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Archives
UPDATE
Wilderness Awareness School has a NEW Blog!
http://blog.wildernessawareness.org
Feel free to browse our old wilderness skills blog. It is a great resource - two years worth of information and photos on wilderness survival skills, wildlife tracking, wild edible and medicinal plants, bird sounds interpretation (bird language), nature education, naturalist studies, and more.
June 14, 2007 15:58 - Home Sweet Home!
Clint adds some debris onto our lean-to during survival week. Home sweet home!
May 3, 2007 11:03 - Tracking, mentoring and cattail shoot stir-fry!
Hello all you blog readers!
I hope you all enjoyed and are applauding Filip for his two contributions to the blog. He very kindly offered to help me catch up with what we’ve been doing the past four weeks! Hurray for Filip!
This week we spent doing some sign tracking at Bob Heirman park and tried to see how many different species we could find signs of. We also worked with some mentoring concepts, specifically the cycle of learning from inspiration to competency to instructing. On Friday, we had another delicious wild-edibles day! John Gallagher joined us to help us learn more about how to use the wild plants around us to supplement our everyday diets, and also in preparation for our survival trip!
Over the course of the day we made a stir-fry of cattail shoots, dandelion roots, fiddle heads (that smelled and tasted like marzipan!!!), cleavers, nettle and dandelion leaves. This was extremely filling, I think because it was a lot of new tastes, but also because wild foods generally have a much higher concentration of vitamins and minerals in them, since the soil hasn’t been depleted like our agricultural areas have. We also made a salad of dandelion leaves, chickweed, and salmonberry, Oregon grape, and elderberry flowers. The tastiest items of our meal by far were the dandelion fritters (dandelion flowers covered in batter and fried!) and a knotweed apple crisp (tastes like rhubarb crisp) brought in by Linda.
It’s amazing to connect with the environment in such a basic way as eating things from the land. Apart from the benefit of having access to free food and learning about the natural world, the health benefits are significant as well. A couple students found that they got a buzz of energy after eating our meal!
Hope everyone is enjoying their spring!
–Dana
NatureSkills.com's Wilderness Survival Skills Blog
May 3, 2007 11:01 - This week it was sign tracking, mentoring and edible plants.
Steven, Linda and Todd work together making Dandelion fritters.
The many beautiful colors of NW wild edibles salad.
–Filip
NatureSkills.com's Wilderness Survival Skills Blog
April 26, 2007 10:52 - Blindfold adventure
Hello All,
This week began with a 2 day adventure in eastern Washington’s sagebrush country and it ended with an extended blindfolded adventure back in Duvall.
After arriving at our location near the Columbia River at a spot known as Crab Creek, we set up camp and prepared for the days activities. Our class separated out into several parties focused on practicing different activities. One group was focused on learning about hunting, another about fishing and the third was about gathering. We joined the groups we felt most called to and headed out to explore for the day. The plant gathering group found a wonderful assortment of plants to eat, including a species of Lomatium (also known as biscuit-root), nodding onion, cattail tubers, sagebrush mariposa bulbs and even wild asparagus! Needless to say, we ate very well around the camp fire that night…
We explored and enjoyed the warmth and sun of the sagebrush country until about 1 pm on Thursday, than headed back to the wetter and more familiar West side of the Cascade mountains to Duvall. The semi-arid land had treated us well, and we left with a great deal of gratitude in our hearts.
Friday was a unique day because we stayed blinded folded for almost the entire day of class back at Linne Doran. That morning we put on our blindfolds and proceed to do everything without the use of our eyes, which included: drinking, eating lunch, playing games and evening starting and maintaining a friction fire! We also did a great scent tracking exercise in which we followed a trail of scent strictly with our noses.
Most of us had never gone blindfolded for that long, and we were all totally overwhelmed by the brightness and color of the world when we removed them in the afternoon. So many new shades of green popped out of the forested landscape at us and colors seemed to make up everything. Even the soot-stained skylight windows of Malalo appeared to be made of stained glass.
No doubt, this has been an eye-opening week to all of us in many ways.
–Filip
NatureSkills.com's Wilderness Survival Skills Blog
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