Week17: “The First Rule of Archery Club Is…”

The sound an arrow makes as it releases from the bow (Twang!) and the sound it makes when it sticks into the bail of hay (Thwuunk!)… just feels sooo satisfying. Especially when your target says, “Civilization,” on it. Of course, I don’t actually have an organized archery club. Though, the way I keep taking groups of people out you would think so. Some photos from this week:

We even shot some Lamb’s Quarters, which we snacked on for the rest of the day.

Though I talk a lot of shit on grain-based diets, I still have a strong addiction to corn. I fucking love it actually. Interestingly enough I became addicted to it while I ate a vegan diet. I used to eat corn chips and hummus as a meal… every day. Can you believe that?!? Mmm. Corn chips and hummus… eh hem. Anyway, I eat a lot of tacos. So many that Penny Scout can’t even eat them anymore without wanting to puke:

Though, I could eat them for the rest of my life… if civilization and corn-growing didn’t cause a systemic ecological collapse by their nature.

Penny wanted to make an infusion, so she made a list of herbs and we went on a bike ride/scavenger hunt to find them. And though I took all the pictures and had a million funny anecdotes for a blog about it, she insisted that since she wanted to make the infusion that she should have a blog about it, not me. After a good long argument that involved legal threats, knife brandishing and a rock/paper/scissor battle, we came to an out-of-court settlement; I would give her the pictures and let her write a blog about it and in return she wouldn’t kick my ass. This closeness of proximity brings with it challenges, “Who gets to blog about this project?” and also has its privileges; a hot chick to rewild with. I mean, I can’t really complain.

Last week we made a list of things to do, and did some of them. Let’s take a look:

St. Johns Wort Tincture
Fire Clay Pots
Metate y Mano
25lbs blue corn
calcium sulfate (for nixtamal)
bike ride exploration
forest park
sandy river
Molalla
Nahalem
Spring Water Corridor
Antler Wedge
Drum Rawhide
Hides
Smoke Penny’s hide
Buckskin Short shorts
Sew Wool Jacket
Pine Needle Quiver (failed, molded in water)
Quickie Bow
Make Bow
Make Arrows
Watch/review Tom Elpel videos
Wild Foods Potluck in honor of Penny’s presence
Body Ecology Dinner
Archery Club
make our own Coconut Ice Cream?
Nasturtium!
Practice Drying Meat!
Fire wood foraging
Willow bark Vinegar
Linden Chocolate!?
Gather Kinnikinik
Tattoos!!!!!
Gather Yucca

Everything above with a line through it, we did. Penny Scout gathered St. Johns Wort near some rail road tracks as we modeled for a potential men.style.com photo shoot on post-apocalyptic fashion of which later we found they chose the picture of Penny Scout by herself! I guess hot apocalyptic girls seem more in demand than guys… Don’t worry, I’ll link to it when it goes up on the site. We drove to Bob’s Red Mill and bought a 25 pound bag of whole blue corn. We biked through Forest Park on our way down from the Archery Range. We drove to the Sandy River and did a little tracking, swimming and sun-bathing. We attended a Body Ecology Diet Potluck for all my friends who have caught on (Auna, Lisa, Jesse, Jessica, Me and the guy who got us all hooked; Willem). Archery Club you already heard about. We gathered cherry wood for fire wood from a local park. We wanted a fruit or nut tree because supposedly the ash tastes better for making Nixtamal… a project that has presented us with several problems (which you will all hear about as soon as we figure it out!). While gathering the cherry wood I cut some weeping willow branches and made a willow bark tincture using apple cider vinegar. On our scavenger hunt we also gathered some linden flowers/seeds which we ground up. Penny had heard that they work as a substitute for chocolate… Mm, not so much. I gathered some Kinnickinnic and some Pearly Everlasting for a pipe mix while at the river.

Gosh. What else? Oh yeah, we made some Rhus Juice and did I mention you will find an article about me in the new (aug/sept) ReadyMade Magazine?

We’ve decided to revise the list of things to do, add more and take some things away. The new list looks like this:

Fire Clay Pots
Find/Buy/Make a Metate y Mano
Explore Molalla (Meet my parents)
Bike/Camp on the Spring Water Corridor
Antler Wedge
Rawhide from shitty Drum
Tan Hides at Shauns
Smoke Penny’s hide, again
Make Buckskin Short shorts
Make Quickie Bow
Make Arrows
Watch/review Tom Elpel survival videos
Wild Foods Potluck in honor of Penny’s presence
Nasturtium flower salad!
Practice Drying Meat!
Tattoos!!!!!
Gather dead Yucca stalks
Work on nixtamal project
Work on infusion
Drive to Seattle to go to Daft Punk and Rapture show for free (yeah, people know us)
Have shaun show us how to flint knapp bottle bottoms
Harvest MORE sumac and dry it
Do something with the green apples in my backyard
Make Rosehip jam?
Find out what we can do with Mountain Ash (the berries look all edible and shit!)

Okay, gotta go watch the rest of Battle Royale on tvlinks. Penny’s never seen it.

**Excluding the title, I wrote this blog in pearly white E-prime.**

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