Hello from Berkeley! I’m back behind the computer after three weeks away from the screen.
Most of that time, I was on a Hunter-Gatherer course, with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, which I’ll be diving into below.
Two more things before we get started:
I’ll be based in the Bay Area for the foreseeable future, so if you’re around here, reach out! I’d love to connect, and will likely be hosting some meetups in the coming weeks & months.
Applications are open for VIVIFY: Patagonia New Year’s 2025! We’ll be journeying through a stunning and remote part of Patagonia from Dec 28-Jan 4, supported by 10 weeks of tailored preparation and integration.
If you’re ready for a powerful, wild, and adventurous transition into 2025, this is for you. Check out vivify.life or reach out to learn more.
Onward…
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I slowly lower my hand into the water, subtly wiggling my fingers.
Gently I move myself underneath the undercut bank of the stream, keeping my fingers moving, attuned to the subtle textures of the grass, the reeds, and the soil.
Slowly I start to feel something firm, slimy, very different from the rest of the textures of the streambank.
Hello, fish.
I take a deep breath and keep moving my fingers - these fish are used to being brushed against by grass, so I imitate the gentle movement of grass in the current with my hands.
I slowly begin to work both my hands gently around the body of this little creature. If I go too fast, he’ll react - often wiggling a little deeper into the bank but staying put. I learn to suppress the immediate response to recoil, take a deep breath, and keep going.
Finally, I’m ready. I take a deep breath, calm myself, and squeeze.
For a moment, I’ve got him. Then, he tenses and with a final desperate wriggle, lurches free and shoots downstream.
Well played, friend.
Stepping Back In Time
Over the past two weeks, I stepped into the Utah desert and back in time.
No phones1, no watches, no artificial lights of any kind. No sleeping bags, sleeping pads, stoves, or water bottles. Very few warm layers. Very little food, other than what we could gather, hunt, trap, or fish. Not even a knife.
As far as we could, we tried to live as most of our ancestors did, as hunter-gatherers in deep dependence and conversation with the land.
I think it was the least comfortable two weeks of my life - between constant hunger2, poor sleep, and (if I’m honest with myself) some caffeine withdrawals, I can’t remember an experience that challenged me more.
I am a complete novice in this - the world of hunting, primitive skills, living ancestrally on the land. I owe great gratitude to my instructors and fellow journeyers from whom I learned so much.
As I sit here in the week after the experience, three threads stand out - a visceral experience of our role in the food cycle, an appreciation for making, and a return (yet again) to our relationship with time and stillness.
Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks
For two weeks, I could point to where almost all of my food came from - the plant we’d gathered from, or the animal we’d killed. If we ate fish, someone in our group had caught it with their bare hands, pulled it out of the water, and broken its neck.
On the first day of our course, we killed and processed a sheep. I had my hands on his body as the knife entered his neck and life left him.
We sang.
Days later, I was eating his body as jerky and using his jawbone as a saw to make an arrow. I remembered the life behind his eyes.
You might have heard the word interbeing - introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh to describe our inherent and complete interdependence on and inter-existence with the rest of the web of life. It’s beautiful, but often I’ve found the concept difficult to grasp and hold onto. It can be a little too easy for it to dissolve into a vague “we’re all connected” platitude.
But (with the addition of a healthy dose of hunger) in these past two weeks interbeing became intensely visceral and practical.
Before we caught fish, I felt lethargic. After eating, I could feel energy return to my body. I’d consumed life to continue life.
Our connection to the web of life is ever-present and all-encompassing.3
It’s in every beat of our heart, every movement of our hands, every moment of our lives. We exist on the energy created by other beings. The calories have to come from somewhere.4
Intellectually, I knew this. Now, I feel it.
In the words of Mary Oliver:
Death itself is a music. Nobody has ever come close to writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot be told. It is flesh and bones changing shape and with good cause, mercy is a little child beside such an invention. - "Straight Talk from Fox"
Extreme Crafting
In these past two weeks, I made (or helped to make):
A bow, bowstring, and two arrows
An atlatl spear thrower
A rabbit stick
A primitive clay pot fired in an open campfire
A number of deadfall trap sets
Flint-knapped stone blades
Many feet of cordage (kind of a thick string) of dogbane
A hollowed-out gourd for carrying water
Jerky, pemmican, and pinole
A hand drill fire set
Our first four days were spent almost entirely in making mode - working with our hands to create many of the tools we’d rely upon for our 8 days in the desert.
This will not be new to anyone who’s spent time immersed in the world of primitive skills5, or even to the many of you who spend time in pottery, woodworking, or other studios. But for me, it was.
I’m comfortable as an athlete, as a guide, as a contemplative pilgrim moving through wild places - but not as a maker.
This experience brought home just how much of our ancestors’ time was spent sitting together or alone, working with our hands. Immersed in physical conversation with gifts from the natural world - wood, stone, and clay.
As I sit here, behind the screen again, I miss it.
Too Much Time
When did you last feel that you had too much time?
Out there, I did.
Especially towards the end of the trip, the hours stretched endlessly.
The calorie deficit, the poor sleep, the incredible stillness of the desert, and the spacious, open days all conspired to slow my body and my thoughts down.
I’d rest for 30 minutes, gather my energy to walk up a small hill next to our camp, then promptly lie down again.
From my journal:
“Well, all there really is to do this morning is wait for it to get hot enough to fish.”
There was discomfort in this spaciousness - sometimes I could feel my mind squirming. Other times, I felt easefully surrendered to the passage of time, at whatever speed it was flowing. Nothing to do but lie there and watch the leaves flutter.
Again, this is an obvious insight, brought viscerally alive by taking it to the extreme.
Our capacity to be still, to direct our attention with intention, to do one thing at a time, is the fabric from which our lives are built.
Everything else I’ve explored through my work and this channel - the primordial force of stoke, the prayer of movement, wandering - none of this is possible without the ability to direct attention and receive time.
In the week or so since I’ve been back, I can feel myself accelerating - transitioning from a feeling of too much time to not nearly enough.
However, I’m grateful for the upgrades in my immune system against rushing, and hoping they stick around.
And more practically, no more watches allowed on VIVIFY wilderness trips.
The Profound Obvious
All of this is obvious.
Gratitude for our food and the creatures that offer it.
Honoring and reclamation of the ancestral role of making things.
A spacious and reverent relationship with time and attention.
I suppose this is to be expected from an experience focused on ancestral ways - it’s not about complex concepts or intricate practices.
It’s a return to the profound fundamentals that underlie our lives.
And as I arrive in the most urban environment I’ve lived in for years, I’m grateful for these simple, timeless lessons.
P.S. In closing, I can’t recommend BOSS enough.
The instructors were phenomenal and incredibly dialed, the landscape is otherworldly, and you can feel the institutional knowledge of 55 years running courses in the same place.
If you want a very intense pattern interrupt from modern life, check them out.
Their flagship course is the 14-Day Field Course.
This means no photos, other than on a disposable camera that I’ve yet to get developed.
I’d say we averaged 400-500 calories/day for the final 8 days of the course.
Over this summer, I’ve been working my way through the Practical Animism course offered by Daniel Foor. The first focused lesson is on “Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks”, which I borrow for this heading.
Phrase borrowed from the excellent piece “Predator or Prey” by Diana Saverin
Which is, like so many things, a massive and beautiful rabbit hole. Each of our guides had gorgeous handmade basket or buckskin backpacks. So much beauty in the world.
Wow Dom. So moved by this and love the visual of turning your fingers into grass to slowly woo a fish. The whole things sounds so intense and so necessary.