Back To The Pleistocene (To Save The Earth)
Published on 06-08-2005 15:56
Thirteen feet of rain fall yearly on the coast of western Washington, of which seven inches have hit the ground since yesterday noon. For a week I’ve been living on berries, mushrooms, foliage, roots and invertebrates within the temperate rainforests and beaches of the Olympic Peninsula. I am hunkered within the burned-out, yet living shell of an ancient western red cedar, trying to start a campfire. Angry rivulets of aqua pura cascade confusingly over the fire-scarred, exposed sapwood of this millennium--old forest sentinel, rivulets that seem intent on thwarting my efforts at coaxing the fire-spirit from this hand drill set. I’ve been carrying these firesticks--a long, straight branch from an elderberry shrub (the spindle) and a short length of root (the hearthboard) that I collected from a blown-over western hemlock—underneath my clothing in an effort to dry them out. Strong gusts from the west shower the area with sitka spruce cones. It’s getting dark. I need a fire.
If you’ve seen the movie Castaway, you may remember that Tom Hanks attempted to make fire by two methods. The first involved rotating a slim spindle of wood onto (and into) a wider, flatter piece of wood. As friction increases at the contact point between the two sticks, the woods disintegrate into a fine powder that will spontaneously combust when the combination of downward pressure and speed (applied wholly by your own two hands!) raises the temperature of your efforts to approximately 800-degrees F. The resulting fire-egg (a.k.a. coal, ember) would subsequently hatch into flames when applied to a tinder nest of cattail seed head fluff, moss, slivers of wood and shredded bark. Humans and their kin have been using fire for at least 1.5 million years, but for only one one-hundredth of that period of time have we been able to actually create fire, on demand, by rubbing sticks together or banging stones for their sparks.
|
It’s not my intent to fully teach specific stone age skills in this article. I do wish to share the benefits of a more primitive and harmonious lifestyle, one that is allowed to be shaped by the rhythms, patterns and cycles inherent around us. One way of accomplishing this is through the adoption and practice of innate (but mostly forgotten) pre-historic crafts: creating fire, foraging for wild edibles, and creating simple and effective stone, bone and wood tools. These skills can be an important asset to those of us who spend a lot of time in the field, no matter what missions were on.
 Salmonberry Flower
|
The next time you find yourself on the shore of a creek, river or ocean, pick up a smooth, oval-shaped cobblestone. Place this rock (end-wise) upon a larger, stable stone. Take a third rock—your hammerstone—and strike your cobble forcefully on its upper end. A thin flake should detach from the parent rock—you’ve just created a discoidal stone blade, one of humanity’s most ancient cutting tools (2.6 million year-old stone flakes have been found in Ethiopia). Your new stone knife will cut grasses, roots, inner barks and leaves for cordage-making, and meat quite effectively.
|
Section Widget
Recent Blog Posts
Calendar
Recent Articles
Bit of an RTI rave :)
One of the members on here- young Spud- found this place a year or so ago and since then, it's been quite the Leicestershire meeters favourite haunt. Not a path to a meet in the midlands occours that...
16-06-2013 10:04