Moved!
May 22, 2009
This blog has been moved to www.dressedindirt.com
Survival Trip Pictures
November 15, 2008
Bowdrill pictures
November 12, 2008
I’ve started a photo a day on my personal blog, but I’ll post any outdoorsy ones here. These are the pictures of my most recent bowdrill. I had just trimmed them down again so the wood doesn’t show the signs of burning. I’m still a beginner at this, but enjoying it.
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Plant ID: Craigslist style
October 20, 2008
Single HWP deciduous tree seeks same. Has the largest leaves of the maple family (hint, hint).
Likes: Clean air, water, photosynthesis
Dislikes: haters, Barry Manilow, being made into a piano
Anger Management TrackersNW style
October 9, 2008
It’s been a little over a month since the TrackersNW immersion program began, and I have yet to cut off any major appendages–which I take to be a fortuitous sign. I have cut myself making my bow, trimming cordage, actually, whenever I am in the same room with my knife or hatchet, I seem to cut myself. But all in all, no emergency room visits as of yet.
Which is a good thing, as our group recently began practicing making tools out of stones. The idea here is that if you are stranded without a knife you can create one by flintknapping. According to our instructors Brian and Shaun, if you hold one rock in your hand and hit it on a 45 degree angle with another rock, the result will be sharp flakes that you can use to cut things. Apparently, this works.
I say apparently because after trying this and smashing my fingers several times, I had worked through all the curse words I know and had to move to another method. This consisted of holding one rock upright between two sticks and slamming down another rock on top of it. The smaller rock crumbles under pressure and begs for mercy. While I did not smash my fingers with this method, I also didn’t produce anything sharp. I did manage to break up a few rocks and gloated over their decimation.
Me Adelaide. Me smash things with rock.
So I switched to the final method, which is my favorite. Here you take big rocks and throw them down on the ground against other rocks. This is Anger Management TrackersNW style. The upside of this is that when you are smashing objects for flintknapping, no one thinks you are crazy or out of control–they think you’re resourceful.
At least, that’s how I choose to think about it. In fact, I’m so resourceful that I threw a rock down that bounced back and hit my shin, thereby providing me with enough anger to flintknap for a while.
By the end, I hadn’t managed to produce anything very sharp, but it’s probably for the best. Looking at the cuts on my hands, I figure that my playing with only blunt objects is probably a good idea.
Check out Earth Ninjas for more stories by the TrackersNW immersion team.
On Horny Goats and Slaughter
October 7, 2008
There is a horny goat in our midst. No, I’m not making a veiled reference to another student. TrackersNW is one of the few educational institutions where you can say, “There is a horny goat in our midst,” and literally mean that with us there is an actual goat not getting enough action.
And he won’t shut up about it. I was kept up all one night, as he called out to the females. I wanted to say, “Dude, you’re sounding desperate. Chicks don’t dig that.” But, as you probably guessed, horny goats (like horny humans) are very hard to reason with.
After a whole night of hearing his calls, I woke up the next morning grumpy and exhausted. If I had previously had any doubts about my willingness to slaughter an animal, they were now assuaged. I could kill one, and I had just the right goat picked out.
Unfortunately adult male goats are not so tasty. The meat tastes too much like pheromones, the goat equivalent of Axe body spray. The animal we had selected for slaughter was a yearling sheep. He was kind of cute. Watching him pace in his pen, I couldn’t help wondering if he somehow knew. It seemed like it, as he resisted being caught, and it took four people to hold him down. Shaun stroked his head a few times to calm him. It was tender, and felt both strange and appropriate to show affection to this animal right before we killed it. I had decided to witness this event because I wanted to know if hunting is something I can do, if I can take the life of another animal. And I wanted to be accountable for my food decisions–to pound into my head the reality that the meat I buy in the grocery store was once something living and breathing.
Despite my determination, I could not watch the first cut. It was too raw. Too grim and holy. I turned back to watch after that. Shaun held its head over a bucket to drain out the blood, and Krista stroked its flank. It twitched for a while and I wondered how long it would stay alive. All I could think was, we’ve severed its vocal chords, it can’t even call out in pain. We were all quiet then, grave, waiting for it to stop moving.
Later, as we skinned the animal, I joined in. I saw blood on myself, spots of it on my thumb and forefinger. I understood then about the blood offerings different cultures do to the gods. That it is some attempt to honor the mystery of our lives being dependent on the death of another animal. That destruction and life are tangled in with one another. The blood on my fingers, the smell of burning fat, the half digested grass in the sheep’s belly, all hinted at something larger and more terrifying than I know how to grasp.
We ate the meat, tanned the hide, used the bones to make tools. We did not let its body go to waste. Ultimately, watching this whole process was important to me, and I hope to participate more directly in the future. I want to be involved in the cycle of life and death. To approach my meals with a mixture of gratitude and solemnity. It’s not that I like killing animals. It’s not blood lust. For me, it’s looking reality in the face by loving and thanking the animal that will feed me. It’s surrendering to things unknown.
That is, unless we’re talking about that damned goat, in which case, it definitely is blood lust.
Dressed in Dirt 
