So yesterday I went to a party at the Ancestral Lifeways house; the sort of "college" of rewilding here in Portland. They only take six interns every year, people between the ages of 17-23, so they are a tiny-weenie college, (more like a collective, perhaps,) but the whole goal of the "organization" (which is run primarily by their charismatic teacher Keeley,) is to teach college aged people skills necessary to live in the wild, to respect nature, and to respect the ancestors, particularly, the native peoples of the Cascadia region.
The party was, as rewilding parties are; wild. We dined on fetal lamb, (the mom was a mercy-killing, apparently,) wild feral cow from Mexico chili, home-brew beer, feral salads and lots of fermented stuff...wild foods mostly. People brought skins and hides they where tanning and compared notes on the best way to tan; my friend Caleb gave a mini-lecture to me and two other girls on how to tan hides...it was great!
The best part was, I was asked by Zac, a brown, buckskin clad lad, to go wild rice harvesting with him in the fall....so I'm planning on playing hokey from school...
TO BE CONTINUED, RAN OUT OF TIME AT THE LIBRARY
LOVE YA,
CARROT
Wow! Sounds fascinating...
I don't know about the lamb, but the salads sound interesting. Rice harvesting? Heck yes!
I want to know more about that little group!
To be honest I think everyone should be required to do something like this. What if you were stranded? You would know how to live and everything. This sounds really interesting. I have never had lamb before.. salad sounds delicious to me but I just can't eat it. Maybe wild salad would be different. I am a picky eater though. I guess if you were stranded you would learn to love it.
http://www.progressiveu.org/032913-lupus-uncureable-wait-what
Love comments? I do too!
This sounds so amazing and I wanted to do something like that while I read your blog. Then I get to the part were you say "they where tanning and compared notes on the best way to tan" and thought here maybe I am secretly wild since I have talked with people about tanning and the best way. Then I realized I am way to city-beach girl and that you were not talking about becoming golden sun gods with no tan lines.
I have a lot to learn and a long, long way to go.
~T
A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins. ~Benjamin Franklin
T, you crack me up! Yeah, these guys aren't the type who would talk about the best way to turn golden-brown in the sun! Rewilders don't worry about that...a tan just occurs naturally from being outside all the time...
No, this was the sort of party where they had a moose-hide on a frame in the backyard and all the guys sorta gathered around it, the way guys at a "normal" party gather around the grill with beers in their hands and compared notes on tanning..it was really amusing. All the ladies sat in the grass and threw lamb bones to the three-legged dog who lives there and talked about building kayaks and dumpster-diving and things like that..sorta funny how when it comes to rewilding, gender roles sorta become very apparent again. For example, at rewilding gatherings, the guys always play with the bow-drills and flint and make friction fires, while the ladies are generally more drawn to basket making, pottery and so forth....just really interesting to me how gender roles play out.
Love ya,
Carrot