Two Weeks

For the last two weeks I’ve basically had no time to myself, so I didn’t post for the last two classes. Now I’ve got a moment, though, so I’ll just do a rapid-fire rundown of my latest activities.

NativeEyes Student Life lately:

Previous class on Oct. 14th and 15th:
We rode out to Bolinas starting predawn because one of our crew had to be there at noon. The ride was utterly amazing.



I hit a “wall of grief” that, at least for me, took precedence over the class activities. While the rest of the class went on a wander, I discussed my state of mind with one of the instructors. What follows is my internal process. The details are specific to me, but I think the core of it is a pretty common spiral of thought that many get into when they hit their walls. Either of the first two can feed into either of the second two, which can cycle back to either of the first two. It seems complex and overwhelming when one is caught up in it, but it’s really just a feedback loop of “everyone sucks”. And it’s really hard to get out of.

I’m paying a bunch of money to be in this class, and because I'm in this class and interning at another nature studies class, I don't have time to work enough to support myself, so I'm constantly stressed about money.

I’m just a student with no access to the information or decision-making process that the instructors work with.

I’ve got few skills and abilities when it comes to nature connection, having been raised in a city. I missed out on my birthright by growing up on concrete and now I’ve got about a three-year-old’s understanding of my environment. Therefore I suck.

I’ve spent a number of years working very very hard at learning about my land, mostly on my own but sometimes with teachers. I’ve seen amazing things, discovered wonders in my own backyard, and amassed much more depth of knowledge about my land than many of my peers. I’ve conquered many fears and endured extremes of weather and emotion. I’ve earned my knowledge, I want to bring that knowledge to others as a mentor/facilitator, and I’m not getting the recognition or support for that personal work that I think is warranted. Therefore my teachers suck.

I talked this over with one of our instructors and finally got most of the way out of the cycle. I think one of the voices in my head is still caught in the loop, though, since on a certain level, it’s all true. But most of the time I understand that the truth of the above statements doesn’t mean they have to be the overriding understanding that shapes my mood and perception in the moment. I have other understandings of the world that I can operate from, and that tend to be much more fun and functional, such as beauty and gratitude.

After that I joined the wandering group, looking for signs of water on the landscape. We wandered down to the beach and built a solar still. First we dug a shallow hole, about the same size as a plastic bag cut open along the side. We found some goopy green water and used bull kelp bulbs cut crosswise to hold the water in our hole, and placed a Frisbee in the hole as well. We covered the whole thing with our cut-open plastic bag, weighted down on the sides with rocks, and placed a single small rock in the middle to offer a focal point for the drips that would form and (with luck) fall into the upturned frisbee. We did get drops from the condensation that started as soon as we covered over the hole with the plastic, but never a drip.








For the record, I think the principle of a solar still is sound, but we may have started too late in the day and/or used too small a hole.

We also went and looked at tidepools.





Bioneers:
Networking.
Got a coal from my bowdrill with some kids who were wandering around the event.
Michael Meade is worth listening to.

Personal time:
Stolen bike! Holy crap my neighbors suck. I spent all of Monday working on my bike, putting on three new Blackspire chainrings, a new 9-speed cassette on the back, and a new chain, as well as tightening up the bottom bracket and ordering new rims and a new BB tool. Then I got up Tuesday morning and found a dangling cable lock in my backyard where my bike should have been. God knows what they did with the Kryptonite Evo U-lock. I really do not like living in this neighborhood full of crackheads and thieves right now.

Last class on Oct. 21st and 22nd:

We made a fire with a deep-red-barked maple that one of my classmates brought down from Covelo. The wood was both beautiful and sonorous when knocked together, and burned very brightly.

Our morning bird sit was an intro to raptor world, with a Cooper’s Hawk, Sharp-Shinned Hawks, and Kestrels making appearances.

We moved into midday with basketweaving, and finished our baskets with some time to spare for tracking.



Our mission then was to find 25 tracks of different animals in the space of about two and a half hours. We went down to the salt marsh and actually wound up finding 10 different animal tracks, both mammals and birds.

In some down-time some fellow students and I worked on the beginnings of buckeye and blue elderberry bow-drill kits. I’m very happy with my elderberry-on-elderberry kit. It’s an uncommon wood, it seems, for bow-drill, but I’ve been very successful with it so far. Next I’m trying out a buckeye-on-buckeye kit and will report back.

We finished the day with some grinding activities, first grinding natural pigments to paint with, then grinding acorns. We had to leave before the pit-baked acorn bread would be ready, though, so I'm trying to collect more acorns to do the whole process myself.