truly wild?

Is the goal of rewilding realistic at all? When I'm honest with myself, when I look at where I am now - how very domesticated I am - and where I have yet to go, I'm inclined to say it isn't. There's been a discussion going on between Ted and Ran about this predicament - everyone talking the talk, but no one completely walking the walk. Civilization is a prison, and we've all been in it so long that no one knows how to really function outside of its walls. And we're too afraid to try.

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So far I've mostly looked at rewilding from the perspective of needing to learn skills to be community-sufficient outside of the life support system of civilization, away from all the tubes and chemicals keeping us artificially alive. Skills are certainly very important. But they are really only a small part of rewilding. Beyond meeting the needs of survival, there is the problem of trying to regain a sense of sane community, both with one's fellow humans and with the rest of the world. Giuli at Anthropik quoted something by Tamarack at Teaching Drum that fits situation -

Someone recently asked, "How long does it take from knowing nothing about the wilderness to going off and living in it, and when do you know when you are ready? I basically just have a few books I haven't started reading about it."

This is a profound question, and I see it is the main theme in various group discussions lately. Not a day goes by that someone does not ask me the same thing, or else a related question, such as, "What are the top skills I need to know?" "Learning the Old Ways should be free, like it used to be; why do I have to pay money?" "Where can I find an elder to teach me?" "Is it even possible anymore, with all the hunting and fishing regulations?" "All the land is private or restricted, and I can't afford to buy any, is there anywhere can I go to live primitively?" "I want to learn on my own, what
steps should I take?"

I'm going to give you all some straight talk, in hopes that it will help to steer you on to a track might get you somewhere. The reality of the situation is that I have not met, or heard of, a single person in the past 40 years who has used the approaches that we have been talking about, who
has been able to return to primitive living. This includes the authors of the popular books. Yeah, they might talk a good talk, but look at what they've actually done -- a month in the mountains, a solo year in the woods, some time in Alaska -- is that really living the Old Way? Where is the
clan? Where are the elders? The children? Where is the example and clan memories to learn from?

Why didn't it work for them, and why won't it work for you? Because they carried civilization with them into the wilderness, and you likely will as well. You can learn all the skills you want, and The Mother will spit you back out just about as fast as you went in. The more stubborn individuals
will last a few months or maybe a year, but rest assured, they'll be back.

Why? Because they didn't do their work. We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for
their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools -- few and crude, and their craftwork -- basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills -- how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special
talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or
else you'll go back to the life that shuns these skills.

Will a book teach you these qualitative skills? Will a class or a workshop? Is learning firemaking or edible plants going to give them to you? They actually take you further away from what you need to know, because focusing on them reinforces the technological approach, and that 95% of your brain
which you don't use, shrivels up even more. We become what we surround ourselves with; the way to learn Truthspeaking is to share with other truthspeakers, the way to bring life back to our dormant brain is to immerse ourselves in the full spectrum of life in which our brain evolved, the way
to elder wisdom is to be with wise elders. There are patterns to break -- crippling, blinding patterns that take continual, unrelenting attention if we are ever going to see, hear, smell, and feel as fully as we are intended. That takes guidance, a supportive environment, and example. Otherwise, it's just another exercise, another class, another walk in the woods, and then
it's back to life as usual, with no end in sight.

Roughly 80% of what a Native person eats is not affected by hunting and fishing regulations. There are vast tracts of public and unregulated private land that are available to a hunter-gatherer, with virtually no human competition. If you think there are a lot of people at your favorite
state park or national forest just step a few paces off the trail, and they all disappear. Very few people really go "out" in the woods anymore. I know a dozen ways to live legally on or adjacent to foraging lands without having to pay big bucks. I can grow fat by living primitively in a farmer's
woodlot or city park. It doesn't take Alaska or the Grand Tetons. It takes shaking off the old preconceptions of what primitive living is and rebecoming the Native person you already are.

It simply can't be done alone. We evolved as social beings, and we literally start going crazy when we spend too much time without company of our fellow creatures. Learning skills alone, buying land alone, is feeding a pipe dream, a romantic fantasy, that will likely only lead to frustration
and disillusionment. Virtually everyone I know who has tried it for any period of time, has given up and bought back into the system. Try to look up some of the older people who once had dreams as you do now. You'll see -- they now have mortgages and jobs with benefits they can't let go of, and
kids' educations they have to worry about. Yeah, they might still be talking about their dreams, and they might practice their skills and head out in the woods now and then, but realistically, when is that dream ever going to become reality?

And then there's the cost of your rewilding. Yes, I said cost, because nothing is free. Money is the least of what you are going to be asked to give. There is a world of difference between something for free and something that is freely given. On a stay with one of my elders in Canada, I built her a cabin. 15 years ago another elder asked me to literally lay my life on the line for him. I would gladly give my last dollar, and much more, for the privilege of walking in my ancestor's footsteps.

The alternative? Sit in the city, whining about how things used to be and ought to be. Or look at the cost of NOT rewilding, and come to realize that one has to give before they can receive. Then you'll be ready to throw away your books, turn your back on the "experts," and turn your face to the wind. You'll start hearing voices that help you walk rather than give you sweet talk. There waiting to greet you will be your clan, your teachers, and your real self. You'll leave survival behind and walk into the Beauty Way.

I don't know where all this leaves me with my own goals. Sure, I'll learn (and use) as many practical skills as possible, probably in both hunting and gathering and in permaculture. But how to become feral? Other animals can do it - cats, horses, goats, pigs. Why couldn't humans? There are stories of civilized humans getting stranded in the wilderness and becoming savage out of necessity, eventually integrating into the local indigenous culture (movies like Dances with Wolves and The Snow Walker), but alas, I doubt I'll be running into any sort of intact indigenous culture. Certainly those are two parts of what makes it difficult to rewild - we lack the necessity to do so (at the moment) and we have no one to teach us -- not only teach us but live with us and become our family.

That's the balance I'm trying to strike right now, I guess. I want to be within a family, and I want to become as wild as possible. I loved Ted's part in his post about truly wild being spear in hand, naked with body paint, and animist. I've at least gotten somewhere on the latter two. And I can't wait to get some experience with a spear. And then to recognize that that is still only the very beginning of the journey back home.

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• rewilding
• community