Rewilding - Rediscovering and Cultivating Our Better Selves

It wasn’t that long ago that I first stumbled upon the term rewilding as something being applied to human beings.

Maybe a year or so ago.

I had, prior to that, known the term as something being applied to natural spaces … to natural landscapes … particularly large parcels left to slowly return to themselves as they were before axes, saws, and other forms of manmade machinery cut and raked them clean of their pristine natural conditions. These reclaimed parcels will definitely show their age over time but their new age will never be able to win a contest against what they were in their virgin age.

Only of late, as best I can tell, has the term rewilding been adopted to apply to humans walking through the process of rediscovering and cultivating their better natural selves. It is, in my opinion, quite a movement. A small one but, nonetheless, an important one in this modern domesticated age.

The objective of rewilding, as applied to humans, is to reverse the process of domestication and return to a more wild or self-willed state of being.

It is no coincidence, in my mind anyway, that this rewilding people-movement views nature, natural spaces, and the complex interdependent relationships inherent in the assorted layers of environment as elements crucial to the heart-health of the rewilding matter.

I have absolutely no problem embracing this philosophy. The philosophy does, in fact, echo tenets that I have believed and communicated for a long time and have always insisted that the tenets are more caught than taught.

I will, in the same breath, also say that some of the characters on the stage of the rewilding play are a bit too much of the winter frozen precipitation variety for my own day-in and day-out personal comfort zone. I’m quite sure some of the rewilders would entertain something of an adverse opinion toward me if they knew me. Each to their own though. I’m not turning up the thermostat or aiming a heat-gun at any of them. I’m just saying. I’m simply keeping the keystroking perspective here in this patch of woods real and honest.

Dirt clod, snowflake, or any state of being residing between the extremes that mark the people-landscape.

It doesn’t matter.

I think what does matter is that there is a lot to discover … and rediscover … every time our bipedal locomotion takes us into wild places where wilderness is allowed to be wild. Not only regarding the natural resources and natural entertainments that surround us. The discovery and rediscovery reach far deeper … deep into the soil and bedrock of who we really are as human beings.

There will always be a vast gulf of difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation … between doing for whatever external reason or cause and being because we simply are.

Not to sound all mystical or metaphysical but we really are connected to the natural environment whether we realize it or not. Without it there is no us. It can healthily exist without us … and would be better off without humans constantly messing it up. The opposite is not true. We cannot live without it.

Rewilding is primarily a personal attitudinal and lifestyle adventure.

Reversing the process and progress of domestication is a lot easier said than done, whether it’s called rewilding or labeled with any other name we can think of. I am of the opinion that those of us living outside of Third World conditions have, this far along in the major time-scheme of things, become overly domesticated. We have become overly dependent upon the supply train and conditioned to listen to the hawkers of wares.

John Muir was spot-on when he wrote,

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”

I seriously doubt that any of us modernites will ever be able to totally escape the process and progress of domestication.

I don’t want to totally escape it.

There are aspects of it that serve me quite well … like this laptop that I’m keystroking on. Shirli and I have, however, taken a great many steps to limit the effects of the process and progress. Aggressively downsizing and living in this small cabin in the woods (336 square feet and that includes the 48 square feet screened porch) is one of them.

Getting here to this point … a point that allows us to invest ourselves in being (and return to a more wild or self-willed state of being) as opposed to spending the bulk of our time running around doing … was one of the best things we’ve ever done.

You can read more about our small cabin adventure at

https://cabinonhuckleberryhill.blogspot.com

Finding Fatwood

Note: This may seem like “old hat” to a lot of people that are already familiar with it. This is not being keystroked and published with the old timers, those of us that knew it and grew up with it as young kids, or the modern-day bushcraft crowd already familiar with it in mind. 

Those that I have in mind are the newcomers and neophytes in the world outdoors. David

I was a small child when I was first introduced to this thing called fatwood. (The photo to the left is a nice supply of fatwood that came from one stub of a standing dead pine here by the cabin.)

My childhood home, there on that small hardscrabble farm, was heated in the winter by a wood burning heater. I don’t remember a wood burning cookstove in the house. My older brothers grew up chopping and carrying wood for the cookstove in the house. We did have a wood burning cookstove in one of the outbuildings that saw a lot of use during canning season and when we were rendering lard.

We didn’t call it fatwood. I was taught that it was lighter’d. Some people call it fat lighter’d. It really doesn’t matter what it’s called. It’s all the same thing and I chopped a lot of pieces of it as a child with an old double bit ax that had a welded-on piece of pipe as a handle. The old ax lived by a pile of lighter’d stumps that my dad drug from the woods with the tractor.

These Southeastern woods, particularly these Lower Alabama woods, have lighter’d in them waiting to be picked up and used for an advantage in getting a fire going. 

Here's some pictures to help neophytes and newcomers begin recognizing fatwood.

Stumps

Fatwood stumps take on different appearances depending upon the type of pine. What remains is solid aged resin that has condensed.

Fallen Trees

This tree (or what's left of it) has been on the ground for a long time. Time and termites have taken about everything except the solidified resin.

Decaying Fallen Trees

This tree was broken off. Probably a tornado or one of the tropical cyclones that come through occasionally. This is the end near ground level. I broke off a piece to examine the quality of the fatwood and to show what it looks like.

Knots

This was a standing dead pine that fell a few weeks ago. While this pine is a variety that does not produce much fatwood, it still has knots of fatwood in it that can be chopped out and utilized. Knots are where limbs were attached. There will be concentrations of resin at these attachment points.

Straight Fatwood Poles

Fatwood poles such as this can be used for fire making material. I see them as valuable for other projects. Considering their resistance to decay and insects, poles such as this one are valuable woodland resources for shelter building and other camp projects where contact with the weather and ground will quickly rot other woods.

Lighter'd, fat lighter'd, or fatwood.

This is what that fresh sticky sap turns into as it ages over time.

Keep building those fires!

Autumn and Winter's Chill

Autumn and winter’s chill?

This is, I admit, an odd subject to address considering we are past the middle of February and the mosquitoes are beginning to show their aggravating presence.

February, here on the Lower Coast, is the budding month. Though the calendar insists that Spring is yet a month away, things are beginning to pop.

It’s a beautiful time of year here along the 31^st Parallel.

A few days ago, we noticed a patch of huckleberries already in bloom. Spring may tarry in the Northern climates and leave folks wondering if it will ever arrive. 

Not here. Its signs are everywhere. Even in the air … tree pollen.

We will yet have a few temporary blasts of cold air that will cause us to layer up. Another frost, or two, is not out of the question. We are, however, only a short time away from stowing the winter clothes as we prepare for the heat and humidity of another Gulf-Coast summer.

There is a lot of enjoyable outdoor adventuring to do before the heat and humidity of summer take us in their soggy grasp. There are campfires to enjoy. There’s good company to keep with other outdoor kindred-others. There are more memories to make. And we need to wear the new off of that new canvas-cottage Kodiak tent!

It is definitely time to get our Spring camping on.

64.

That is what I’ll be when Spring makes its official arrival.

One of the interesting things inherent in this thing that I refer to as oldering, at least where it concerns me, is that it causes me to be a lot more introspective. It causes me to examine and weigh priorities … maybe because I have had to wrestle with the reality that, though I still feel young as a pup at heart, the rest of me has begun to balk like a mule that’s been dragging a plow all day. 

I can still pull the plow. I just can’t pull it as long and as far as I used to.

I lost both of my brothers over the past few years.

They were not what could be considered old men.

They were both in their early 70’s when they drew their last breath.

Reality.

Reality bites.

Those teeth marks, along with a few other sets of signs and indicators, are wake-up calls.

I am not ready to give up the plow and remain in the corral or in the shade of the barn! The way I see it is that I am just now entering into the prime of life. Life at 64 … retired life at 64 … is prime for doing what I  enjoy doing. These are prime years to make memories. These are prime years to add to the legend.

Nessmuk was a colorful character.

There’s nothing in his outdoor articles to indicate it but, from what I gather reading up on him, he wasn’t much a family man. He may have indeed been a great outdoorsman but his personal kit was lacking in the tools necessary to entertain and groom his marriage and family. I’m not faulting him. I’m just saying. And my saying is just a simple observation from this far this side of when Nessmuk wandered the Northwoods.

I consider myself one of the most fortunate of men with a passion for being outdoors and wandering the woods. I’m married to someone who shares and entertains this passion with me. I think this is a rare commodity and I often scratch my head wondering how I became so fortunate.

A few of Nessmuk’s concluding lines in Woodcraft and Camping are some of the most striking in the little book.

“In a word, act coolly and rationally. So shall your outing be a delight in conception and the fulfillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoulders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle. ….. That is me. That is why I sit here tonight – with the north wind and sleet rattling the one window of my little den – writing what I hope younger and stronger men will like to take into the woods with them, and read. Not that I am so very old. ….. But, in common with a thousand other old graybeards, I feel that the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail from dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me."

Of all the lines written by the Ole Woodsman, those have haunted me from the first time I read them. 

They haunted me then ... 

they haunt me now … 

whether 

or not 

I read them afresh … 

because I know the day will come when, like him, 

I’ll no longer be able to wander the woods.

Going Where Woods Meets Woods

Things have changed a lot since the days when Nessmuk wandered the woods.

Folks like to say that he pioneered the practice of minimalism where woodcraft is concerned.

I am not so sure that he pioneered it. Many others before him had practiced the craft. I am more inclined to think that what he did was revive it, adapt it to his own preferences and personal needs, and garner something of a reputation through the articles he wrote that were published by Forest and Stream Publishing Company.

Regardless, Mr. Sears (Nessmuk) inspired a lot of people.

He showed a generation that pruning back superfluities and going light into the woods offered every soul an opportunity to reclaim and enjoy adventuring into the woods. Nessmuk, despite the fact that he has been dead and gone for better than a century, still offers a lot of sound advice … advice that can be taken and adapted to these more modern times.

Free roaming, at least in this part of the world, is a thing of the past. It was fading fast at the time Nessmuk roamed the North woods. There are still large tracts of “public” land to be shared with others of the public. But, for the most part, every other square mile is owned by private individuals and large corporate entities.

It is hard, anymore, to get deep enough into the woods that you do not hear the sounds of progress.

Somewhere in the distance will be the sound of human activity … cattle bellowing in a field, logging equipment, planes in the air, vehicles of one sort or another rattling down a pot-holed road, rifle reports. Signs that someone has already been there will always be there. Well, we do the best we can do with what we have to do with, deal with the love-hate relationships inherent in the nuances of modernity, get as deep into the woods as we can, and concern ourselves with what signs and footprints we leave behind when we walk out.

I can still, at least in my own mind, imagine what it was like before the age of fenced private property and hunting club leases.

The truck is a mile from the gravel-paved road.

I am another three-quarters of a mile from where the truck is parked on the bad, muddy, red dirt road that I came in on … sitting on the ground leaning back against the trunk of a nice beech. A slight northerly breeze touches my face. It is a really nice place in the woods to spend an afternoon being fruitfully entertained by the woods.

It is a place where an unnamed woodland creek has its origin with water emerging from several small springs hidden in a hollow.

We people-creatures like to personalize places … give them names that have some sort of meaning to us.

Possum Creek.

In my mind that will do just fine considering the hairy little critter that came along and hung around for a while. It never once noticed that I was there and wandered all around that spot in the woods, at times only a few yards from me, before leaving downstream in the same direction it came from.

I couldn’t help but to think of something Nessmuk wrote …

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,

With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;

And men are withered before their prime

By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.

And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,

In the smothering reek of mill and mine;

And death stalks in on the struggling crowd –

But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.

(Keystroked – 1/7/2012)

Priorities

Priorities.

It’s all about priorities.

Being able to spend time outdoors is a priority for us. Not just a priority but a major priority. It is a priority based on need. It is also a priority based on want. A combined want and need priority simply has to be satisfied.

Keystroking words is not new to me.

Writing has been an element of my life for practically all of my adult life. It was something that I had to do as part of what started out to be a suit and tie career. That career changed. The change was one of those life happens things that takes you by surprise, catches you unaware, and leaves you scrambling, questioning, and searching.

There is a large gulf of difference between having to write and wanting to write. Having to is a mundane chore. Wanting to is a much more pleasurable form of expression and creativity. Writing, for me, seems to be a natural part of who I am.

I’ve had an internet page of one sort or another since 1998 and started blogging on subjects of personal importance twelve or fifteen years ago. Those pages are still floating around in obscure areas of deep cyberspace. I look back on those pages as stepping stones that assisted me in crossing the swamps and bogs that would have otherwise kept me from getting to where I am now.

I did an update on my YouTube channel that gives it a bit of needed definition. Too, it seems there are several other people around the world that were given the same name at birth and have channels so I renamed my YouTube channel David Kralik Outdoors.

I also updated my channel description to describe what David Kralik Outdoors is about in the big ole YouTube world.

The channel description reads,

“David Kralik Outdoors videos are about adventuring in, exploring and enjoying the outdoors in its assorted flavors that are of interest to us (Shirli and me), as well as the skills and stuff necessary to do what we are doing.

On October 21, 2016, Shirli and I finished the long and arduous task of downsizing from life in suburbia and made our home in a small cabin (we call it our camping cabin on steroids) in the Lower Alabama woods. Outdoors as a part-time hobby became outdoors as a full-time lifestyle. It is, for us, a dream come true. We love it. Life is good up in these woods.

Thanks for watching and thanks for subscribing to David Kralik Outdoors.”

I am really happy with the number of views that the channel has gotten in the short few months that it has been up and going. I look forward to the enjoyment involved in producing more videos and continuing to develop the channel.

After mulling on the idea for a while, I decided to create this complementary David Kralik Outdoors blog.

Videos are great. I enjoy making and publishing them.

YouTube is a great tool in today’s Google It world and there are some really good channels on the Tube. I don’t follow many of the Big Gun Guru’s these days. Monetization, commercialization, and fame … at least in the opinion of this one outdoorsy person … has a way of ripping a gaping hole in the burlap of what getting outdoors is all about. My favorite YouTube channels these days are the ones created and published by the lesser and practically unknown folks that are simply getting out, recording, and publishing their outdoor adventures.

Maybe I am a dinosaur but I believe there’s something about the printed page that can never be replaced. Especially when the desktop publishing tools we have at our disposal allow us to insert photographs into the content of the keystroked verbiage.

So here you go folks.

David Kralik Outdoors blog has been officially launched with a keystroke.