WILDROOTS COMMUNITY

Wildroots is a 30-acre homestead in rural Western NC. Our focus is on experiential learning and living, while practicing, developing and sharing primitive skills for rewilding and reconnection.

At Wildroots, we live off the grid, carry our water, and practice "earthskills", or earth-based lifeways. Our interests include permaculture, natural and primitive shelter building, hide tanning, flintknapping, herbal medicine, nature crafts, and wild food foraging. These skills are rapidly falling into disuse in our throwaway culture, but we see them as crucial to our future survival, and we intend to help keep them alive. Some of these skills are as old as the human species itself. The surest way to protect earth based lifeways, or "earthskills", is to practice them, and pass them along as we move through this alienated modern life. Just as we can propagate endangered native plants in the ecosystems from which they have been displaced, or re-introduce wolves into areas from which they have been extirpated, we can reclaim our species' lost knowledge of living with the earth.

On a practical level, rewilding involves both accessing our present situation, and looking back to what has been done before by people. By developing blends of old traditions and new adaptations that are suited to our habitats and all the complexities of modern life, we can reclaim our wildness little by little. Some of us may decide to go as far as we can in eliminating the conveniences and comforts of modern life, and simplifying our existence. Some may strive for self sufficiency and appropriate technology, preferring more complex food, fiber and medicine systems than our forager ancestors. Others of us incorporate some of that simplicity, while still maintaining a foot in modern culture, including resistance movements within it. Others may wish to learn methods to help us survive the oncoming collapses of ecological and economic systems, and to lessen our dependency on profit motivated institutions and all the mental control that comes with them.

Keep an eye on our website, or get on our mailing list to keep updated. We're looking for long-term residents, as well as shorter-term visitors interested in experiential learning.