New blog!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.