Wednesday, December 28, 2016

New Motivation from the "Alone" show on the History Channel

Although I fell behind a bit on my regular "New Moon" posts here through the fall, I have discovered a new and greater motivation to keep going: The "Alone" Show on the History Channel!

Basic premise of the show:  10 Contestants are left in a wilderness area scattered about three to eight miles apart from one another. They are allowed clothing and 10 essential survival items chosen from lists provided and minimal safety/emergency gear including a satellite phone with a GPS tracker so that the producers know where they are at all times.  The challenge is to stay as long as they can stand it - being completely alone - as they demonstrate their survival skills, self-videotaping along the way with equipment provided by the producers. They are encouraged to plan for as long as a year, but as of the second season, the duration has been 66 days. Each person uses the satellite phone to "tap out" when they've had enough. The last person standing wins $500,000.

First of all, at least in my mind, this is much more an "introvert's" game! Which would suit me just fine! It doesn't involve "forced" challenges like on "Survivor", only the challenge of building and maintaining shelter, making the most of the resources available to you for food and fuel, and accepting the experience of being isolated from all other human contact for an extended period of time. Although I am still building on my survival skill-set, I keep thinking of something Tom Brown, Jr. said, "If you go into the woods with a knife, you might as well be living in the Holiday Inn!" And not only do people get to take knives, they can take Nine other items as well including things like parachord, sleeping bags, and tarps, not to mention all of their clothing and shoes, boots, etc.

So, yes! I sent in an e-mail to present myself as a potential contestant on the show! The immediate (auto) response I received let me know that they have already cast the next season, but that they would send me notice as soon as they start accepting applications again.  In the mean time, I figure I'll just keep working on what I've already been planning to work on...only with more motivation than ever given the long term potential rewards.

You may wonder what I would do with $500,000 (once the government has taken it's cut, of course...) - First, I would give a percentage to Tom Brown, Jr's Tracker School because that's where most of my inspiration and instruction has come from and I am (already) Very Grateful for that. Second, I would buy a piece of wilderness (or near wilderness) property, build an off-grid tiny house on it, and then make it into a retreat where others can come and learn and practice survival skills themselves! What better way to "spread the wealth" on multiple levels?!

To that end, I'm going to review what I already know here, starting with shelter building. If you are not already familiar with "debris shelters" here is a quick review in photos, based on the shelter I built in Williamsburg, VA after hurricane Irene blew through.

Demonstration Announcement
Ground should be level and covered with a thick layer of pine needles, leaves or moss for comfort. The "Ridgepole" needs to be 1.5-2 feet taller than user's height. This one ended up being a bit short. I would use a longer one next time.
Ridgepole is first covered with "Ribs" about 1 inch in diameter.
More ribs.
Completed Ribs. Keep in mind this is going to support all of the weight your your debris. So it needs to be sturdy.
Lattice=Branchy Branches
First layers of debris, "trapped" by the lattice work.
More debris. Tom Brown, Jr. teaches that optimum depth is about 3 feet. I didn't have quite enough leaves to do that, but would use more in a true "survival" situation. Also, you can alternate between layers of debris and more lattice branches.
Getting help from one of my neighbors.
Initial test without "door" entrance.
Another neighbor posing with the "door" partially completed. Stakes driven into the ground with others resting on them and driven into the sides of the shelter at right angles. Then covered with more debris.
The finished shelter. Again, in a true survival situation, I would have added much more debris and a "door plug" made of leaves and branches strapped together, or a flap woven from dry grasses.
 Just with the depth of debris shown, this structure remained for about a week, with continuing rains. When I took it back down, the ground was dry underneath.

As I continue to imagine What I Would Do as an "Alone" show contestant, I think I would still build a debris shelter to sleep in, as I suspect it would keep me warmer than just about anything else. I would save any tarps, etc. to protect my gear and/or make into a daily work space. Sleeping bags are "optional" gear. There might be some other of the Ten Survival Items I would rather have, although every other contestant in the current season has chosen to take a sleeping bag!

So this month's "New Moon Challenge": Find a place where you can build and sleep in a debris shelter for at least one night! I'll be doing the same here in Campbellsville, KY (or nearby)!

Friday, September 30, 2016

Finding Friends in Frontiersmen

It's been another busy month since my last post! September 10th I helped with the "Outhouse Ride," a combined event for the Friends of Green River Lake and the Back Country Horsemen. Following that I took a stroll through the Harvest Festival at Homeplace just a couple of miles from my house.  It was there that I met Ken Hill, former police officer and current Executive Director for the Kentucky Board of Auctioneers...at least, that's what he does for "work". For "play" he likes to dress up as a Long Hunter re-enactor from the late 1700's, a period otherwise known as "The Westward Expansion"! Ken was so engaging with his "Plum Granny" melons and his, intent, grey-green eyes peering over his period wire-rimmed spectacles, that I was compelled to sit for a while, and hear more about his experiences along with his 12-year-old son Jake as a members of the "Wilderness Road Primitive Riflemen".

That encounter led me to realize the potential benefit of getting involved with this group myself. Although about 200+ years more recent on the timeline from pre-contact Native Americans, there's still a great emphasis on learning hands-on skills in both textile/clothing/accessory manufacture, hunting and trapping, as well as iron and metal work. Furthermore, there's still a place for understanding wild edible plants and medicinals, as well as knowing how to find or create shelter and fire in the woods. In other words, there's a strong emphasis on self-sufficiency.

Ken Hill center with friends before the "Siege of Ft. Boonesboro".
Consequently, as I continue to develop my primitive survival skills, I am also pursuing more in depth historical research for my local area of Kentucky. Although there were not many Native Americans who lived here over long periods, many tribes - Shawnee, Cherokee, Iroquois, etc., - did travel here to hunt, and were also involved on one side or the other of several wars and battles in the region along with the French, British, and Frontiersmen. As most are aware, things did not go well for the Native Americans across this continent, and much of their culture was lost. We are actually lucky to have access to knowledge of their primitive skills through places like Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School and other primitive survival schools that are growing throughout the country.

From my point of view, the accuracy and authenticity expected of re-enactors, at least the one's I've met so far in this group, lends itself to thorough research and respect for the various characters that people choose to portray. I already have it in mind that my character will be Native American, even though I can't claim any blood association. It is my intention to "do my homework"well so that I can embody such a character as accurately and respectfully as possible. And, again, it gives me that much more motivation to develop my knowledge of primitive skills within a much broader historical and geographical context.

Finally, as I am perusing library shelves and gathering resources, I have noted that there does not seem to be a single book that "covers all the bases", so to speak. As a "newbie" I have the perfect perspective to compile such a book by simply documenting my own learning along the way. I expect this to take quite some time, but then, I just set-up my "Six Year Calendar" so I can plan...at least that far out if I want to!

Apart from that though, I can feel this endeavor - becoming thoroughly knowledgeable about local history and geography, as well as mastering primitive skills - could take up a considerable part of the rest of my life, maybe even all of it...and I'm okay with that. There is so much to learn and as neuroscientists are teaching us - learning new skills as we age is key to keeping our brains healthy as well as our bodies. So I have so many new things to look forward to learning now, and I am very excited about that!

Which brings me to the "Reader Challenge" for this New Moon: Look into your local area and see if there are any re-enactment groups that you can associate with and learn from. This "Westward Expansion" period - mid to late 18th century - was a very dynamic time in the history of our country. You might find listening to this lecture by Gordon S. Wood to be enlightening as well. (Skip the intro and start at 18:16.) It really speaks to the unique circumstances that surrounded our Founding Fathers as they created our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

So until the next New Moon...Happy Hunting!

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Learning More About Wild Edible Plants

The weather continues to be hot and humid here in Campbellsville, Kentucky. There's been plenty of rain so the trees and grass are all green and thick, but the humidity has definitely been a bit of a deterrent from going outdoors much. Nevertheless, I did take one day to explore a couple of the trails around Green River Lake. I started from the marina at the southern end of the park and hiked the Cabin and Lodge Trails looping from and back to the Marina-Main Trail.


Because of the rain, it made for frequent muddy spots - but that also meant an opportunity to find well-made tracks like these from a raccoon.


I hope to hike all of the currently mapped trails as time goes by with the commitment to learn everything I can from my immediate environment before branching out into other territories.

For those of you who are interested, there's a new place to get topo maps that can be printed on standard 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper. I took advantage of the site the other day to print maps for my local area. The site is run by National Geographic and you can find it here. I was able to roughly match the park map with one of the quads from the NatGeo website.


In addition to continuing to familiarize myself with the local area, I've also been reading another book, Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate, by John Kallas, PhD.


I really appreciate the level of detail that the author goes into for each plant he describes. He is true to the title in that he gives pictures for the smallest seedlings to fully mature plants, as well as best gathering and preparing methods.  As a consequence of studying this material, I have come to appreciate how important it is to know when to find plants as well as where in order to harvest the best quality.

Thus far, I'm still harvesting most of my "wild greens" from the patch of Lamb's Quarters that I have cultivated under the bird feeders.


Hopefully, as more species put on fruits this fall, I'll be able to find them as well, that is ... once the weather cools down a bit to make "hunting and gathering" a little more enjoyable!

So if you're up for this New Moon Challenge - I encourage you to either find some wild edible resources at your local library to read and/or find one or more of the plants described in your local environment. Feel free to share your experiences in a comment below.

Otherwise, wherever you are, enjoy what the Natural World has to offer!

And Until Next Time...

Happy Trails!

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

To Be or Not to Be...a Tracker? Is That the Question?

What follows was originally posted on The Blue Turtle Blog. I have decided to start this new blog to focus on this one theme/mission of developing my tracking and survival skills. Unlike my other ...Blue Moon Turtle Blog, with a "Blue Moon" being a pretty rare event (i.e. when a month starts and ends with a Full Moon, as rare as my posts were there), "New Moons" happen more regularly and are a good time for Starting things. From each "new start" the waxing of the New Moon builds towards the climax of a Bright Full Moon before it fades to dark again. I hope the same will hold true of my writing for this blog; i.e. it is my intention to post more regularly to this blog, with a new challenge to start with each New Moon. (I'm sure it will evolve over time as all such efforts tend to!) I look forward to sharing my continuing journey with others who enjoy such things.

For now...here's my New Moon starting point...

To Be or Not to Be...a Tracker? Is That the Question?

In my bedroom I have a small book shelf. On three shelves it holds the books that have had the greatest impact on my life so far in chronological order of when I read them. The first book on the first shelf is my Bible, the second is a hard-back copy of Kahlil Gibran’s, The Prophet, and the third book is The Tracker: The True Story of Tom Brown, Jr...as told to William Jon Watkins.

I decided to start re-reading these books, or at least, The Prophet, and The Tracker... as a way of helping me fall asleep at night. However, when I started reading The Tracker... I recalled not only how it impacted me originally, but how I have been further inspired by actually taking tracking and survival skills classes from Tom Brown, Jr. as part of my cross-country cycling preparations back in May of 2011. When I had the resources to do so, it was the first thing on my list that I Really Wanted to Do followed by riding my bicycle cross-country.


Given my history with my mother, given that most of my early life was consumed by Her story of “Us”, it has taken the rest of my life to try to figure out what My Story really is, what my deepest motivations truly are and how I can focus my attention on pursuing those motivations successfully.
I will admit to feeling some envy for talented children whose parents have no problem supporting their child’s natural motivations. Whenever I watch shows like “America’s Got Talent” or “So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation” I am awed by the level of ability some children are able to demonstrate in part because they were simply given the support they needed to embrace and express those talents early in their lives.
That just wasn’t the case for me. The first 20 years of my life were all about what my mother expected of me and what she needed me to be for her own ego-gratification/sense of self-worth. It was only after she was formally diagnosed and committed to a mental hospital that I was set free to figure out what My Life Purpose was supposed to be For Me, how best to learn and to give My gifts to the world.
I’ve literally been “all over the place” with that quest. Starting from Tennessee, I was on the road with the carnival for several months, lived in Montana, England, on the island of Kauai, and in Colorado where I joined the Navy. From there I went to Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp, was stationed on an aircraft carrier for three years, home ported in Norfolk, Virginia and made two "med cruises" to places like Greece, Italy, and the Arab Emirates. Shore duty brought me to Maryland where I lived for a few more years before attending Tracker School in New Jersey and riding my bicycle cross-country.
 

As documented in The Blue Turtle Blog, that adventure took me first (by car) to Williamsburg, Virginia where Hurricane Irene gave me an opportunity to practice shelter building.  From there I continued by car to Jacksonville, Florida. I actually started by cross-country cycling from Jacksonville Beach and continued through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and into Texas. Texas was also the venue for all of “Stage II”. In between I lived briefly in Santa Barbara, California and Millville, Pennsylvania, and after “Stage III”, Columbus, Georgia and now back “home” with my dad in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
Although I was trained as an Electronics Technician while in the Navy, I finished my Bachelor of Science in Social Science in 2010, a program I'd started 18 years earlier as a student at Tennessee Tech. However, I was so "beat up" being on my own, working full-time, going to school, and having to deal with a long string of dysfunctional living arrangements, including a brief marriage and divorce, that I did not have the motivation to pursue my formal education beyond that. Looking back, once again, Mom was the one who thought I’d be the next Margaret Mead or something, not me!
Mom also thought we’d be writing books together. Over the course of the last several years, besides posting to The Blue Turtle Blog, The Blue Moon Turtle Blog, and Blue Turtle Solutions Hub, I have made numerous attempts to write a book – philosophical, practical, autobiographical, etc. Most recently, I thought I would write a book focused on parenting as leadership incorporating the principles I learned from reading a book entitled, Extreme Ownership...by Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I don’t know so much about Leif, but I know Jocko is one of those people who knew what he wanted to do with his life as a child and got to do just that. This is something he refers to pretty often in his podcasts.
Rather than being encouraged by Jocko’s story, I found myself once again feeling frustrated by my own circumstances and wondering if I would ever be as motivated about anything as someone like Jocko. Although I may still give it some attention as a “back-up plan”, I have once again run into a lack of motivation and focus where my research for the parenting book is concerned. (I have learned a lot more about our brains though as illustrated here...)


However...I have been pretty focused of fishing lately! And feeding the birds and the squirrels and keeping the water baths clean and full. As I sit here typing, I’m looking out the basement windows as the yellow and black Swallow Tail Butterflies hover feeding on our deep purple and lavender butterfly bushes. The ground looks a little weedy, but that’s because I’ve left the Lamb's Quarters to grow so I could add it to my green smoothies. There’s also one sunflower that came up under the feeder on its own. Who knows what ate the top out as soon as it was blooming, but I’m hoping the secondary buds might make it to maturity.

 

There’s also the worm composter on the back porch. That’s been doing really well since I moved it from Georgia. It is an expression of my deeper motivation as a "constant composter" - never wanting to let anything go to waste, to allow things to progress through the "Life-Death-Life" cycle wherever possible. I was fishing with some of my home-grown red wigglers at a co-worker’s pond and managed to catch enough Bluegill for supper. Although I empathize with their suffering as I am cleaning the fish, I try to make quick work of it, and there’s a strong part of me that wants to know how to do this – to eat what I catch. I joked with my dad a little about it being pretty satisfying even though it is quite a bit of work first to catch the fish, then to clean it, then to cook it, and even to eat it while avoiding all the bones! 



Of all the times that I was “trapped” inside the house with mom, some of my strongest memories are of the rare times when I was able to get out. One of the apartments where we lived in Radcliff, Kentucky sat on the edge of the woods. I spent many hours playing there, mostly alone. I remember the year there was a “plague” of little brown frogs that scattered ahead as I walked through the grass.  I remember when I sat amongst the trees in the middle of winter, and watched the birds come to the feeder not five feet from me, including a covey of quails, all marching in line, one behind the other.  I also remember a big blackberry patch in the middle of a field of red Kentucky clay. I picked a lot of blackberries that summer, and I think of it every time I pick blackberries now like I did on the property of the co-worker with the pond.  I also remember a sink hole where I played in Brandenburg, Kentucky. That’s where I started catching snakes and lizards, much to the awe and chagrin of all of the boys in the neighborhood. (I "played" with another snake here at the house in Campbellsville, early this spring.)


I guess what I’m realizing is that I’ve always had this affinity for nature. Maybe it had something to do with growing up watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or maybe it was the rare times I remember going camping with the whole family and fishing with my dad. Maybe it was because my dad brought turtles home to me from his truck trips rather than store-bought souvenirs.



Nevertheless, it was never something my mother ever encouraged me to pursue for a Living. Again, she had much grander plans for “us”. And so, instead of taking Environmental Studies or something that might have led to my becoming say a park ranger, I was taking courses “working towards a degree in anthropology”. Granted, a lot of those were “natural science” classes, but they were never meant to be the FOCUS of my education or my life...as far as my mother was concerned.
Now I find myself “over the hill” – but feeling I still have another Big Hill yet to climb, The Hill that is truly aligned with my deepest core, my values, my skills, my INTRINSIC motivations.
The other day I watched a brief TEDx video, How to Know Your Life Purpose in 5 Minutes.  The speaker, Adam Leipzig, posed a series of questions: Who are you? What do you do? What are you qualified to teach others? Who do you do it for? What do they want or need? How do they change or transform as a result of what you give them?
I had a hard time answering those questions at first. However, if I were to become skilled enough myself to teach tracking and survival skills to others, I could answer those questions easily: What I learned from the experience of, for instance, learning to make fire from “scratch”, is that it is Very Empowering and Liberating. Although I may not be super-skilled yet, I learned enough during two weeks of classes at Tracker School to feel I could survive in the woods for an indefinite period of time if I had to. Consequently, no matter how bad things might get in the world, I know that I have the option to “run away” from it all. And because I have that confidence in my ability to run away, I am also free to choose to continue to be involved with this world as much as I want to.
As I was explaining to my dad over supper, I think part of the “madness” and violence in the world today is due to the fact that people feel trapped. They feel trapped in their jobs, their relationships, in their neighborhoods, in “society”. Some try to resolve these feelings of being trapped by “fighting their way out”. Unfortunately, this can lead to even worse incarceration. Others will “die trying” or intentionally take their own lives and who knows how many others' with them.
In the wild, if two bears confront each other over territory, they will posture and roar, but it seldom comes to violent conflict. That’s because either bear has the option to Run Away. I think part of the problem with modern humans is we have, for the most part, lost the option to literally Run Away. Instead we virtually run away by using drugs and alcohol,  playing video games, or watching endless hours of "entertainment media". Few of us could survive for long outside the bounds of our homes, towns, and cities, let alone in any truly Wild part of this country. And so, for most people, the only option is to fight, or die - quickly or slowly.


How different might things be if more people could literally run away for a while, or at least know that they could? If they could go off into the woods and become more connected with the abundance of life and the natural world? Or connect with one of the most primal abilities of humans across millennia: to build a fire from nothing but the natural materials around them?
I know this may seem a bit morbid, but I have felt truly empowered by two distinct experiences in my life: the first was having the knowledge that I could kill myself if I wanted to, and the second was being able to build a fire from scratch, something I got to do during the first week of classes at Tom Brown, Jr’s Tracker School! (And although a photo of that first fire was taken by a fellow student, I was never able to get it from them. :/ )
Now, I don’t mind dealing with the challenges of day to day living that we all face. But I’m not carrying fears of the credit card companies, or the IRS, or some other government entity messing with my life, or forcing me to do something I really don’t want to do…because I know I can Run Away whenever I want or need to. (After more classes at Tom’s Tracker School I’ll just be that much More prepared to Run Away if I want or need to.) And I’ve known this for over five years now, and I’ve found it’s Good to Know! It allows me to be calmer deep down inside, where others might feel fearful and anxious.
So, should I choose to pursue tracking and survival training more intensively, to the point where I could become a teacher for others, then this is how they might be “transformed” by what I will have to give them: they will be liberated from their fears of entrapment. They will become free to run away whenever they choose, which means, they will also be free to stay, and to do whatever they can to figure out their own life purpose, the gifts they have to give to others, and the ways in which they can help transform the world into a better place for humans and non-humans to live.
I’ve had many motivations that have led me away from this. Motivations that I really had to see were not intrinsic but rather extrinsic and mostly stemming from my relationship with my mother. As I have learned from one of Gregory Careman’s neuroscience courses, "extrinsic motivations drain you of energy, intrinsic motivations give you energy". If wanting to become an expert in tracking and primitive survival skills is my deepest intrinsic motivation finally coming to the surface, then the energy will be there to carry me through in a way no other motivations have thus far.
From the beginning, my earlier blog posts have been about my journey...ing. I've felt more and less sure of where that journey-ing would take me all along the way. Nevertheless, I continue to persevere and to try different paths as others have grown cold. I Have Learned A Lot along the way and I hope there has been some value in the vicarious experience for those who have followed me. No matter where my motivations have led at any given time in the outer world, what I have been most motivated to do is to live more and more deeply from my heart. That is where the inward journey has been taking me, deeper and deeper into my own heart. That is the "home work" that I feel is every individual's responsibility, something for which they must ultimately take "Extreme Ownership"!
So here's to that continuing journey...the skills we learn and the wisdom we gain along the way...and the tracks we leave behind for ourselves and others to follow!