Bark Tan Leather – primitive waterproof technology?!?

  The ability to make waterproof clothing, footwear, and containers from indigenous materials is an incredible asset for those trying to reduce their dependance on industrial society, survive ‘the collapse’, or deeply connect to their landbase. Using the tannins in local tree barks to preserve skins as leather - bark tanning - is a simple, magical and utilitarian method of providing ourselves these things. Bark tanned leather resists rot, is water repellant to 100 percent waterproof depending on how it’s tanned, and, of course, is extremely beautiful. Several years ago, when thinking about the eventual fall of civilization, I would sincerely worry about how we would survive on this rainy coast without plastic raingear and gumboots when the system that produces them halts, and whatever we have around from before falls apart. Well, turns out we don’t need ’em (the system, the gumboots). The art of bark tanning has almost been completely lost – it is shrouded in myth and obscurity, but, what we have uncovered so far makes me confident that we can make our own gumboots, rainjackets, and water bottles, independant from industrial society.

Almost Back…

Hey all, it’s been a couple months since anything new has come up here – winter has slowed down my posting, surprisingly. I’ve been keeping warm and dry indoors a lot during these short days and looong nights of wind and rain. Working on lots of projects, spending time with friends, hunting (and eating good food!), reading, writing.
I’m still alive, and will have some new stuff up in the next week or so.

Parasites: Those who Inhabit us

Parasites have been coming up a lot in my life recently. Almost every day I am touching them, looking at them, talking to friends about them. Trying to understand what their role is, in me. Much of it has to do with the salmon we have been preserving; salmon are host to many parasites, but the one I have been paying particularly close attention to is a parasitic nematode this world calls Anasakis. They look like long, stringy white worms, I have seen them in the flesh of almost every salmon I’ve ever butchered, usually still alive, wriggling around. Humans are not hosts for them, they require a marine mammal’s digestive system to continue their life cycle. If a human eats the raw, fresh (drying kills them, there are no eggs present in the flesh, just obvious, living worms) meat of a host fish, they might not ever notice anything, or they might get nauseious and even puke up a clump of these little fellas. In any case, our bodies are not their chosen bodies. Salmon, of course, do carry other parasites that can inhabit our bodies. Like, say, tapeworms.

Honoring the Bodies of Salmon

The last few weeks have been incredible - salmon are returning to spawn in the rivers and creeks where we live, and almost every day we have been going to catch some.  Being in the presence of uncountable fish, watching more and more of their dead bodies wash up on the shore every day, watching their bodies shake with release as they ejaculate onto eggs or lay them and tease and fight with each other. Witnessing the fall salmon runs is essential for anyone living in the northwest to understand how truly filled with wild aliveness and magic this land can be – needs to be. In this post I want to talk about some of the amazing ways we have discovered to utilize (preserve, eat) these salmon’s bodies.

Tan a Stomach

I’ve read many times in wilderness survival books how the stomach of a creature can be simply emptied, cleaned out, dried and used as a waterproof container.  It has always been left at that – no how to, no description or details. Doing some experimentation with friends, I realized there is more of a process if you want to turn a creature’s stomach into a container that doesn’t smell really bad or rot. Following is a description of what has worked for me so far…

Celebrating Salmon

a close friend wrote and shared this with me recently:

‘There is something so vital to these autumn moments that must be shared and celebrated – the salmon are here. and though we are not all together celebrating this miracle, maybe these words can in some way unite us. because this runs so deep through the blood of the west coast that it can’t help but run through our blood as well. we are here and the land is alive and part of us.

Attempting Feral Community

Just over two years ago, myself and five friends decided to begin living on some land together – to support ourselves by scavenging, foraging, hunting and gleaning as a tiny clan of rewilding people. We were given the opportunity to live on a large hunk of abandoned land on the fringe of the town we were then residing near; there were already grassy clearings and open spaces in the forest where old structures were decomposing. The landowners hadn’t lived there or been involved with the land for over 10 years. There was a house that had half-burned down, and another that had been used regularly by local rednecks for target practice and was ready to fall apart. The land itself was amazing – it felt so inviting and open for humans to live there – so we moved on and began disassembling some of the old dwellings, using a dilapidated camper that was there as our storage/common space (until it, too, fell apart).

By that fall we had built ourselves a large, warm, dry and beautiful common house using materials we had salvaged from the land, dumpsters, demolition sites etc. The only thing we paid for was roofing screws for the metal roofing, which were actually quite expensive – $65.00 – though split six ways it wasn’t that bad.

There are no major water sources on the land, so we set up makeshift gutters on our roof and caught rainwater in used wine barrels. At night we lit the house with candles or oil (like seal or olive oil) lamps. We gathered copious amounts of hazelnuts, dried copious amounts of Deer meat – harvested, scavenged and shared food with one another. Together we brought some of our wildest dreams to life. And, together, we were smacked hard with the reality of how difficult it is to live in such an intimate, communal way; coming from where we all do, in a broken world.

Wild Fermented Crabapples

The pacific crabapple (malus fusca) is a beautiful, widespread tree – growing abundantly along the pacific northwest coast from northern California to Alaska and into the Yukon. The indigenous people here traditionally gather the fruits in clusters from the trees in late summer, before they have fully ripened and become soft. They are then stored for winter by being submerged under water in bentwood boxes. Because of the inherent acidity of the fruit nothing further is required. No salt brine. No cooking. Ridiculously incredible…

Pulling Out: a viable form of natural contraception?

‘Pulling out’ is one of the most ancient, effective, and nowadays totally invalidated forms of natural contraception. Mention it in any serious discussion about natural methods of birth control, and expect to be severely ridiculed. ‘It doesn’t work!’ they say – many people call it the ‘pull and pray’ method, since one is apparently relying more on faith than any actual form of contraception. This post is dedicated to clearing the bad rap pulling out has gotten – revealing the misunderstood facts so that males can finally take charge of their fertility! (for women wanting to learn about taking charge of their fertility, this site is absolutely incredible)

Iqaluich Niginaqtuat, The Fish That We Eat

I highly recommend that anyone interested in eating fish, amazing wild fermented food, indigenous food preparation or becoming a wild human in general check out this INCREDIBLE book: Iqaluich Niginaqtuat, The Fish that we Eat. The author, Anore Jones, like a modern day Weston Price spent decades among the Inupiat of Northwest Alaska learning their INCREDIBLE food traditions. This book is almost too good to be true – recipes include fermented salmon heads, cod livers with black berries, how to dry salmon eggs, pretty much everything! Much more than a recipe book, this offers a complete picture of how the Inupiat live with the fish in a beautiful way, giving us ideas and methods that may apply to many other bioregions. Absolutely amazing!

Download it for free here:
http://alaska.fws.gov/asm/fisreportdetail.cfm?fisrep=21

Scroll down the page to the Northwest Arctic section, you’ll find the link there.