I woke up today to the sound of Sasha’s cell phone vibrating against her bedside table. She climbs over me and turns it off. We lie in bed for maybe a few minutes then she gets up to go to school. She comes back in the room and she sits by the heater and is eating breakfast. I wonder if she made me breakfast too, but she doesn’t bring me my breakfast so I figure she hasn’t. We make breakfast for each other often, but it looks like today won’t be one of those days.
Well the first time I posted this over at naturetalk.net it dissappeared or was deleted. I have reposted it again, but in case for some reason it happens again, here it is…
Quick disclaimer for those who don’t know:
Kamana is an independent study naturalist training program created by Jon Young. Of all the schools I have been to, of all the classes I have taken, Kamana is the only one that I feel really set me up for success. It’s sounds funny to write that, seeing as how halfway through the program I destroyed all of the work I had done, trashed the workbooks, and sold my supplemental field guide library (that I spent over a thousand dollars acquiring) for mere pennies. Sounds dramatic and it was. At the time it felt like taking a huge shit after being constipated for years. I’m in a different place now and am seeking to rekindle that structure in a new/old way. This week I will begin to redo what I ritualistically burned so many years ago, having spent the last few year learning to get over or side step the hurdles of conformity.
I love chips. Anyone who knows me, knows I have an insatiable hunger for them. I can eat a whole bag without blinking an eye. Of course, afterwards I feel like crap but that has never seemed to stop me. On my current diet, I am only aloud to eat blue corn. Last week I ate two whole bags of blue corn chips. Immediately my dandruff, a symptom of candidiasis, returned. Most of the food I eat is unprocessed. I decided that if I should continue to eat blue corn chips, I should have to make them myself.
My goal in life is to walk away from Civilization and become a full-time hunter-gatherer-horticulturalist. To walk away from civilization means a lot of things to a lot of people. To me, dropping out of high school was one step towards dropping out of civilization. Refusing to go to college was another. Refusing to work for someone else for a living is another. Yet, for every step I take I feel as though there is something else that gets in my way, another pair of chains I must figure out how to get out of. This week it is two pair; desire for celebrity and running wilderness schools.
As some of you know I bought a Tipi a few months back to serve as one of my shelters on this urban hunter- gatherer adventure. I have learned a great deal about tipis in the last few months. Mostly gleaning information from the book, The Indian Tipi: It’s History, Construction and Use, which covers much more than just tipis and has tips on Indian lifestyle that I have heard no where else.
I can personally remember feeling ill at the thought of libraries, full of books containing knowledge gained through science, burning down during the collapse of civilization. All that knowledge… lost forever… I used to believe that despite all the terrible things civilization has created, science still felt worth saving. For some reason I saw science as “pure,” something even civilizations mythology could not ruin. I don’t feel that way anymore. In fact, these days a wry smile forms on my face and my eyes begin to sparkle when I envision of a world without science.
(The Complete Edition, with commentary by Urban Scout)
For those who don’t know, I was involved in a publicized feud for several weeks in the late summer of 2006. The feud began with the Portland Mercury article about my summer camp for post-apocalyptic survival. The Portland Mercury is known as the pretentious, sarcastic and cynical paper of this town. Luckily, I myself am a pretentious, sarcastic cynic. Towards the end of my interview the reporter, Marjorie Skinner, asked me if people often thought of me as a hippie. The following was my printed response:
Apocalypse Soon – Portland Mercury 8/17/06
Just don’t try calling them hippies.
“Ha, ha. Fuck you,” replied Scout when I broached the topic. “I fucking hate hippies. Hippies are pot smoking, peace- and love- and sustainability-begging pacifists with no understanding of the power structure of civilization, or even a shred of understanding of the laws that govern the natural world. Hippies claim to love the earth, but most I’ve spoken with do not even know five native plants to their own bioregion. Preemptive Post-Apocalypticism is not about peace™, and love™, and sustainability™. It’s about survival. It’s about adaptation. It’s about deep knowledge of place.”
Rarely do I think about money, let alone write about it. Money seems like one of the most trite subjects anyone could write about. Never the less, what began as a lament about money turned into a rant, which then turned into my first (and hopefully last) philosophical examination of my feelings about money, which bared some uneaten fruit… at least by me.
From October until April the Northwest is a cold wet place. I’ve always felt January and February mark the coldest, wettest months. During these months I have to fight this strange sensation that I am “not being productive.” Rather, I’m inside staying warm and dry and simply doing… not much. This has always made me feel guilty.
1. Get rid of stuff (broken car, old clothes, etc).
2. Make a quality digging/throwing stick.
3. Set up library/study at Willems.
4. Sew Tipi lining.
5. Build composting toilet.
6. Set up solar kit.
Hey peeps. I need your help. I’ll tell you the plan, then ask what I need.
The Plan:
I will eat roadkill, but as it is an oportunistic source of food, it is not reliable. I need to hunt for protein. I’m planning on mostly sticking to the old throwing stick. I can get squirrels, ducks, geese and rabbits and such. Maybe that will be enough. But I’d like to catch me a raccoon. A few of them at least, to make muklucks for next winter. I don’t think rabbit or squirrel hides are thick enough to for boots. They also don’t have a lot of fat like those raccoons do. Anyone know if I can get enough fat from geese? I think I’m going to stay away from the fish, seeing as how fresh water fish have the highest level of dioxin of any animal. I’m guessing those are farmed fish, which means wild fish probably have more. I will probably shy away from trapping at first, don’t want to kill a defenseless house cat.
Any tips on hunting? Any bright ideas? Please give me feedback. Thanks.
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Today Sasha and I are fully on the Body Ecology diet, so I thought I would throw out some info/theory on bacteria.