Pumpkin vs. Wild

It is a time of luscious abundance here at the pumpkin house. The hens are laying, the greens are in constant need of thinning, and the tomatoes are about ready to pop out of their skins. Garlic and shallots are drying in the sun on the front steps in papery shades of silver-white and green-gold.

I've put very little work into the garden this summer, with all my rushing

about in day camp crazyland. But I feel like I'm finally reaping the benefits of my last few years of gardening experience. When I look at this garden, small though it is, and compare it with my shady little community garden plot in college, I feel a sense of satisfaction in seeing how far I've come. Just having found a good place to put the raised beds to begin with, and having prepped them properly, has made this year so much more fruitful than the previous ones. Of course, moving south has helped too . . . up in Bellingham even when our tomatoes were healthy, they never made it to ripeness before the frost. Here's to longer, hotter summers!

Meanwhile, with the end of summer camp comes the beginning of the weekend immersion programs in which I will be a student instead of an instructor (there's a little more of an explanation in the previous post, if this is confusing.) I get to do two trainings a month: one focused on wilderness survival skills, the other on permaculture and restoration ecology. As is probably obvious from previous postings, I'm already more of a homesteader than a woods(wo)man, and this combination should allow my to deepen my more rooted, place-nurturing skills, while going completely out of my comfort zone to learn survival skills so I can wander in new places forming relationships with the wild things.

This weekend was wilderness survival.

We made digging/throwing sticks, debris shelters, and bow drill kits. Mostly we learned about sticks: how to find the right sort of stick for different tools, how to carve it and how to use it. If it had been a college GRE it would be Sticks 101.

We split into small groups to build debris shelters. These are not shelters the way people often think of shelter -- not huts or houses or any kind of place you would hang out. We're thinking of shelter in its most basic form: something that protects you from the elements. A debris shelter is more akin to a sleeping bag than a house in its purpose; it wraps tightly around your body, insulating you with layers of moss, duff and twigs, to keep you safe from the cold and wet night.

The process of building a shelter makes you look at your surroundings differently than you otherwise would. I'm used to walking through the forest looking for edible plants and mushrooms, but as I was gathering materials for our shelter I walked over an oyster log dozens of times before I noticed the pearly white mushrooms beneath my feet. (Luckily I hadn't crushed them, and they made a delicious pre-dinner snack later on.)

Instead, I was focused on the shapes of fallen wood -- what was straight, what was forked, what was thick enough to provide structure, what was brittle but not rotten, and (my favorite) what was covered in soft, pillowy moss for bedding. The forest became a maze of useful materials waiting to be gathered, cut, sorted and assembled. Oh, and thanked. Although we tried to gather only dead materials, there is nothing dead in the forest that doesn't already have new life springing from it. I was constantly aware of the destruction our construction left in its wake.

It was also an interesting group process. I think the four of us were keenly, and sometimes painfully, aware of our differences in experience and capability. Especially towards the end, as we were all becoming tired and hungry, we were quietly but certainly grumpy with each other. But I think we all knew that we were lucky to have each others' help, no matter what our level of expertise. It took us several hours to build a single shelter -- in a true survival situation, we would have needed four.

We worked all afternoon on a shelter that turned out to be too small for the largest person in our group. Every team was to choose a group member to sleep in their shelter, so we did a last minute modification for the night, extending the front with a squared entranceway. Our shelter was still ridiculously uncomfortable and our guy bailed halfway through the night.

In the morning we took the whole thing apart and built a bigger frame for it. The re-building was easier and more rewarding than we could have imagined -- since we had already gathered most of the materials, all that we needed were new forked sticks and a longer, straighter ridgepole. I think having a night of sleep and a belly full of breakfast also boosted my morale. Of course, we won't really know how well our new version works until next month when another one of us spends the night in there.

The rest of yesterday was devoted to fire. This was the most challenging thing for me so far. I've gotten pretty good at the one-match fire, but the no-match fire is a tough nut to crack. After I had made my bow drill kit I set about practicing, but my form was bad and I ended up using a lot of arm strength. I ran out of steam before I could make anything beyond smoke.

I did try practicing my fire-starting again this morning, but I was stiff and sore from my earlier efforts. I made some coals but I didn't last long, and the only things burning were my arm and shoulder muscles.

There is a pretty stark contrast between the homesteading and plant gathering that I usually do, and the survival skills we're learning. Here at the pumpkin house, most of the things I do involve the creation of something tangible -- a garden, a chicken coop, a meal, a ceramic pot, a basket. I work on it for a while, inside or outside, and then I can take a shower or plop into the hammock and read.

Not so with the wilderness survival skills. They are hot, sweaty, and dirty, and if you were really a purist about it, there would be no creature comfort relief. And the skills involve a lot more physical strength and coordination -- not my strong suits, but then, that's why I'm doing it.

Hence the "Pumpkin vs. Wild" title. Of course, the eventual goal is to blend the two (homesteading and wilderness survival) together, to garden with native plants and create habitat for half-wild creatures who can be our neighbors or our food as circumstances dictate. But for now I'm trying to learn one thing at a time, while my greed for knowledge springs me out of bed early each morning.