Week23: Homeless Romantics

As you can see from the above photo, Penny and I decided to stay an “item.” She just couldn’t keep her greasy paws off me! Eh hem. Just kidding sweet-heart!

I have a new slogan; “will hunt and gather for tribe.” Back in the day my sign said, “will stalk your enemies for cash.” Then I came up with, “will hunt and gather for food.” Than one day at the bookstore I flipped open Steve Watts Practicing Primitive book and saw a drawing he did of a caveman hold the same sign. Then I saw that green anarchist Kevin Tucker silk-screened t-shirts with the same slogan. Did he steal it from me? Did I steal it from Steve Watts? Did we all think of it independently? Probably. But then I started thinking about a title for my book (should I ever write one) and I came up with “will hunt and gather for tribe.” It makes more sense in terms of how hunter-gatherer cultures work. You don’t hunt and gather for food, you hunt and gather to keep your community alive. An artist does not make art in order to make money. They make money so they can make art. Hunting and gathering for food does not imply the deeper relationships with people and the land that we seek. This echoes an earlier blog (before I wrote them all in e-prime) titled Tribe is the Root of All Money.

…More on that later? Let’s look at the Laundry List;

Smoke Hides
Sew Urban Scout Buckskin Short Shorts
Complete Penny’s Buckskin Short Shorts
Create a list of “To Do @ Rabbitstick”
Bike/Camping trip up the Spring-Water Corridor
Schedule Tattoo appointment
Experiment with flint-knapping bottles
Continue experimenting with Nixtamalization
Get/buy/make a food dehydrator
Gather and dry more fruit and berries for the winter
Blog about routines of social capacity rather than technology
Experiment with drying meat

The Back-Burner:

Make Rose Hip Jam
Fire Penny’s Clay Pots (@ Rabbitstick?)
Carve Bow (@ Rabbitstick?)
Carve Arrows (@ Rabbitstick?)

Didn’t get much done from the actual list this week, but we sure did a lot of stuff and I took a lot of photos;

Penny finished her buckskin short shorts.

I smoked my hides… Which ended up feeling like a cluster fuck. Notice the Duct tape holding the skirt to the hide. Big mistake. The lesson I learned about making buckskin; take your time, do it right. It would have worked better if I had sewed the hide to the skirt (the skirt works to protect the hide in case of fire). But I couldn’t sew through it because I didn’t tan it well enough. That part of the hide dried super hard and I couldn’t get a needle through it. Had I taken the time and egged it again, and stretched it again, I could have sewed it. But I felt rushed to get these hides tanned so I could make these shorts in time for Rabbitstick. It didn’t happen. Instead I will make them at Rabbitstick with some of the skilled buckskin tailors who attend.

I changed the oil in Penny Scouts car for our trip to Rabbitstick.

I also changed the oil filter. I really love working on cars. I told Penny this secret love of mine and she told me that perhaps I should give up all this rewild stuff and get a job as a mechanic. I joked with her that I have actually thought about that more than she would think. As much as I love working on cars, I would love much more for them not to exist at all.

I just thought Penny looked so cute from my vantage underneath the car, so I had to snap a photo of her.

At the archery range I gathered some Hawthorne berries and made them into a tincture.

On a romantic trip to Bagby Hot Springs, I stopped to look at how similar False-Lily-of-the-Valley (left) looks to Wild Ginger (right). We harvested some Wild Ginger, Baldhip Rose hips, Pearly Everlasting and some Vanilla Leaf. Penny said, “What if Vanilla Leaf had the name “Banilla Leaf” and it tasted like vanilla and bananas?” I said, “That would rock.” That night we stayed up late looking through all of my plant books and identifying plants we saw and reading about their qualities. Later I read that natives used the roots of False-Lily-of-the-Valley as a poultice on sore eyes. I love reading those books.

I have decided to ignore the normal laundry list in lieu of Rabbitstick. Instead, I have several goals specific to it.

Goals for Rabbitstick Rendezvous:

1. Primitive tattoos?
2. Flint-knapp a knife.
3. Seek help to complete my buckskin short shorts.
4. Take LOTS of pictures.
5. Video interviews.
6. Learn about drying meat.
7. Work on traps
8. Learn to nixtamalize corn.
9. Fire Pennys pots.

Wish us a safe journey!

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