I moved back to Portland some time ago now. I don’t really like living in Portland, but all of my friends live here, and all the cultural rewilding opportunities happen here, blah blah blah you’ve heard it all before. Lately, I really feel the weight of toxicity in the city (perhaps all those wi-fi signals have finally got to my brain!?) and don’t want to stay here much longer. I keep telling myself, “just a little longer”. I plan to eventually move back to Molalla, or at least out to the woods somewhere near Portland. I want to find land out there to live on or perhaps just travel around the cascades in a gypsy wagon. But alas, for now I must work and toil in the confines of urban civilization.

My basketry materials and workspace.

I’ve continued my job in film production in order to pay my bills. I would really like to find a way out of this job, but I have a hard time imagining making a living otherwise. I’ve worked in production for so long I can’t remember what it felt like to work at say, a coffee shop or grocery store. …I remember not liking those jobs either. As much as I hate the idea of selling information, I really think I might start a small Rewilding Program (I don’t want to call it a school!). I’d like to have this program up and running by the time I turn 30, in two years. I’d rather make a living at a trade that involves some aspects of rewilding, and then build an apprenticeship program around the trade, rather than just having a program based on educational information that will go nowhere afterward. It reminds me of what people say about philosophy majors: “What do you do with a philosophy major? Teach philosophy.” What do you do with a rewilding “major”? Teach rewilding. Does anyone actually use the skills they learn at these programs to live more closely to hunter-gatherers? Or focus on a trade at one of them?

My boxing gym:

I did a book reading/talk/signing (as pictured above) and sold a few copies of my book. The reading part felt a little wonky because I hate reading my writing aloud to a group of people… so I made fun of myself all the way through. Later my friends asked me why I did that and said that I need to feel proud of my writing and need to respect other people that like my writing by doing a better job of presenting my work. Whoops!

Having Rewild Camp every Sunday has really increased my enjoyment of the city. Washington Park sits outside of ear shot of the freeway and the Archery Range always just smells and feels nice. I’ve learned quite a bit about archery in the last few weeks. I can feel and witness myself getting better. I will continue to write about the experiences of rewild camp over at rewild.info in this thread.

My blog has not had many pictures lately because my camera stopped working a while ago. I haven’t felt inspired to put any more up here or get a new camera because I still have the internal struggle going on of “does photography steal my soul?” and “should I really add more to the culture of excess media?” After struggling with this for months now, I bought a new camera yesterday after feeling inspired by my new friend (and super internet crush!) Leslie at the Oko Box blog. You’ll see a lot more pictures on here again. Thanks Leslie for inspiring me!

And surprisingly, with the new camera, I feel like bringing back my “Weekly Laundry List“. If you don’t remember, I used to have a list of things I wanted to accomplish every week. I always made the lists insanely too long so that I would always fail, but always set the bar high. In this way, I thought I could at least get some of the stuff done! Now that I’ve got Rewild Camp going, I thought I’d do two lists. One for Rewild Camp Portland, and one for me. The Rewild Camp list will link to the Rewild Camp Portland thread at rewild.info. So… Here we go again.

On the list for this week (I wish I knew the number):

Personal Goals

1. Soak willows and Ivy to make English Ivy bike basket at Rewild Camp.

2. Make a few variations of stone drill’s

3. Make a mullet into a paint brush

4. Write my “Hypocrisy vs. Rewilding”

5. Trap the rat living in the compost

6.

Rewild Camp Goals

1. Build a Bow-making tool kit (technique “setup”)

2. Take pictures of the kits I have built and share them at Rewild.info

3. Have a barbecue at Rewild Camp!

4.

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