King's Blog of tracking and Wilderness Camp


King WOG's Blog Ramblings of Wise Old Guy
San Ramon Camp Fair, We gathered up some of the things representative of what we do with the camp kids: atlatl, rappelling gear, friction fire kits, flint knapped arrow head, handmade bows, and smoked brain tanned hides. We headed out to the community center of San Ramon. We set up a slide show of the kids doing cool stuff and set out our wares on the smoky deer skins. We met some cool kids and parents, and had parents sign up that will most likely be apart of our camp family for years to come. Funny the comments that people were making “Your camp actually looks like camp” “The smell of smoke here smells like what camp smelled like for me as a kid.” “Can you really make fire with that” “Your camp is awesome, there were more kids here than any other.” Kids were making cordage from dogbane, wanting to make fire, and just checking out the cool handmade tools. There is something in a child’s DNA that connects them to the tools of their ancestors. It felt good when one boy told his mother, “I do not want to check out any other camps this is where I want to go”. We always hear from adults “I want to go to this camp.”
Nature Call Series Along with developing the program at Wilderness Skills Institute we have been participating in Jon Young’s Nature Mentoring, Community Mentoring, and Cultural mentoring call series. The Community and Cultural Mentoring series focuses on what attributes, ceremony, or practices are found in happy healthy nature connected communities and observing these things in the communities around us. The nature mentoring series focuses on applying core routines of nature connection and observations we observe as we get connected to nature. I do not have the space here to give it justice. We always look forward to Jon’s talks, not to take anything away from Jon but I get the most from the small breakout groups hearing the stories in the fields from members from New Zealand to Alaska, to Pennsylvania, to England, and back down to Australia and points in-between. Very cool to hear stories of the fall harvest move around the globe and animals following it or storing it, stories of spring and the changes to the animals as it moves around the globe, stories of summer as it moves around the globe and how the stories change as they become more connected to the plants and animals. Over the months of working with these people we have developed a very strong network of friends all on the same page all around the globe.
Change for Spring Break Camp With our new farm and forest location we have decided to upgrade Spring Break Day Camp to an overnight camp. It will run Monday through Thursday and will still have the same cost. The focus will still be making hunting tools and practicing wilderness skills, with all the added benefits of being an overnight camp. We are still going to cap this at 10 students and we have a few openings left.









Mark Twain To celebrate my birthday I was taken to a sold out performance of Hal Holbrook performing Mark Twain. What a treat. Over the years I have read and re-read much of his work. His description of himself as a boy looking at the leaves on the trees reflected off of the glassy surface of the Mississippi shows how connected to nature he truly was. If you get an opportunity to see this show you will be delighted with how timely his humor and commentary is today.
It has been raining nonstop for the past few days and a good time for me to work on the website, Newsletters, and check up with friends on face book. The videos I added are of elk playing in water.

Brian Buffini Seminar Toni suggested that we go to a Brian Buffini Seminar yesterday. She has been in his training for many years. The morning was time well spent, I walked away with some good business tools and it was a very entertaining presentation. He used excerpts of the Nolan Cheese (I checked there is no Nolan Cheese) advertisement as an inspirational segment. Watch it all the way through. You've got to root for the little guy.
Wind Wolf Preserve Had a great visit with Sherryl the director of outdoor education and Dan the associate director of the Wildland Conservancy in California. Sherryl and I had a great talk on how she runs her programs and how programs can become too curriculum based. I shared with her how cultural mentoring/coyote mentoring differs from that. Dan took us on a tour of the preserve. In the short time we were out on the land we saw 2 coyotes and 2 bobcats all hunting. Wish I had been faster with the camera we were very close to a bobcat with a rabbit in it's mouth. It is our goal that Wilderness Skills Institute and Wind Wolf can do a productive collaboration for a spring or winter overnight. What we are looking for is a place that not only has all the resources necessary to practice survivals/wilderness living but also encourages us to tend and harvest these materials in a wilderness setting in a manner equal to how First Nation People did. There is interest in what we do and a possibility that a proposal for this could be accepted.
Visit with Clem and Hanna Toni’s Uncle Clem also lives in AZ and we stayed with him for a few days. He was with latent prints with Beverly Hills PD in the 50s and then with Scientific Investigation with LAPD which he was the head of until his retirement. Every time we see him it is so enjoyable to draw stories from him from all the years that he did what he loved doing. Like what we do at Wilderness Skills Camps every day is different. Hanna is one of our crafts/and wilderness mentors and is a student at Prescott College. Clem, Toni, and I headed up to Prescott to have dinner with her. It was the day after Prescott had more snow than they have had in recent history, roads were blocked off, and everything was white. Hanna in typical RDNA fashion walked from her house to old town, not a short hike. Hanna is excited about camp this summer and should be able to get college credit for her work with us. Sorry I did not get any pictures but copied the one shown for http://www.propertypurveyor.com/ .
Visit with Gary Gary was one of my students I stayed connected with from back in my teaching HVAC engineering and controls. He lives near Carefree, AZ and close enough for a visit. In fact he should have been at Winter Count, just nobody ever told him. Next year he will be there. He built his home and the last time I was there it was the only house for miles in any direction. Not any more. Just as we got there we hit the shower and felt much more sociable after dry camping for 6 days. They waited dinner for us and his father in-law came to say "Hi". We have similar passions and had many good conversations in years passed and it was great to see him again. Gary's oldest was an infant when I saw her last and now is 12. I said his house was the only house in the middle of nothing and now everyone and his dog has built around him and some are telling him what he can and can’t do, seems to be a common problem that my friends and I seem to find ourselves in. Anyway it was great to hear about his elk and buffalo hunting trips; his miss adventures with his dirt bike 6 miles from pavement with a badly broken foot and how he made it back to the truck; his story of an abandoned and sunk canoe. It was cool having him teaching me the latest version of the program I taught him so many years before. It was great reconnecting with him and his family.
Winter Count Winter Count is a gathering in Arizona of about 100 skilled mentors of indigenous skills and 300 of those that what to learn these skills. 400 like minded people! The same people run this run the Rabbit Stick gathering in Idaho in September. I have been wanting to go to Rabbit Stick since its early days more 25 years ago, always had some kind of reason that I could not go. Many of the current and past staff have been actual mentors of mine or authors of books and articles that have seeded my head to study these skills I model. Do I need to say I had high expectations of Winter Count? I was not disappointed.
Day 1 Toni and I walked around and got our bearings. With 400 people it shows how connected we are with our friends that within 15 minutes of parking the car Jennifer from native eyes found us. Jennifer filled us in that the first timers, like us could get a knife if we were to get a card at registration and check off making: friction fire, cordage, an edge, and a project. We went over to the sign up tent and got our names on the class list for making an atlatl on Monday, Tuesday the atlatl dart, and Friday Cherokee fiddles. The potter classes conflicted with those classes but figured I could pick the instructors brain when I had a chance. Joe Dabill had a traditional arrow making class he only taught on Tuesday, frump, which I wanted to attend, but a stone pump drill class on Wednesday, cool some of the same skills so got my name on Joe’s pump drill class. Flint knapping was continuous throughout the week and did not require signing up. So I knew how I was going to spend the week. It was very hard to decide with all the classes that go on at any given time what to not attend. I could have spent 3 weeks there and still could have had more classes that I wanted to take. From the sign up tent we moved the car closer to where the Riekes people were camping and set out to get some skills signed off. Toni made a hand drill fire without any help for the first time. Super cool. I made hand drill fire, our new friends Digger and Myron were mentoring the friction fire area and when they asked if I had ever made hand drill fire before, I said “First time” and Jennifer said “You lying bag of wit” it sounded like wit. I got the little box next to friction fire checked off. The Arizona sun was hot to a point of one person went to the hospital for heat stroke that afternoon. Sun was getting low in the sky so we set up the tent, threw some of the gear in it and made a bed under the stars. We headed back in to the main demo area and ran into some of the RDNA family making cordage. The mentor was using linden bark, cool a new material for me. The mentor “Have you ever made cordage before?” “First time” Missy “You lying sack of wit.” Cool got cordage signed off just as the conch horn blew, funny feels like camp. Dinner was great. We met some very cool first timers to Winter Count at the first timers fire, one family from our back yard. It is like old home week here seeing past participants from RDNA, skills workshops of the past, rendezvous of the past. Babies have been born, the bearded ones are getting grayer, and the gray hairs are getting thinner. It is great to see that as we get older there are many young ones getting involved. All have cool stories to tell and are doing very cool things in the world. I have been going strong for weeks and it is taking a toll on me so early to sleep under the stars under a dry AZ Night.
Day 2 Woke to a wonderful sunrise and a sore throat, bathed with a quart of cold water, off to a great breakfast, and our first real classes at Winter Count. After our best breakfast for the week we watched some masters cast atlatl darts. Darn they make it look easy. I spent the day making a Great Basin atlatl with Bob Kitch. Toni made a basket weavers atlatl and did a great job carving and finishing it. At lunch Rachel our new friend from Seattle stopped by to get some help with friction fire with a bow drill, first time trying and she got a coal and blew it into flames with tinder from our camp site. She asked me to sign off her card I laughed did it and told her that my name has no weight here. After lunch went back to Bob's tin teepee to finish the stone weight and sinew on the weight, the buck skin handle, and the stag point. It looks great and am eager to try it and more eager to make them with the Wilderness Skills Camps kids. The sun took its toll on me so after dinner I hit the sack.
Day 3 We watched the morning atlatl competition. Like archery there are those that are very traditional and those that are very modern. The kids were showing me atlatls made from PVC pipe and darn those 10 year old boys were unreal with them. One of the boys looked like he had been casting the atlatl for years, when I asked him how long he had been doing it he said “Yesterday.” Very cool, 20 inches of ½ PVC 1 elbow some arrow shaft and we could get each kid in Wilderness Skills Institute making atlatl that work very well.


Toni and I made the atlatl darts with Bob rorm Arundo donax, also known as giant reed or giant cane and is a prolific invasive weed in riparian areas that I know well, just did not know that I could make atlatl darts from it. Very cool I know where I can get an endless supply of it. We started by straightening the canes with heat just like doing an arrow just now it is 7ft long with joints and as big around as my thumb. We glued a block of hard wood onto the wide end to make a point and shaped it so that the weight is now about 10% forward of center. I used goose feathers for the first time making the atlatl dart fletching and tying them on with sinew. Learned to fill the end of the cane with clay, to make the matting surface with the atlatl.

The work went fast for me so I was able to get it down before lunch and sneak into Joe Dabill’s tradition arrow making class The main thing I missed was shaft straightening over heat something I have done many times before with hand drills, bow drills, and arrows with other mentors over the years. If I had to miss any thing I am glad it was that. I have made modern arrows for myself and others and my arrows do well in compation. However, I have not made traditional stone hefted arrows. I was torn between spending the day making the atlatl dart or working with Joe; it worked out that I could do both. I learned how he prepares the feathers for fletching and ties them to the shaft with deer sinew. He fletches differently than how I have done it in the past at he does it in a very traditional method.


I still had time to spent the rest of the day with Larry Kinsella from Fairview, Illinois. He is an extraordinary flint knapper that makes artifact replicas for film and museums and is a respected field archaeologist. I learned more working with him that afternoon than I have in the past year making chips.
Day 4 Joe Dabill, from Santa Margarita, CA taught a bow making class at our site a few years ago and he is also a phenomenal flint knapper. He knapped the points for the stone drills for all 5 students in just a few minutes of chatting. He was modifying spear points but still the speed and accuracy that he works is remarkable. I always pick up something when hanging around with Joe and today was no exception. We made cool stone tipped pump drills using soap stone as the fly wheel. They were lovely tools.


There was some time left in the day for me to go back to the knapping tent and get some good old mentoring from Larry. I spent the rest of the day chipping at my atlatl dart, my arms were very sore from knapping yesterday, muscles never used before. I wish I could hang out with Larry regularly I have so much to learn from him on how to read the rock and getting it to brake and chip in a very predictable manner. One of our new friends, Alix we met in the atlatl workshop is a member of an international humanitarian team that dismantles land minds. Do I have to tell you that I was mining stories from him? Alix made a beautiful obsidian spear point and was nearly done with it and it feel and broke in half. We all do these projects to learn how not so much for the project itself but you see the pain in all of our faces seeing the 2 halves on the ground. Before dinner I was on a mission to talk with Tom from Sacramento, CA, a duck hunter from literally my old hunting grounds and he is going to be a great resource for donating turkey, duck, and goose feathers for wild crafts at Wilderness Skills Camps.



Day 5 I looked up Estaban Fire, from Portland, OR he teaches the traditional potter classes and I learned a great deal of how pottery was made before modern technology. Rachel from Seattle had made a bowl that was being fired that day and asked for my help with making cordage I sent her off to find some plant material to use and in little time she was back with well retted yucca. With me modeling for less than a minute she was well on her way, with a little bit more help with splicing in more fibers she had it down. She asked me to sign her off and again told her that my name has no weight here. Having made her pot she went off to get her knife. I thought she was going to have to find someone else to sign her off for fire and cordage but she came back to show me her knife. David Wescott from Rexburg, ID is one of the founders of Winter Count and is a professor at BYU, Managing editor of the "Bulletin of Primitive Society" and the keeper of the knives. I know when I got my knife from him he read each one of the names, so I am wondering if he is wondering who Brian King is. But she got her knife and is happy and she is walking a little taller knowing how to make fire, cordage, an edge, and a pot with only materials found in nature and without modern technology. How cool is that? Ken’s little boy Jasper was down with a fever so I hung out with the two of them in camp. I have known Ken for 3 years and just today I learned that we both worked in this very small community called Anaktuvuk Pass: "place of caribou droppings" up in the Brooks Range in the North Slope of Alaska at about the same time. We spent most of the day telling stories of bears, cold, ice, and people. We also talked about doing some cool collaboration with our teen programs this summer. His has a cool academic year teen and pre teen program is in Menlo Park and he shares many of the same staff between our programs. I have taught a brain tanning class in the past and we always learn from each other.
Day 6 Toni and I took the fiddle making workshop Randy Kinkade, Corona, AZ and I learned some cool tricks in working with agave and yucca. He also makes some very cool flutes from yucca so I picked up some more cool skills I am looking forward to passing on to Wilderness Skills Camps kids. We learned some new skills, made connections with new friends, reconnected with old friends, and passed on skills that were past to us. It was all in an atmosphere of celebration in a very large family.


Met with Mike a former colleague in Tempe Mike and I were colleagues in the 90s both instructors teaching control logic him in Florida me in California. He is 8 years my senior and had a great deal of product knowledge him having been a technician for JCI before getting into training and I teaching before I was employed by JCI so we spent many an hour on the phone talking shop. Both of us were into philosophy somehow we always seemed to end talking about Allen Watts, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Arthur Schopenhauer, or B. F. Skinner. We spent much time designing our own utopia, a way to follow our own bliss. Mike is also an accomplished musician and was a part of the pop music scene of the 60s and early 70s and is still doing some studio work and some live gigs. We did not have much time to get caught up on this trip and we have not had any face time in 13 years, again after hugs we picked up where we left off. He is always good for a story or 2 from his days with the Almond Brothers, Beach Boys, the Outlaws, his time in mining, and teaching what we taught, but I think I spent most of the time talking about Wilderness Skills Institute and the cool stuff we do.
A Visit with John a Hopi elder out on the reservation on the Arizona border. We met John at DQ University and made some very strong connections with him. He is one of those people that even though we haven't seen each other for months after hugs and getting off the road dust the conversation starts as though we had only been apart about the time necessary to get a cup of coffee. John and our friendship started with just a day or 2 talking and it feels that we have known each other from childhood. John is a good mentor to help us on the Wilderness Skills Institute journey. We talked of synchronicity, plants of Mojave, techniques of using plants of Mojave to make rattles, paint, and glue. We talked of teaching what we teach. Our time is always too short and there is always a few tears shed as we part.
ACA conference We spent the week taking workshops at the American Camping Association in San Diego at 150th national conference. It was a week of keeping abreast of changes that we need to be aware of for going through the accreditation process and getting better at the business of running, marketing, and staffing camp. These things are always great at reconfirming that what we are doing is what we should be doing, we always pick up something we can use, It was also nice to reconnect with ACA staff and my friends running other camps. To save on money we stayed in a youth hostel. The staff and the other residents in the hostel were great. However, we were in the gaslamp district and things got a bit loud on the street some nights at about 2 AM when the bars closed, it made for a long week. The last night of our stay from 2 AM until about 4, sirens were constant it made for a very rough night. In Arizona we saw on CNN that there was a tragic accident involving a taxi driving through a crowd on the side walk on the same block as the hostel in San Diego. We only had a rough night those people their lives changed forever.
Native Eyes Leading up to winter break we did some very cool stuff with Native Eyes, my tracking skills, and understanding what the birds are saying . Sometimes I hit this wall and do not feel like I am getting anywhere, but tracking with the group and doing the bird sits followed with the bird map and the debrief do get it in me. Jon Young’s nature call series on Mondays and Thursday nights keep me focused on getting out in the wilderness and staying with the animals and birds. All of the NE people were standing in the dunes and someone mentioned how cool would it be to have a coyote walk past us so we could watch its gates and then look at the tracks. On cue coyote enters stage left, in a direct register walk, gets into a side trot, look over its shoulder left then right, run, stop, walk, walk putting his nose down walk in a circle and then side trot off and all in the soft sand. What a gift. We checked out the prints. Now when I look at tracks I can see the animal.
Wilderness Skills Camps Outreach and Registration Spring camp is quickly approaching and summer camp is just around the corner. Toni and I sent a mailer off to our past families during the winter break and have been calling some of the families to just touch bases. Registrations are coming in, the website is in the top 10 in Google with many key words. Very cool considering we did all of the web design in house and have not spent any money on advertising. We are on top because of you all. I have no doubt that all weeks are going to have waiting list soon.
11/8/2010 Bandit 4/1/1998 - 11/7/2010 He was a good friend and is missed.
Tissue in the back country I had a bit too much venison for dinner a couple of nights ago and woke with the dire urge to let us say "do a system down load". We were camping on private land and what separated me from the "approve down load facilities" required me to walk through the tents of the RDNA crew made up of about 30 young men and women, walk between the residents of those gracious enough to let us camp on their land, cross the road of commuters trying to get ahead of the morning rush and plunge into the redwood forest to give me some privacy, in all about 100 yards but in the dark and in my condition it seemed to be a mile and one there I needed to dig a trench and do the task on hand which I was trying not to think about since the first rumblings in my gut. You should get the sense that 1) I was scantily dressed 2) I had waited a bit too long, and 3) doing this mission in my boxer and unlaced forester boots with a red LED key ring light was probably not the best way to endear myself to the greater community and because of item 2 it was not prudent to rectify item 3. I pondered all of this listening to the rumbling in my gut and deep within me I knew that immediate action was necessary. For my Permaculture colleges this design project, at this point, had only 2 essential parameters, time and distance and former was getting shorter and the later seemed to be getting longer. Bending over to pull on my over used and abused high top boots took great will and muscle and strength beyond human power. I was centering my chi working at unity, transcending the duality of my head and the other end. The boots on, not laced, the tong of my left boot down near my toes, its hell vamp bunched up to a point that my foot would not go all the way in and no socks, not a real professional look, but at this point I considered the boots on and time, I must say, was getting shorter, my gut is saying "Get a move on." I started my vigorous waddle through the star lit tents but with too little time to enjoy the fastness of the milky way or the insignificance of our existence. My gut said "What are you thinking? " On may path lay a young man that had just returned from advanced scout training at Tom Brown Jr. Tracking School. He now a finely tuned machine of stealth and cunningness and lay in a blissful sleep in my path and if not for my current mission I would have given great consideration to stitching him into his mummy bag, hiding his boots and drawing a line on his neck with a red sharpie to just make him feel at home. My gut yelled "What the Heck" another time… I navigated through the labyrinth of tents and the bodies of those sleeping under the stars in this moonless night with the skill of Magellan not wanting to wake anyone with even the light of my red LED key ring light. I negotiated their zone 5 (a Permaculture term for where you store junk) and a long line of cars in too little an area. I got to the edge of the asphalt with only the cover of the night. I stood there watching the 5 AM rush of cars and trying to look like I should be there with my blue and white checked boxers hunched over and working at “unitary with one”, and listing to my gut tell me "YOU' R NOT LISTENING" the few breaks in the traffic were not enough for me to make a waddle for it, but enough to see that between road and the refuge of the forest appeared to be a ditch filled with blackberries and star thistles and me in bare pale legs. The current challenge was to go into owl vision with a fair about of body radar and find a deer run into the redwoods before I make a break for it. Just then there was enough gapouses and I made my waddle for it. I had spiritual moment as the head lights of the next approaching car illuminated my bowlegs middle aged body casting a long surreal shadow on the pavement as I scampered to safety. I got a fair distance into the forest following a faint hint of a deer run through the brambles and still avoiding an 'early and untimely system Down Lode" In looking for a suitable location to start this operation I evaluated the plants material in the area suitable for taking care of the required paper work, I did mention I was using a red LED key ring flash light. When in my sleeping bag designing the solution to my situation I wrongly predicted my resources. The best i could find was some sapling madrone, and I was desperately out of time using all my concentration I said "Good enough" my gut said "Get R Done You EDIOT". I used all my physical power and concentration to not have the down load start before the proper preparations were taken, I got the trench dug with my unlaced logging boot, got what little i had out of the way and relax into my meditative position. Feeling much better after the “system down load” was done I got a closer look of the vegetation around me only to realize that the madrone was in fact California live oak with its hard spiny leaves and my only other choice was the evil star thistle, dusty forest duff, and redwood bark. Hum it reminded me of the video that I wanted to share with my staff from Baxter Black which I hope to have as a part of our staff's wilderness training. Enjoy.
11/5/2010 On the Fine Art of Story Telling I am sitting the Lone Oak Hotel in Monetary on the first leg of a 4 day of a road trip, and was doing one of my favorite pastimes procrastinating by surfing the internet. I tell everyone that wants to listen, how much easier it would have been to get research done when I was working on the masters degree in the early 80s if we had had the internet. Just to think of think of the ability to glean information from a news paper with a circulation of 12 from the coast of Cuba from 1850 was mind boggling. How cool would that be? Well the truth is I would have spent some much less time surfing the net I probably would not have gotten any of the work done, but I would have certainly would have learned along the way. In my surfing this morning I found a video by Baxter Black that I was looking for to add to our staff training manual and spent the next hour just enjoying his skills at story telling. He is a master at his craft and I just want to share this clip with you. One of the Core routines of Nature Connection is Story Telling. We have the kids go out on the land and have an adventure, it is required! Then in the evening after the fire is made the meal is eaten, the dishes are washed, we all sit around and the mentors pull stories from the kids about the adventures the kids had. We hear about banana slugs as big as your thigh, alligator lizards eating a large rodent, and hikes so strenuous that they made it back to camp just before certain death. The kids are not lying or bending the truth but practicing the story tellers mind. I must say that the engaging story tellers of the past Will Rodgers, Andy Griffith, Gorge Carlin, Baxter Black were a major influence into making me who I am today. The best teachers I had were great story tellers, Barney Horan from high school, David Church from college, and Jon Young from RDNA, Wendolin Bird, and Anne Carla have (had) a way of getting us to remember what they felt was important in a very fun way. I can remember stories told to me more then 35 years ago. I can remember my near retirement age physiology teacher taking his suit coat off jumping onto a lab table, blowing the dust off the florescent tubs making us laugh and lifting a weight and telling us a story about how the class III lever and the muscles work. At this moment I cannot recall what his name is but can still see mussels sticking out in his neck and his face getting red and how the muscle is attached to the bones via tendons and where the fulcrum is. Story Telling is also a great way for us all to learn. We learn painfully small amounts of what we are told but almost all of what we tell in story.
10/28/10 Tracking with Native Eyes and RDNA Interaction Tuesday we had a stiff wind down at the beach so only the most protected tracks were still visible. It was of value to watch the speed and how the tracks deteriorate with the wind though. This week our intentions were to gather data on deer and cougar sign in the area, and and get the gates of deer, cougar, gray fox, coyote, and racoon into us. I want to get to a point that I can see the coyote, deer, or cougar run, trot, lope, walk, just by a glance at a set of tracks. Andrew saw a doe and a fawn in a dense willow thicket pronked off. We crawled into her bed spot and got a good feel of how she can see clearly across the valley but a few feet away we could not be seen in the thicket. In the afternoon we went to another site again to gather data on deer and cougar. What was telling was what we did not see, no fresh rubs, scat, or kills. In fact we did not see the deer kills that had been there the year before.We did find some tar brush to make hand drills for starting fire, and a caterpillar that can squirt stink like a skunk. We had a bit of excitement, we were sitting around in a circle looking at scat when one of the participant said, "There's someone at the car" Binoculars went up to look at this yahoo. He knelt by the tires, then took a long shiny object slid in down the door, and set the alarm off and all but me took off running after him, he started running hopped on his bicycle. Yes he had the brilliant idea to let the air our of the tires of the car we park at the gate not realizing that 1) we were watching him with binoculars with his distinctive red white and blue jacket, 2) there was 7 of us, 3) we had 4 other vehicles parked a short distance up the road, and 5) that we were going to chase him down and detain him. We have been on a journey to this point of being aware of every thing we hear, see, feel and journal everything. So when the sheriff got on the seen and questioned us we all had divergent parts of the story, but we had great details about, this yahoo, the tracks around the car, what he did, how he reacted and all of our stories agreed. It was like doing the map of the weekly bird sit. We were lucky that he did not get into the car or damage it. I will set the intention that he or his associates will be less likely to want to pry on us or anyone else. We did a early morning bird sit with all the RDNA participants, Essentials, Cultural Mentoring, and Native Eyes. It was in the 20's last night and we were greeted with frost on the ground. I can only speak for myself but I was uncomfortably cold camping not sleeping to through the night still not shaking the bug I have had this last week. The highlight for me was hearing song of the Ixoreus naevius Varied Thrush has just been heard for the first time this winter. Native Eyes accompanied RDNA into areas that were new to them to look for black tailed deer (Odocoileus columbianus) and cougar (Puma concolor) signs. The 6 groups mapped out what they found, then later in the day we did a debrief with Jon Young and we got a bigger picture of few squire miles of meadow, forest, and riparian. Yesterday all of the Native Eyes went on their way but me, I stayed with the RDNA folks for their annual friction fire workshop. The entire Cultural Mentoring team and myself followed the 8 Shield model to introduce friction fire. It was very productive and many fires were started. The nuggets for me was the incredibly retelling and tweaking of the story of how Father Buckeye got fire, by David Hage and the demo by Will Scott. I will follow their model when introducing this subject.




10/25//10 Fur On Brain Tanning Workshop Praise the rain, it gave us challenges to work through. We got 1skin done that was beautiful and many more that just would not dry enough to smoke. I also smoked a deer skin that I had started years before. When I conduct these classes I demo on skins that only get one step worked on for just a little and worked on by those that do not want to commit to working on their own skin. Therefore, I have hides that get reworked and experimented on for years before I finally get them smoked, but they always end up being beautifully soft. We because I knew the skins were not going to dry and had never been dry we used corn meal pull the membrane off the way I had done it when I was making study skins for Fullerton Collage when I was a kid. The membraning by scrapping a skin that has never dried does not read the same and is easy to get into the follicles and cause the hair to slip.


Ken brought his fire kit and in it was a fire piston, I have read about that cool tool that works like a diesel engine, it uses the heat of compression of the air to get a bit of charred cloth to ignite. I have held one before that Tamara Wilder owns but it was missing the packing. It was very cool to see how it worked and for me to try it. Ken got it smolder with the first try, I just did not have the strength to do the same. To make it work you pack a bit of charred cloth in the opening on the end of the piston, assemble it give it a healthy wick, open the valve and pull it apart and there it is, an orange coal.

10/22/10 Making Order from Chaos My body has been telling me I need to take it easy, so I spent the last day just working on the links page of our website, adding links to friends, updating broken links, links important to our staff, and to our campers and their parents. Please check it out. You will find links related to Camps, Nature, Education, Social Change, Archery, Primal Skills, and much more. It is an ongoing process and links to venders break faster than I can fix them. As we get closer to the holidays I will make sure all the archery links are updated for those that want to give bows and arrows as gifts. The climbing links are only a month old so they should still be fresh. Another idea for gifts is to give the gift of camp to a child, day camp, overnight, or intensive, or if you can go to our Support Us page and asset us in having the gear to work with more children. I have to run.
10/19/10 Toni and I are exhausted both physically from months of being on without a break and mentally from all we have learned and experiences we have had over that time. I need to sit down and organize my notes incorporate what we have learned into what we do and organize that which has become fractal.
10/18/10 Bioneers Conference If you want to see the real and hard evidence showing planet change, go to Bioneers. If you want to have face time with the person that did the research and first testified to congress about climate change, Jim Hanson, go to Bioneers. If you want to look into the eyes of Dr. Jane Goodall as she talks about the connections she made with the chimpanzees when she was 15 alone in the Jungle in 1960, go to Bioneers. If you want to engage with the edgy wit of Dr. Carolyn Casey, go to Bioneers. If you want to see what is happening in our cities across the US and across the globe to heal our planet, the land, the waters, the animals, the people that inhabit it, go to Bioneers, If you want to be surrounded with like minded environmental educators go to Bioneers. If you want to meet people that you can collaborate with that have the pieces that you need, go to Bioneers. If you want to have confirmation that what you are doing is worth the effort or that you should be doing something that you were overlooking, go to Bioneers. If you want to be at a convention where you struggle with which breakout group you have to give up because there is a equally good breakout group, go to Bioneers. If you want to go to a place where the participants are as important to what we do as the presenters go to Bioneers.
10/14/10 Gaia University orientation at RDI. It was great to meet the 11 starting students that chose to do their orientation at RDI. There is 7 BS students, 3 MS students, and myself in the first year of the doctorate. We were also joined by some associates that are farther along with their program. It was seven very intense and full days, learning what is expected of us, learning new processes, learning about some very cool new software tools, having some stimulating lectures and discussion about environmental and social issues, and breaking away to have some time to have fun and bond. We grew to learn each others skills and strengths, and enjoy each other's company. Someone asked me to describe Gaia University. Well, it is a low residency program, where the associates (students) develop a plan for their education with an advisor, much like most any university, but there are no weekly classes, we work on our own, with advisors, and associates world wide that we meet with over Skype, emails, and conference calls. I will meet with other associates on a bi-weekly basis, including someone doing a similar project as me in Germany. I meet with my main advisor about once a month, and turn in documentation of my work every 6 weeks after a peer, and mentor review. We all will meet face to face once each year, and at the end my work will also be reviewed by a PHD outside of the university. Yes we will not be in classrooms but we will be collaborating with advisors (mentors) and other associates throughout the world on a regular basis. Gaia has a mandate to heal the earth, waters, and communities, and the students in all levels learn the skills and information to do that, and their projects must reflect not only bettering themselves but the University and the community as a part of the whole. I have laid out for myself a very challenging program of professional and personal growth. I will also be implementing and documenting nature connection core routines, 8 shields cultural mentoring, and more into Wilderness Skills Camps to give our staff excellent training materials. Very cool wow activities to do, documentation for accreditation. I will keep you posted on my growth, for it is you the parents of my students and you the staff of Wilderness Skills Camps that have a vested interest in what I do.
10/5/10 Native Eyes met down by Pescadero this week. There were just a few people this week, and some were fighting some bug. There was not the rich signs this week as we have had in the past, maybe the critters were just making us work harder. Greg and I had a good discussion on my 8 shields role with native eyes this year and I will be holding the role of the North East South West. I will post some of the traits of this role in future posts.
10/4/10 I am doing the Mentoring Nature conference calls each Monday now. These conference calls include people that are studying nature all over the US and includes input from Jon Young. There is group discussion, think and discussion breakout sessions, lecture from Jon Young, more think and discussion breakout sessions, and some open discussion with Jon and then some questions for us to head into the wilderness to answer. We were discussing the indicators that showed that the harvest is happening. It is very cool to hear from people in biomes far from me that are seeing the same things, like bear scat that is full of berry seeds. There was some discussion that some first nation people could only get some berry seeds to germinate if they planted bear scat and not get seeds they gleaned from berries on the vine to germinate.
10/4/10 Native Eyes was with RDNA Essentials and Cultural Mentoring groups up at the Regenerative Design Institute this past week and it was great to be with the bigger group and do some bonding of the two groups. Native Eyes met first at the Native Eyes fire circle and were greeted with gray fox (*Urocyon cinereoargenteus) scat in the center of the fire circle. We took that as a sign that we should set the intention to have lots of encounters with Urocyon cinereoargenteus*. We did and got some cool photos from the trail cameras we were putting out. It was a great week for tracking, Jon Young's talks, and making connection with the rest of the RDNA people. This is one of the few times that Bright Path and I will be in the same county for our classes and it was very nice to share these experiences with her.
9/25/10 Yippee we spent the day at the ranch which will be one of our new wilderness homes for Wilderness Skills Camps. 180 acres of a mix of forest, meadows, ponds, creeks, rivers, and cliffs, what more could you ask for. It is off the beaten path, off the grid, and you can not see anything but forest from any location for as far as the eye can see. Can you tell I am excited. It has so much potential and so much for kids to explore. It was so easy for me to imagine kids running and playing hide and go seek, shooting archery, catching frogs, singing songs at the creek around the camp fire. All that is missing are the kids. Check back for our first open house and work party there.




9/24/10 Be careful what you wish for, I just finished a phone interview with the university and was accepted into the first year of the doctorial program. My course work will continue my education in nature program development and management as well as the pure naturalist skills.
9/22/10 My tracker class (Native Eyes as part of RDNA) met down by Pescadero this week. This was their 4th week but I have not been able to attend because of my attendance in the PDC program and finishing up our last week of camp. They are a great group people with a wide group of skills. Tuesday the day started with us at the lighthouse doing the Thanksgiving address to have it interrupted with a cooper's hawk flying through a flock of starlings and landing at the closest tree then fling over head giving us quite a show. We then headed out to the beach to check out critters that had visited the beach the night before. A coyote obliged us to give us lots of tracks of varying gates and other signs to teach our senses. We later headed into the forest to do a bird sit and investigate this familiar location. Last May I had tracked a sow and her litter to a point of hearing her, and was eager to find signs of her again. At the end of the day we headed into the camp ground where I busted a coal with a bow drill then cooked up some dinner. Our friend Ned came to visit and gifted us some peppers and awesome tomatoes as well as other veggies, Jon Young came to enjoy our camp fire and share his wisdom. Off to sleep under the stars. 3 AM wake up coffee and out to the beach before the stars were gone (not many stars, due to the full moon) and we all took up positions to see what wildlife would visit the area. We saw coyote tracks the next day which had a story to tell but we did not see him. Later we headed back to the camp ground in the forest to have breakfast and plan the rest of the day. We did about a 2 mile hike up into the forest to check out this really cool tree and explore the area. We did a blindfolded drum walk which I got completely befuddled in an area surrounded with brambles and could not make my way out. Dinner back at the camp ground and Jon and Nicole along with their kids came to spend dinner and share in our stories.


9/20/10 Bright Path and I took a Permaculture Design Certification class at DQU by Davis a tribal university that is soon to reopen. Can you imagine making a list of a half dozen experts in your field of passion that you could have shared what they are passionate about for a few hours, then have a day or more that you could pick their brain, then add an equally number of people that you did not know about but should have that have the same skill level as those that you picked, add in participants that have come further in their learning journey then you, that you can learn from that understand where you are because they were there not long before, add those that are at the same place as you so you can all learn together bouncing ideas and skills off each other, and finally those that are just starting their journey that you can help. and enjoy seeing in them the Ah Ha moments that those that have the child like enthusiasm someone new to this educational journey we are on. Put in on a square mile land that has deep rooted history with native people, with ranching, with the Vietnam war, and with people that have hopes of making it a place where participants can learn material that is found in few areas. If you can image in your mind's eye then you will have a sense of what an experience it was for me to spend the past 2 weeks at the PDC. For those of you that do not know who Jake Swamp is Jake was a Mohawk Sub-Chief and representative on the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and is a spiritual leader of his people today and someone that I have hoped to learn from, it was very cool to have him sit with me and talk about what we are doing with kids at Wilderness Skills Institute. We learned
9/2/10 This has been a very cool week, funny how I plan things but we end up doing different things due to just how the day plays out but it always ends up being a great experience for us all just following our intuition. Yesterday, we went tracking the elk and were very successful. I had been telling the kids that a sting of tracks is in fact a cord attacked to the animal that left them. As we continued to track and see signs, including scat, rubs, day beds, it was obvious that we were on a very fresh trail and with in an hour the kids saw the cows they were tracking looking back at them. To have never seen an elk and then have one bugle within sight that they had been tracking was an experience that they will never forget. This was a great week of new experiences for the kids ascending up a rope was very cool. Successfully making friction fire by one was a great rite of passage. These kids this week and last week developed bonds between themselves that they will treasure forever.
8/20/2010 What a week it has been. We had the coolest kids, and did so much that we could have never done before, taking kids to check out Creek, RCA beach, Samuel P. Taylor state park, Drakes Bay, and Shell Beach and more. It has been so cool to share what I am passionate about with kids that are so passionate about what we do. It has been such a pleasure this week hiking the watershed, tracking a fox, seeing the trackers of a hybrid wolf. finding heron, owl, and jay pellets and doing a bit of research to understand what these guys eat. On another day we headed up the water shed to investigate some remote areas I had not been in for years but knowing that there would be some cool faces to rappel down with the kids and their newly donated gear. It was cool to have the kids on the first day of the week to have the kids write their names on the new helmets. Over the course of the next 10 years the kids will put their names on the helmet they use for the week and it will be used by no others during that time. I can just image kids returning each year pointing out their names on the helmets and telling storing about what they climbed that week that year so many years back. Working at friction fire, making cordage with leaves that I stashed weeks ago in a puddle to rot enough to separate the fibers out and we made some very cool fine thread for necklaces.On another day we headed out to the beach, rappelled down, and checked out funny rocks with dents in them. Dug in the sand and found fresh water working its way out to the ocean and that all brought up questions for the kids. Later at Drake's Bay we found what was making those funny dents in the rock. Funny how the connections to nature get formed by just having a week to play and investigate. I would have not had asked for a better experience to start our comp off on .
8/11/2010 This is so cool on the way back to the east bay today we got a call from a parent asking if we could take 4 additional kids for an additional week. Cool camp starts next week!
8/9/2010 Bright Path said "If you build it the kids will come." Well before we had it built kids were coming and on 8/6/2010 the first check was written and we became real. The business infrastructure started falling into place and in a few days we will have our first camp as Wilderness Skills Camp.
8/13/2010 As long as I can remember parents and students have been asking me to start a blog and share what I do in my own nature connection as well as what I have been doing with the students. well here it is, the Ramblings of King WOG.