I don’t usually share some of my more personal stuff here, but what the hell. I’m pretty excited about the banjo, so why not throw this up here to see how I improve over time? This is a tune I learned a month or so ago from my banjo buddy. It’s called Sandy River Belle. If you know the lyrics, please post them!
[youtube BFeWsbjcqQw]
The mentality of colonization runs deep in our culture, particularly deep in those who benefit the most from the colonization. While I like to think of myself as a non-racist, I still have the mindset of the colonizer that prevents me from seeing my own racism and prejudice. For a while now I’ve grappled with this. I think one of the first steps in de-colonizing my mind involved recognizing that I live on stolen land. This scared the hell out of me.
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Hello readers. Guess what? April 1st will mark the third official year of my blog! Crazy, huh? After 3 years I’ve finally published my collection of rewilding articles. I’ve begun to move away from general rewilding philosophy and gotten much more into specifics of creating rewilding culture. I’ve also got a much more keen idea of rewild camps and how to get others inspired to run their own. Over the next year my personal focus will rest on four major topics. Boxing, banjo, basketry and Chinuk Wawa. I’ve worked on these four things for a while now, and you haven’t heard much about it here because I keep the more personal stuff, well, more personal. So you probably won’t hear much more about it, but I’d just like to share what I work on in my “own time”. Aside from that, I think I will put some more general passions down here to work on over the next year on this blog and over at www.rewild.info:
Rewild or Die! Finally, the edited collection of my blogs is out.
A few weeks back I took the Grover Cleveland High School NW Ecology class on a hike through the Gifford Pinchot. I hadn’t worked with a group that large (25 or so people) in quite some time, and since I didn’t have much time I did what we call the “drag and brag” in that, I dragged them down the path and bragged about how much I know about Northwest Ecology. This hopefully inspires students to understand how much knowledge is out there and maybe even to get a few of them to come to the rewild camp. I had a great time and forgot how much I enjoy doing environmental education. If only it paid more than television production!
I have a lot of friends and family. The great majority of them know nothing about rewilding. Many consider themselves Christians, Mormons, Atheists, Democrats, Republicans, etc. I want to make the point here that I don’t base my relationships on whether or not someone has an interest in rewilding or even understands anything about it. Obviously I lean towards rewilding friends, but I don’t require it. Why do I remain friends with these people? Because I don’t act like an insane fundamentalist asshole.
A few weeks back I went to a anarchist curated fundraiser for an anti-civilization film. In lieu of my recent “fan mail” and the overall attacks I get from green anarchists, I’m very apprehensive about going to these kinds of events, but I wanted to show my support for the film and meet the filmmaker. I didn’t stay long. Why, in a room full of people who generally agree more or less with me about civilization, did I feel like I stood in the lions den? On my drive home I realized that the activist (and particularly anarchist) community that I have known and experienced has felt like a hate culture.
This book is a 3lb tome that describes Jon Young’s mentoring model. I recommend it for any rewilding people out there, simply on the basis that it has a great collection of games and “routines” that help people have amazing experiences with the other-than-human world. The routines in this book gave me experiences that formed the foundation of my relationship with animism. However, it would be a lie to say that I recommend all of the content in the book. It’s worth digging through the domesticated outlook of connecting with nature (i.e. the feeling of schooling) for the more rewilding type gems. Very worth it, in fact. I wouldn’t have been able to really understand much of what I know now if it were not for the principles in this book. So thank you Jon and company for finally getting this work out there for people to start experimenting with!
Check it out here: http://naturementoring.com/
