since then these giants have fallen to ax or disease and what remains is a different denser landscape of younger trees, shrubs and swamps.

I visit this boulder every morning. It sits in a line of boulders, left behind when the glacier melted just behind my house. North of my house is Swain’s lake, also left behind by the glacier. South of my house is an intensely diverse patch of woods and Cedar Swamps. Deep in this forest lives the Majestic Moose. Someday I will see this massive herbivore wading through the morning fog that rises from the swamps.

This place I call home sits in the center of the Salmon falls - Piscataqua Watershed which drains directly into the Atlantic Ocean. Much of the water seen under our bridges here will not freeze even in the coldest weeks of January. Although it is miles from the ocean, this water is tidal and fully brackish.

To the West lie the Great Lakes of the United States and Canada. These lakes to our left coupled with the Ocean to our right form a landscape humidifier and provide us with much rain and snow. Large amounts of water are needed to support the lives of thousands of species of plants, hundreds of birds, and dozens of mammals. Mammals like the Moose, Otter and Porcupine who fall asleep at night to the eerie call of the Loon and celebrate the morning to the music of Song Sparrows, Chestnut-sided Warblers, and Black-capped Chickadees.

The plant world in this forest supports all other life and holds a quiet power that is best not disrespected. A mere lick of the stalk of the Water Hemlock can bring death while the mysterious, nutritious, Stinging Nettle is being used to fight prostate cancer.

Only when you are up close do these beings look separate. Inevitably comes the realization that all parts are working together like cells in my own body to create this whole, unique piece of the Earth. And if I am still, the chipmunks and squirrels carry on with their chores around me and the hermit thrush flies in to land near my feet as if to tell me that I’m not separate either, just one of the many interesting pieces making up this landscape.

The White Pine Tracking Apprenticeship

2010-02-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

The goals of the apprenticeship are:

1. To create competent, skilled wildlife trackers.

2. To prepare competent wildlife trackers to apply their skills as effective tools in community, scientific, and educational settings.

Tracking is an invaluable tool when learning to read the book of nature. There is alot happening out in the woods that we never know about, but sometimes when we are lucky, animals leave there tracks behind as little windows into their lives. Lately I have enjoyed following the trails of bobcats, moose, foxes and coyotes for as far as I can and getting to see what they are doing all day.

This is flying squirrel scat; either northern or southern flying squirrel. You can tell because it is flattened and not round or irregular like other squirrel scats.

And this is my favorite cedar swamp to go tracking in. Today I found otter tracks, shrew tunnels, beaver sign and 3 coyotes hunting together.

Hawaii

2010-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from Hawaii. This is my friend Andy and his professor Nicole. He is demonstrating bedrock formations with his hands. Geologists are always talking about rocks.

These are Eucalyptist trees, one of the many invasive plants in Hawaii. They have really spongey bark and if you smack a tree with a big stick it makes a deep resonating tone.

This is what we did all day. Andy pointed a lazer at a mirror that I was holding and recorded the data.

Here is where we lived.

We usually ate extremely healthy but on occasion we binged. We definately earned a pizza or two with all the work we did.

I love Detroit Airport. They have this tunnel of changing lights and weird music.

Update

2010-02-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

Greetings blog followers,
I am hoping to carve out some time this spring to write in this blog again. As for an update, I am now living on a beautiful lake in Barrington, New Hampshire. I returned yesterday from Hawaii where I spent a month with my good friend Andy. He invited me to be his field assistant for the month on an assignment studying the gulches in the North Kohala district on the big island of Hawaii. It was an excellent trip and we worked very hard. I have many pictures from the month of which I will sort through and pick a few good ones to post.

Now I am back to my two jobs and my two missions here in New England.
Jobs are:
1.babysitting two young men of the ages 5 and 7.
2. working at White Pine Programs attempting to connect people to nature.
Missions are:
1. complete the Kamana Naturalist Training Program with Dan Hansche and Dan Gardoqui as my mentors.
2. complete and learn as much as I can from the Wildlife Tracking Apprenticeship run by White Pine.

Pictures to come...
Connor

Finished pots!

2009-07-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

Barry Keegan Pottery Workshop

2009-07-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to squeeze in a full day of primitive pottery with Barry between camps. It was an awesome class. Here are some pictures. We still have to fire our pots which I think we are going to do tomorrow. I'll upload the final pictures after they are all done. Thanks Barry!

Pictures...

2009-07-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

We are currently in the middle of camp Yellowknife. In this week we practice the basic skills of camping that you might take for granted like setting up a tarp, making a good cooking fire, lashings etc. Here the campers are learning to use rawhide rope to transport bundles of goldenrod to a shelter.

We also have a mystery track.... is it a raccoon or a fisher? It measured 1 3/4 inches long which is on the low end of either animal. My guess is raccoon but others are arguing for the fisher. For those that aren't familiar with the north eastern wildlife, fishers are big stout weasels that have huge ranges. They are similar to wolverines but not as nasty.

One down five to go...

2009-07-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

Our biggest week of 40 campers is complete. It was a very busy week but also very successful. At our final council the campers surprised us all with their thanks and kind words. I underestimated how thoughtful kids can be when they are only 11 or 12 years old. This week we only have 10 campers but it will have its own set of challeges and lessons. Pictures are coming soon.

Summer camps!

2009-06-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

Summer is here and our camps are busy... very busy. We have 40 kids at camp this week. Most (if not all) of them are on scholarship from the CROP program. There isn't alot of time for blogging but we are having fun teaching kids these skills and getting them dirty and out in nature. So far we have done alot of bird language, tracking, shelter building, bow drill fires, hunting skills, edible plants and cordage making. They are good kids and super excited to be at Hawk Circle. I'll have more updates throughout the summer and hopefully some pictures too.

Thunderstorms and egg

2009-06-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

We've had some beautiful thunderstorms lately. I also found this broken egg on the trail with a slug in it. I don't have an egg book but maybe someone reading this will know. Is it a song sparrow egg? I'm also not sure if it was broken by a beak, bird foot, or maybe a squirrel/chipmunk.

June happenings

2009-06-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

Well June is here faster than I expected it to be and we have been very busy. We had a group of 45 fourth graders from New York City come for a few days. It was a fun time and a good warm up for the camps this summer. We have a break for a few days now and with that time I have been doing bird sits, working on kamana, finishing up my bow and working on an adz. The angle of the adz handle isn't quite right so I will probably make a new one but it was a decent first attempt. For it to work properly there must be a 90 degree angle from the bevel of the blade to the first finger of your grip. This one that I made is a little too steep.
I also added a picture of some points I made - the gray ones are out of Pedernales chert from Texas and the black one is Obsidian from California. This last picture is a Robin nest. Most of the birds here have already fledged once and they are on their second batch. They are ambitious little creatures.
The rabbits have been hard at work too. We have tiny baby bunnies everywhere! Yesterday I saw two hopping around on the trail so I stood really still and after a while they hopped right over to me. One of them even started chewing on my sandal and sniffing my feet. I could feel its little whiskers on my skin. It was super cute. I guess it tasted me or finally figured out what I was because all of the sudden they both took off. Another exciting spring day here at Hawk Circle!

Building Strong Naturalist Communities

2009-05-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

This weekend Flying Deer Nature Center is hosting the 4th annual Building Strong Naturalist Communities Spring Retreat. D'Arcy and I will be attending and we're looking forward to meeting other teachers of nature and primitive skills. Here is the link for anyone interested: www.flyingdeernaturecenter.org/events.html

Its located in New Lebanon, Ny.

Hope to see you there!

Pictures

2009-05-18T12:44:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures of my camp from the survival trek. The shelter I made is commonly called a Debris Hut. It kept me warm even when the temperature dipped below freezing at night. It rained almost the entire 3rd day but the inside of the hut was still warm and dry. I also made a small lean-to type thing near the fire pit so that I could sit by the fire and keep it going during the rain without getting soaked. The inside of the hut I stuffed with dry mosses. They were very comfortable to sleep on and kept me up off the cold ground. I wasn't able to flip the picture but if you tilt your head to the left you'll get the same effect. The last picture is of my sit spot. Looks very different from the winter!

Update

2009-05-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Well things have been very busy here (hence my lack of blog posting). Two weeks ago we had an amazing class on bird language with Dan Gardoqui. As a result I have been living the life of a nerdy birder running around with binoculars trying to identify birds, their songs and most importantly trying to figure out why they are doing what they are doing. I knew about 10 or 15 birds before this class and now I know over 50 by sight and song and I'm learning more every day. This land has so much variety in vegetation that it is perfect habitat for tons of birds. A few of the cool birds that I didn't know exist but now I see/hear everywhere include: the blue winged warbler, black and white warbler, wood thrush, magnolia warbler, black throated green warbler, catbird, northern oriole, common yellowthroat, american goldfinch, yellow warbler, song sparrow, chipping sparrow and the list goes on. I was even lucky enough to sneak up and touch a chipping sparrow while it was on a feeder by the house. I guess that is cheating since it was on the feeder but it was still pretty fun.

So that class happened a week before last and this past week I spent on a survival trek. I decided that I wanted to do the trek by myself and face those struggles that come with being alone in the woods. It was a great experience and I was blessed with some very valuable life lessons. There is a quote about tracking that I like. It goes: "An animal is an instrument being played by the landscape." This is true for people too except our landscape is usually very comfortable, easy and safe. We don't have to worry about being cold at night or a coming rainstorm or finding food. By leaving that comfortable place and living in a dynamic setting I had to constantly be present and problem solving. It also demanded an intense level of physical endurance and strength. Anyway living in a more difficult interactive setting made me feel really good and like nature was pushing me towards my potential as a human being. I think I want to take a short survival trek every couple of months to be reminded of that potential and to be brought back to reality. I have pictures that I will add later but for now here is our bird language group. We had alot of really great and knowledgeable people here.

Tracking Week

2009-04-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

We had a fun and succesful week of tracking in the woods around camp, the Albany Pine Bush, and the Adirondacks. One of my favorite excercises was making a foot print in a tire track and then using our fingers to restore the tire pattern, causing our tracks to dissappear. Another highlight was seeing this baby Great Horned Owl on the side of a cliff.

Snapping Turtles look like rocks

2009-04-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

Can you see the snapping turtle in this picture? If you need a hint, Joe is working hard to stare it into submission. We took a trip to the Mohawk river to look for pieces of Basalt to use as ax or adz heads and we nearly walked right by this snapping turtle. It was sluggish from the cold so we were able to pick it up and have a look-see. Despite the snow flurries we have had lately spring is really almost here this time. The little coltsfoot flowers are popping out along with willow buds and wild leeks. Soon the honey suckle leaves are going to open and we won't be able to see anything but green. I added an updated picture of my sit spot before all the leaves come out so that we can compare in a couple weeks and see if it is even recognizable.

Gone fishin'

2009-04-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

It is 40 degrees and rainy today but we did get one beautiful warm day last week so we took that opportunity to go fishing. I didn't have any luck but Ric caught a very nice brown trout. I think it measured at 16 inches or so. He was kind enough to let us students eat it and it was delicous. Below are pictures of D'Arcy with our fish, the remains of the fish, and a sunset after a nice day.

Finished Celt!

2009-03-30T11:32:00.001-07:00

The Celt is finally finished. The handle was a little greener than I thought and as it dried it started to split so I wrapped it with wet rawhide. The rawhide shrinks as it dries and holds pretty tight. I'm happy with how it came out and it chops really well. I expect it to be a formidable foe for a couple saplings this spring.

Arrow making and hide tanning

2009-03-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of an arrow I made and the hide I'm working on. The shaft of the arrow is Nannyberry. I found it standing dead- all seasoned and ready to go. The point for the arrow I knapped out of local silt stone. The fletching is from turkey feathers and I wrapped it all with artificial sinew. It is a bit clunky but I think it will work as a quick survival arrow. The hide is almost finished but it is stiff in a few spots so I'll need to keep working on it. We "tanned" it with a bark solution using oak, walnut and hickory bark. These trees have an especially high amount of tannic acid in the bark which we use to balance the pH and it also turns the hide a pretty brown color. Once my hide is soft we will smoke it which will turn it even darker.

Celt

2009-03-23T16:19:00.001-07:00

The Spring Semester has officially begun although it doesn't quite feel like spring yet. We have been working on buckskin and discussing spring survival strategies. I've also been working on my bow and a stone ax called a "Celt". The hole in the handle is tapered so that the top and bottom of the stone wedges in. The sides of the stone don't touch the handle because if it did then it would split the wood. All that is left now is to thin and sand down the handle.

Snowy day Pump-drillin'

2009-02-23T07:06:00.000-08:00

Pump drills are cool. They are a little bit tricky to make but once a good set is tuned and working it takes very little energy to create an ember. I've never made one before so since it has been snowing hard here lately I thought it would be a nice little indoor project.

It works by twisting the rope around the spindle which raises the handle and as you push the handle down it turns the spindle, creating friction where the spindle contacts the fire board. The weight is attached to the spindle by drilling a hole through it (the handle also has a hole drilled through it) and tapering the spindle so that it is thinner at the top then gets thicker as it goes down so that the weight gets stuck part way down. This weight causes the spindle to keep spinning after you have pushed the handle all the way down causing the rope to twist back around and bring the handle back up. It was surprisingly easy to make once I found the parts and it is very fun to mess around with. I borrowed the dimensions for the parts out of the Bulletin of Primitive Technology and it worked well. The materials I used were an old broom stick for the spindle with a cedar plug on the tip and a cedar fireboard, an ash handle, a sawed off pine log for the weight and a purple nylon cord for flair.

Sit Spot

2009-02-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

This is where I sit to learn about nature. I come here for at least an hour every day to just sit, expand my senses and observe. I’ve had many awesome experiences from just sitting quietly in nature. I had a deer almost step on me, a fox trot by and sniff my outstretched foot, little Juncos hop around on my boots. I heard once that animals and birds are drawn to meditating humans and from my experience I would have to agree. The Sit Spot is part of the Kamana program but it is a practice found in many native traditions and cultures all over the world. Sometimes it is used for meditation and to rejuvenate the spirit or to teach young scouts about the intricacies of bird language. I find that I am generally happier and healthier when I’m visiting a Sit Spot every day.
I’ll be going to this sit spot every day for a full year and I like that I’m starting in the dead of Winter. This way I can know the lowest level of activity and watch it all come to life then back down again at the end of the year. It is also nice to pick a spot while there is snow on the ground because while it looks bleak, there are tracks of bobcat, coyote, gray fox, grouse, rabbits, deer, skunks, fisher, mink, mice and more in view of where I sit. I plan on getting to know all of these animals before the year is up.

Gray fox tracking

2009-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

It has been warm the past few days and the snow has been melting. We had a little dusting of snow on Thursday night which creates perfect conditions for tracking. There is a solid frozen layer with about half an inch of fresh snow on top. This makes the tracks clear and also makes them easy to age.

I took this opportunity to follow a gray fox trail that I saw on the road. On top of the perfect tracking conditions, it was also a beautiful day with a big blue sky. I followed the fox from the road, through the swamp, up to the cliffs behind camp. It was probably two or three miles total. It is rare treat to get to follow an animal for that long of a distance and you really get an insight into its life. I was amazed at how agile and nimble this fox was while I was stumbling and crashing through the snow after it. In one spot the fox trotted up a stump then hopped onto a narrow fallen branch without ever breaking its stride - even with everything covered in snow and ice! I'm looking forward to seeing this fox's trail again trotting through camp and hopefully getting a glimpse of the animal itself.

Progress...

2009-02-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

I’ve finished roughing out my bow and carving it down to one growth ring on the back. This can be a tedious process but with sharp tools and a little patience it goes by fast. My method for doing this was to use the drawknife to bring it within two growth rings, then use a spokeshave to shave off one more growth ring, then go back to the drawknife only this time I held it as a right angle and used it as a scraper to scrape off the last growth ring. I touched up any final remnants with a pocket knife held the same way. If anyone else has a method for doing this that they would like to share I would be very interested in hearing about it! I've thinned out the belly quite a bit so I'm probably just about ready to start floor tillering. We'll see what Barry says tonight.

My First Bow

2009-02-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

Bow making, like a lot of these skills is an art form. The only difference is that when you are done, you can use it to kill a deer! You can’t do that with a painting.

It is a great feeling making something with your hands and watching it take shape. I especially like working with wood and carving through each growth ring and seeing how the grain peels apart. I’ve attempted a few bows but I’ve never made one all the way through so this is very exciting for me. I picked out the stave which I thought to be Black Locust. Turns out it is White Ash with a weird orange tint to it. With much help from Barry Keegan I stenciled the outline on the back of the bow and roughed out the shape. The stencil we used is the Sedbury style bow from Peabody, MA. This is a copy of a bow from the 1600s and thought to be one of the few known bow designs that was made with stone tools. I think that is cool. I've finished roughing out the outline and now I'm working on finding a nice growth ring which will make the back of the bow (the "back" of the bow faces away from you while shooting, the side facing towards you is the "belly"). Once the back is finished then I will start thining the belly until it starts bending. More to come...

Tracking Intensive

2009-02-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend tracking with White Pine Programs in southern Maine. It was a great day of tracking. We followed an animal from the weasel family for several hundred yards slowly adding clues and ruling out species. We finally determined that it was a mink by the way it was sliding on the snow and heading from one water source to the next (Mink are alot like Otters in that their diet is made up of aquatic animals). We also tracked deer, porcupines and bobcats. We followed one porcupine trail all the way to its den where we found the grumpy, spikey animal trying to sleep. We even got a glimpse of a flying squirrel. Apparently if you find a standing dead tree with a hole fit for a flying squirrel you can tap on the tree and get the squirrel to poke its head out and sometimes glide away. We were lucky enough to see it poke its head out but we didn't get to see it fly.
Now I'm back at camp and back to work on my bow. Tonight Ricardo is taking me to see Michael McCarthy, the local blacksmith to work on projects and if I'm lucky, learn a thing or two about blacksmithing.
Connor

Happy 2009

2009-01-29T13:19:00.000-08:00

Hello! Welcome to my Circle of the Seasons blog. I’m going to be spending an entire year at Hawk Circle and writing about my experiences, projects, adventures and what not. Hopefully this will give my family and friends a taste of what I am up to and also give prospective students an idea of what life is like here at camp.

My name is Connor, I grew up in Texas but spent the last 4 years studying Natural Resources and Rangeland Ecology at Colorado State University. I’ve been interested in primitive skills and nature since I was a little boy and I’ve taken several classes as an adult at Tom Brown’s Tracker School. I’ve also been working on the Kamana Naturalist Training Program. This is a home-study course that is broken up into 4 levels and takes several years to complete (I’m about to start the 4th level).

I chose to spend a year at Hawk Circle after I finished college for several reasons. I spent most of my time learning and practicing these skills alone and I always wanted to have a length of time to work in a community with other people that share my interests. I’ve also always wanted some long term and in depth instruction and mentoring. I had heard good things about Hawk Circle from friends and the logistics of their programs worked well for me so after a long process of emails and phone calls I committed to the Circle of the Seasons Program.

My time here began with the Winter Intensive class. This was a three week course that focused on winter survival and winter living. We practiced fires in the snow, sleet, and freezing rain with flint and steel, bow-drill and hand-drill. We also learned about and made winter shelters, made and set traps, dried meat, went tracking, worked with soapstone and several other projects fit for the winter time. All of this practice culminated in a 4 day survival trek where we slept out in a shelter, cooked over a fire and basically hung out for 4 days experiencing the winter life. It was a great class and an excellent way to start the year.

Now that class has ended and I have several weeks open to work on any projects I want. One major bonus to this year long program is that there is time between classes to really hone all the skills I learned during the class. Right now I am focusing on Kamana and trapping. I've also picked out a bowstave and will be working on that in the next few days.