Reconnecting Links
From Wildroots
Reconnecting can be broadly interpreted to include a whole lot of things, some of which we are interested in more than others. It’s a matter of how far you want to plunge into rewilding: permaculture only goes so far, but is still valuable and can help our decadent culture bring itself back into balance. General sustainable living resources are easy to find (such as www.backwoodshome.com) but some rewilding info is buried deeper.
Here's a list of web resources that reflect some of our passions and visions, followed by a booklist.
Contents |
Primitive Living
- The Native Ways Association is an earthskills education organization in Northern Wisconsin working to proliferate, nurture and protect native knowledge, wisdom, culture, and living skill.
- Dancing Hawk Native Lifeways' "goal is to help people live closer to the edge, to relearn what means to be alive. We connect people with the earth, with themselves and each other, by teaching them to live a native lifestyle, to live simply." They offer workshops, intensive course, and longer term projects.
- Tools and instruction on the natural way to making buckskin. Publishes an incredible How-To book called Deerskins into Buckskins By Matt Richards. A really good schedule of gatherings where brain tanning is taught at www.braintan.com/resources/classes.html
- Home of the annual Rabbitstick (September in Idaho) and Winter Count (February in Arizona) primitive skills gatherings.
- This is the virtual home of our bioregion’s primitive skills network and spring and fall gatherings, the Rivercane Rendezvous and Falling Leaves Rendezvous. It’s meant to become a clearinghouse, resource center and networking forum.
- Teaching Drum Outdoor School in northern Wisconsin (ojibway country) is an excellent opportunity for folks to learn general skills like shelter-building and fire making, as well as to concentrate on specifics like hide tanning. There's also a yea long submersion program that has changed many lives, and they are open to work/trades for some programs. Contact us for a personal account of a month-long experience there.
Wild Foods and Medicine
- Persimmon Pudding is dedicated to growing, education, and use of Diospyros virginiana L., the common, or American persimmon
- United Plant Savers is dedicated to protecting native plants
- Steve Brill is a legendary New York City urban forager who leads walks and classes, and has written several must-have books for foraging fans. He was once arrested for picking a dandelion from Central Park.
- Foraging and Ethnobotany links. INCREDIBLY COMPREHENSIVE!
groups.yahoo.com/group/wild-edibles
- Wild Edibles listserve, fairly active, but really useful. Since it's on yahoo you can set your subscription to read it online.
w4.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/pemmican.html
- Pemmican links
Whole Foods
- A network dedicated to disseminating the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated non industrialized peoples established the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics of human diets. Dr. Price's research demonstrated that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation after generation only when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators found exclusively in animal fats.
- Wow. This web site will make you seriously question a lot of what you believe about vegetarian/vegan nutrition, and the real meaning of the “traditional” diet.
- SUPER useful links to articles, essays, and web sites.
www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/health.html
www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/green_leaf.html
- Plants for Future (UK) web page on Plants for Health
Permaculture and Seeds
- Mountain Gardens is an appalachian/chinese herb garden tucked in a cove in an alternative rural community 1 hour from asheville. An incredible learning opportunity for self-motivated folks. Sells medicines and medicinal plant (mostly natives) seeds, holds workshops and offers apprenticeships.
- A hub of permaculture activism and practice around the world. Listings of classes and gatherings, and archives of articles from The Permaculture Activist magazine.
- An organic permaculture model farm and “kinship botanical garden” with internships and classes. A synthesis of food not lawns and apervechio veterans.
- This organization raises awareness of the importance of balancing biodiversity and agriculture, and maintaining habitat for wildlife within farm ecosystems.
- A nonprofit dedicated to preserving the crop seeds that connect native american cultures to their land.
- Plants for A Future (UK) web site. Extensive resources on seeds, permaculture, edible landscaping.
Natural Building
- Learn about various methods of building with earthen materials, through workshops & seminars, as well as hands-on internships in Thailand and other worldly locales.
Ecovillages
- Dancing Rabbit is an ecovillage set amid the hills and prairies of rural northeastern Missouri. Their goal is to live ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives, and to share the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle.
- A 300+ acre, 80+ member ecovillage with their own sawmill, permaculture gardens, earthen building, herbalism, solar and hydro energy systems, and internships, classes and gatherings. Definitely worth a visit, and arguably one of the most impressive examples developed so far.
Booklist for Reconnecting
Thomas J. Elpel - Botany in A Day (Must-have for plant identification, with some info on edible and medicinal uses)
Ewell Gibbon - Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Tom Brown’s Field Guides (REALLY useful for anyone learning the basics of primitive living)
Peterson’s Field Guides to Edible and Medicinal Plants - A must have for foragers
Doug Elliot - WildRoots (a field guide to medicinal and edible roots in the Appalachians, with incredible pen and ink drawings by one of our bioregion’s infamous teachers and storytellers)
Doug Elliot - Wildwoods Wisdom (collection of funny and profound observations of nature)
Paul Stamets - Mushrooms Demystified (the bible for mushroom identification in North America)
A Pattern Language-
Sandor Katz - Wild Fermentation (one of the few books written on fermentation for health. Brand new)
Sally Fallon - Nourishing Traditions (examines the role of the modern diet in the decline of health, and suggests a high-protein animal, based diet)
Foxfire - entire series (anthology of Appalachian mountain folk wisdom)
Zines
The Feral Forager - A Guide to living off nature’s bounty in urban, rural and wilderness areas - Available for $3 - Wildroots PO Box 1485 Asheville, NC 28801
Shelter Building, Firemaking, and Wilderness Cooking - By Gerry and John McPherson (available from www.grannysstore.com)
