Introductions

Hangtyr, welcome to the forum!

Hi

I’m 27 living in New Zealand. I’m a movnat and parkour instructor, and also run a small fitness business which uses those methods. Training through movnat in particular has drawn me to this concept of rewilding. It’ll be great to read around these forums and learn a lot :slight_smile:

Hi Max! Welcome to the forum! Looking forward to hearing you share your thoughts on movement and rewilding!

Hi all. I have finally found somewhere where other people with this interest gather! I’m from Australia and some friends and I are starting a project in the Northern Territory, so I hope to get some input from this site. http://zone5project.blogspot.com.au/

Hi my name is Connor. I’m especially interested in tracking and primitive skills. I make a living as a biologist studying mountain lions in Wyoming. I occasionally update my blog naturalskills.wordpress.com where I post pictures of tracks and things from where I live. Love the rewilding philosophy and looking foward to connecting with folks!

Welcome yall!

Hello the Rewild folks… My name is Dude McLean , have been active in the primitive skills for well over 60 years. Iam 76 years old but way too immature to be this old. I was a record producer and music publisher for 45 years. My escape to keep sane was the wilderness. Ive done many solo trips from a week up to 93 days at a time… I live in a cabin in the high desert of California, not far from Joshua Tree. For 7 years I was a field editor and writer for the now defunct magazine “Wilderness Way” . I m one of three founders of Dirttime.com, a survival and self reliance forum .My partners are Alan Halcon who can get a coal in 2 seconds with a hand drill, timed. The internationally known Christopher Nyerges is the other partner , he has been teaching wild edible foods since 1974, and has written 11 books on simple living and foraging. We have at least one new article every week. I have written a series of articles called the “Feral Woodsman” about 17 articles so far, we have drawn a lot of folks to these articles, seems it is very popular . On our website , you will have to work backwards if you are interested.
We hold an event once a year and bring in instructors from all over the U.S.A. , teaching things from primitive trapping and weapons to shelter and skinning, It changes up every year . bow and arrow making , atlatl , pottery, slingshots and spears, wild foods and how to prepare them, fire making and so on . No classes overlap so you can attend all of them . We cut the students at 150 so we can make sure everyone gets close attention. 3 meals a day are included.

I m here to learn more , as I feel we are perpetual students, no matter how long you have been doing anything. And I hope to be able to contribute in some small way.
I have been lurking here for several weeks and like a lot of what see. Some good folks with an honest outlook for their future. I also see some confusion but that is to be expected when searching for a new way to live.

Nice to be here… :slight_smile:
Dude… I am the original Dude… 8)

Welcome Dude! I love Wilderness Way. Was really bummed when it stopped. Glad to have you here!

Thanks Peter … yep Wilderness Way was a breath of fresh air for a long time… we were sorry to to see it go. We tried to buy it but didnt happen…

the rewilding is a more than an interesting concept that I endorse , though I might be a bit too long in the tooth to really embrace , but in a limited way am trying to indulge myself.

thanks for the welcome

Dude

Hi folks. My name is Julian. I’m 23 years old and I live in San Luis Obispo, CA. I’ve been deep in the eco-anarchist game for some time now, thinking more and more about collapse and rewilding and origins and what the future is going to look like and all that jazz. Like most people here I think, I’ve been thinking about civilization as a concept day in and day out for a year or so now - all of its problems and supposed benefits, attempting to understand its core logic - ever since I was introduced to the writings of John Zerzan and Kevin Tucker, as well as other thinkers. Critiques of technology, mass society, agriculture, division of labor, even language and symbolic culture, opened my eyes to how far our humanity has been lead astray. My upper-middle class liberal worldview pretty much shattered and I learned about the chains of domestication, the control logic of the civilizers. Having gone through the whole liberal socialization in high school and college, I once believed reformist solutions could solve the world’s most pressing problems. Now, I see it as ‘rewild or die’, since this culture is already so estranged from nature. If someone were to attempt to take an activist approach to halting this mess, they wouldn’t even know where to begin!

So while I’m constantly thinking on the theoretical side of understanding the critique of the origins and progress of civilization, I’m ready to get my hands dirty and actually work on the harder part of undoing domestication completely. Reconnecting with an ancient lifeway and building a rewilding community is what I’m interested now. Looking forward to posting.

  • Julian

I’m new here. I’m Tanner, a 20 year old male from Wisconsin. I’ve been reading about an anarcho-primitivism for about a year. It pretty much contains every view I already held, so I’m an unshakeable supporter of rewilding. I don’t plan on being in civilization forever, it’s stifling. However it works out, I’ll be in the wilderness eventually. To that end, I started taking steps to strengthen myself and prepare for an uncivilized life a few months ago. There’s still a huge amount to do, but being raised in a rural area, to a hunting family, gave me a bit of a head start.

I joined this site to talk to other people who hold these views, since it’s hard to find people in real life.

Sge:no

I go by many names, but most call me Sam G. I may be the youngest person on this forum (still in high school) but I look forward to being a part of the rewilding community.

MY STORY: (it’s long even though I haven’t lived that long)

I live in the land that the Gayok:hoño (Cayuga) once lived with. Even though I have lived here my whole life, I always had a limited connection to this place. When I could first walk, I spent my time in the woods, covered in mud. I may not have understood nature that much, and I certainly didn’t spend all of my time in nature, but I loved the outdoors. As I got older, I started spending less and less time in the woods, even though I all but lived in the woods. As a result, fate moved me away from that area and put me and my family smack dab in the middle of a windy field.

The flames of my relationship with the earth started to rekindle when, during the fifth grade, I went on a school trip to a “Wampanoag village,” which was populated by a great variety of Native historical interpreters. I remember entering a beautiful wigwam and marveling at the handcrafted tools and furs. Something about that experience caused me to stir from my civilized state, but nothing much happened.

A year or two later, during the summer, I participated in an overnight with a primitive skills-oriented camp (which I currently work at). We made 2-person friction kits and slept in primitive shelters. I didn’t have a shelter to sleep in, so I couldn’t fall asleep. Eventually I went to tend the fire. Something about spending a night around a fire, alone, listening to the sounds from the woods, awakened something primal in me. I started pursuing primitive skills and a relationship with the earth. I also became a CIT at the program I now work at. I read “The Tracker” by Tom Brown Jr,'who I currently have mixed feelings about, but I can’t deny that reading that book inspired me greatly.

Being in high school taught me much about rewilding, or more about the the pain civilization causes. My friends got addicted to drugs, had parents/siblings that abused them, or suffered from poverty. Almost all of my friends (myself included) have experienced some form of bullying, and almost all of them (myself included) suffer(ed) from depression. After tasting these aspects of civilization, I realized the vitality of rewilding. I discovered my path in life. During school breaks, I grew closer to the plant people, spending days eating mostly wild foods. The program that I work at hired me as a paid instructor. I started to realize the vitality of a community after I suffered from a debilitating injury. I felt extremely powerless due to frequent depression, and ended up hurting the people who care about me. Fortunately they understood my pain and did what they coould to help me.

Recently I’ve been learning more about myself and the world, as well as what I can do to give back to the earth that provides for me. My interests include rewilding, most aspects of primitive living, foraging, acorn processing, percussion and drumming, and (recently) learning the language of the Gayok:hoño (Cayuga) in order to better relate to the place I live.

I hope to teach and learn much from you all!

(I wrote this post in e-prime, and now I’m sweating… Oh no! I messed it up!)

1 Like

I can relate to a lot of that, minus the tendon part.

Grew up spending a lot of time in the woods, then stopped. A bunch of random things happened that caused me to become more interested in nature again, until I eventually started prioritizing the wild again around high school, once I saw all the mentally and physically damaged people society had created.

I also got depressed for a while during and shortly after high school. After medication and therapy did absolutely nothing to help, I found that trees were far more successful. I haven’t been depressed for a few years.

So, yeah. It seems a bit similar.

Good work making the right decision. Many people eventually see that civilization is broken, but most of those decide the cure is more technology. It’s like trying to cure a hangover by drinking vodka. More rational people, like the ones on this forum, realize that nature is the real solution.

welcome Scout 7799… As a young man you can mold the future to your interests… bullys and those types are in every walk of life no matter how old you get. Go your own way you are on track… I recently did a primitive information class to some senior citizens group , a fight broke out between an 85 year old and 90 year old , the older fella said Im not to be bullied by the likes of you and fists were used… believe me you would not have liked being on the receiving end of the 90 year olds punch…he still had it … So it doesnt end… My first inclination was to laugh but caught myself in time … 8)

have a great time here …

Dude

Thanks Dude and OneEarth52.

Some people just have really short fuses. A few years ago, when I was a CIT, another instructor (a guy in his 40’s) started making sexual jokes around a group of 10 year olds. When I confronted him about it, he threatened me… (Luckily he got fired) This is one of many reasons why social skills, taboos, and mediating conflicts are so important to rewilding.

OneEarth, sorry to hear that you were depressed as well. It’s really sad, knowing that most young people (as well as a good handful of adults) have had to deal with it. Nature exposure is my solution to most of the problems I face. It really helps, whether or not I’m making something or doing any special skills. It’s always helpful to just relax and immerse yourself in the flow of life.

I remember that, when I first cut my tendon, one of my doctors (a general physician) made a huge deal about how I had to have the surgery ASAP. However, the surgeon who did the operation told me that I could’ve waited 3 weeks to have the surgery! (I also got her to sign her son up for the forest preschool that’s run by the program I work for! Something good came out of it)

Tanner and Sam,

Welcome to the clan! I love your stories.

And congrats on the e-prime attempts Sam - I definitely focus on the journey, not the results. E-prime can really kick your butt!

My name is John Jacobi and I am a member of Freedom Club, an anti-industrial student group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our main project is the FC Journal (which you should submit to!).

I am interested in learning more skills to make it in wild nature for long periods of time, and I’m interested in meeting new people.

Look forward to great discussions with you all.

welcome John … Im pretty new here as well… but we need folks to post , ask and answer … been at this for many years… primitive skills AND ETC.

lots of good people here…

Dude

Hi. I’m Roxie (my nickname). I live in New York City, but I grew up in Ohio. I am a dancer, writer and musician, and Daniel Vitalis’ work has profoundly affected my life. I like foraging, working with herbs, and thinking outside of the box. I consider myself a loving and fun-loving person :D.

Hi Roxie, welcome to the forums. Your introduction has left me wanting more. :slight_smile:

What brought you to rewilding, specifically? What brought you here to this forum? What aspects of Daniel Vitalis’ work do you find inspiring? How did they profoundly effect you?

Looking forward to hearing more of your story.