Week26: Bloggers Block

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve posted a lot less lately. I know it sounds trite to write about ones writers block, but here I go…

The last few weeks have felt sort of aimless in terms of the Urban Scout project. Penny and I have crashed on Willem’s living room floor for almost two months now and things seem to continue to chug along… Though, I feel our time here has nearly reached a self-imposed limit. I’ll keep contributing to the household and receiving the benefits of such work, but I also feel like I need to invest in somewhere else… somewhere outside of the city. Yes folks, my days as an “Urban” scout feel awfully close to an end.

My current plan involves buying a motor home with the last of my money and parking it at my mothers house out near the country. She lives with my stepfather in a large house with a lot of land for gardening. My thinking involves living in a mobile home, rather than paying rent in a sedentary city home. If I want to move to some land, or move back and forth between forest, country and city, than I need a home that can move too. I still haven’t figured out how to escape the trap of paying for a home. So I’d rather pay insurance on a home with wheels than one that keeps me stuck in one place. Of course, this causes another problem; money!

It always comes back to money. The money trap. Though I can’t escape it fully, I, or rather Penny and I can work around it so that we have to make less money so we can afford more time for building another way of life. For example, if we buy a diesel motor home and live in it, it will cut down our “rent” considerably. If we both work on the side a few hours a week we can cover the cost of insurance. If we continue to hunt and gather our food costs will remain low. etc. etc.

Though I would love to have made money by receiving donations at this site, or selling space here to sponsors, or writing a grant, or whatever. I think in the end, I may just re-enlist in the wage-slave chain. At least I can work at a natural food store or something less painful. Perhaps another way of making money will appear… but you won’t find me holding my breath.

My plan involves three fold; permaculture my mothers yard, permaculture Willem’s mothers yard, and make connections with cool people who have land near Portland but far enough away and permaculture that land. I just got a new book that has changed my world; Keeping it Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. I just began to read it, but I’ve already received several ideas. Basically, it describes the practices used by the oldest members of Cascadia to encourage biodiversity and food. I think this book may have the most value of any book about hunting and gathering in the Northwest for those who plan to live outside of civilization in the long-run. I came across this book from my friend David who also recommended another book called The Earths Blanket; Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living which I just ordered. I also ordered Edible Forest Gardens from my friends which I plan to integrate with these other two books.

I feel that I finally have had a few breakthroughs with this project. I cannot live as a hunter-gatherer if I don’t take care of and cultivate the land. It seems rather like an oxymoron to suggest that I need to cultivate to live as a hunter-gatherer, and yet I no longer see that as so. After discussing at length at rewild.info that people cannot live alone in the woods, I came to the understanding that people need to know how to give back to the land. A wolf knows instinctually which deer to kill; the sick and weak. Humans don’t have this instinct, we have observations and stories to continue this knowledge. Hunter-gatherers did not walk the land aimlessly in search of food, devouring whatever they came across. They had circuits that they worked seasonally for thousands to millions of years. They knew what to eat, how much to eat, and how to properly kill things to encourage more growth. This knowledge still exists in these pockets like the books I just mentioned. Though I know what berries to eat, I don’t know how to encourage them in a larger context. I hope to remedy that as I read into the old wealth of knowledge that still exists throughout the fall and winter.

Oh yeah, Week 26 means that I have reached the half-way marker of my year. Maybe I will celebrate with some acorn pudding! Acorns, acorns, acorns… ACORNS! Get them while they… have heat? My e-prime has gotten a little rusty.

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