rewilding author, teacher, & catalyst
“Federal officials have called for killing about 30 sea lions near Bonneville Dam each year to keep them from gobbling a rising share of Northwest salmon that the government spends millions of dollars to protect.” – The Oregonian Friday, January 18, 2008 Dear salmon. I have a confession to make. When I worked as a …
People have called me many names: Self-serving new-age nihilistic pseudo-hippie/yuppie quack-opportunist poseur-hipster-douchebag green-capitalist-bastard egotistical-celebrity-anarchist tool that gives everyone douchechills with a BS agenda, a trust fund from granny, and an obsession with publicity. A poster of Meta-filter asked the question: Urban Scout, sincere crusader for sustainability or poseur-hipster-douchebag? Much of what I do involves performance …
I owe almost everything I know about rewilding language to my friend, author and teacher Willem Larsen from the College of Mythic Cartography, from the day he introduced me to “ePrime” to more currently as his obsession with animist languages sends reverberations through the rewilding community with his invention of “ePrimitive” an even further in …
Continue reading “E-primitive: Rewilding the English Language”
One day my friend Tony and I decided to see if we could make a bow-drill from scratch at a local park we traveled to often. We played around in the log jam for a few minutes and gathered up all the pieces we needed. All but cordage, which would involve more labor. I knew …
In order to understand the destructive nature of agriculture you must understand the phases of ecological succession.
Since its inception civilization has created a value system of good vs. evil. The concept of good and evil (or the more scientific “right” and “wrong,” seems to permeate so much of our thought, that we have projected it onto indigenous mythologies as well. “Surely the notion of good and evil comes from human nature, …
In our culture, the young and the elderly experience perhaps the worst amount of prejudice and abuse. Living with abusive parents, families and forced into schooling where the system coerces us to do what it tells us than dumped in nursing homes and forgotten. Oppression among the young and old happens so often and looks …
When I think of “resistance movements” I envision a small group of people resisting against a much larger and all-powerful militarized machine. To think of civilization as an all-powerful death machine, the idea of resisting makes me feel small and paralyzed. But when viewed through the eyes of rewilding, resistance looks and feels very different.
I have always used the term primitive skills to refer to things like making hand-made tools such as the bow and arrow or the the social systems such as tribal organization or educational systems such as mentoring or body skills such as heightening senses or rituals such as giving thanks to the landbase. After spending …
I get made fun of for looking like a hipster all the time. I care a lot about my image and I feel no guilt or lack of purity for feeling that way. I take showers, I shave, I dress in clothes that I think look cool and match the aesthetic I see as “hip.” …
I recently joked with Penny Scout about how the term, “scavenger hunt,” sounds like an oxymoron; a scavenger doesn’t hunt… they scavenge. This joke inspired me to write a little about the terms of subsistence strategies.
I recently saw a comic (thanks Anthropik!) that inspired me to articulate some things about the notion of “green-washing,” and other terms floating around in mother cultures myth-space/meme-pool.