How is a zombie like a grasshopper? Most people know the story, from Aesop’s Fables, that tells about how the grasshopper sat around all summer and played his fiddle while the ants furiously worked to save up food. The grasshopper said, “there’s so much abundance and it’s so warm… why do you work so hard… Continue reading Ants, Grasshoppers… and Zombies
When a food dehydrator comes into your life, what do you do? You make jerky! An Excalibur food dehydrator became part of my kitchen gear, thanks to my friend Russ. While I like jerky, I don’t eat it often because most of the time, the stuff you buy at a store is either cheap, unpalatable… Continue reading Making Homemade Beef Jerky
Out of the primordial ooze it crawled… …or maybe just out of the pond at The Human Path quarry. Take your pick! In the first of a series of animal tracking classes, Sam Coffman took us through three different aspects of tracking. At the beginning of the day he focused on awareness exercises. We first… Continue reading Hark: what goes there? Or, my first tracking class
Chris Hyde of Austin demonstrating how to construct a paiute deadfall trap to catch small game. The video is from The Human Path’s third Level 1 Hunter-Gatherer class.
Sucking chest wounds. Blisters. Altitude Mountain Sickness. Spider bites. Evacuation techniques. Sprained ankles. These are just of a long list of ailments and injuries I learned how to treat in my Wilderness First Aid Certification class this past weekend. As any first aid knowledge, the skills I learned will come in handy at any time,… Continue reading Wilderness First Aid Certification class
Heartbreaking… and heartwarming. Bastrop, Texas is struggling with a fire that has been burning for a week, and is still less than half contained. A city with 7,218 residents, it has been devastated by the fire that has burned tens of thousands of acres and over 1400 homes. On my visit today to Bastrop, I wondered… Continue reading A tale of fire and ashes
From a distance, six separate plumes of smoke. State Troopers blocking Highways 71 and 21 heading east, both at 95. Trailers of horses heading west. A tent city of insurance companies set up to assist those who have lost homes or other property. In Bastrop proper, there are no plumes of smoke. Instead, it hovers… Continue reading Bastrop is burning
As anyone in Central Texas can tell you right now, there’s smoke in the air. In fact, Austin is all but surrounded by fires to the north, east, west and south, with a few that have been popping up in the city itself. The biggest fire right now is in Bastrop, not far from where… Continue reading Fire, fire everywhere
Survival doesn’t just mean being able to make a bow drill fire or having a year’s supply of food in your pantry. To me, survival also means resilience: not giving up in the face of difficult situations or unexpected outcomes, and finding ways to cope with disaster and move forward. Yesterday I talked to someone… Continue reading Survival lessons in songs
When the lights went out, it was unexpected. Probably the product of our blistering drought and huge taxing demands placed on the power grid here; one Sunday night recently, the system sputtered and plunged our area into darkness. At the time, I’d been sitting in a warm tub of water, trying to soothe the effects… Continue reading Never Quite Ready
Surviving the Modern World 