A Very Special Fiddleback On Tap Saturday For Me

Mistwalker

Mistwalker

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Dec 22, 2007
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I love to teach wilderness skills to young people who are really interested in the subject. But with my current work schedule, and me getting older instructing to larger groups with any real success is really not feasible anymore. A few months back, a friend of a friend contacted me on Face Book and approached me about helping with her 12 year old son Alex. Alex has been reading a lot, and watching all the "survival" shows because he is really interested in the subject, but growing up in the life style his family leads, the woods and primitive living are truly an alien environment for him, and he really wants to learn how to be more self reliant in a natural environment away from the modern urban world. Over the last few months Leslie and I have talked a lot, trying to sort out how best to approach this to ease Alex into the scene. One obstacle to overcome was making our schedules line up to permit two half days of training or one whole day, per week, near the end of the week.

We finally settled on a schedule and my fees based on a positive outcome of the interview and introduction phase. The lessons started this past Thursday. I was pleased to find out that Alex is not just interested in the subject from some sort of cool factor fascination based on Hollyweird hype, he really is genuinely interested in learning about the natural world around him here in the area where they live. I was really impressed with both Alex's enthusiasm and his very steep learning curve. He paid very close attention to everything we discussed, and he did his best to emulate the exact movements in the skills we discussed these first days.

Alex is a lot like me in that he has a better rapport with animals than with people. The dog he is petting in the photo belongs to a man who lives on the edge of the forest we were in. She has been coming to hang out with me when I am in that area for more than ten years. I do not know her name, I have never talked to her owner, but I will miss hanging out with her when she stops coming over.

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The last interview day with his mother took place in the woods, the same place I would start Alex out in. One of the things I showed her was how to use a ferro rod with organic tinder material. She told Alex about that, and he was really excited by the idea, so that was one thing he was interested in to start with. He is a very good student, and a very quick learner. Teaching him the technical aspects will not be the challenge with him. Getting him to relax and be comfortable in the woods and fields with all of the various animals and insects will be, and that is actually one of the reasons Leslie chose to contact me. My level of comfort with them, and my love of photographing them in macro, along with the various wilderness skills I possess. The introduction and subsequent discussion on techniques for different environment and conditions, as well as all the various benefits of fire in a survival situation really held his attention. He was ecited to successfully create flames with no lighter or matches, and he hasn't even done either of those yet as far as starting a fire goes.

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He and Leslie learned some foods that are edible

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Some that will be edible, what the bletting process is, and why it is important with persimmons.

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And some you should never eat. They did not know that poison ivy even produced berries.

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Alex took notes of everything for the journal he is making on all of this.

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All in all this week, for several different reasons, has been a cause to celebrate small but important victories and successes.

Cheers guys!

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BenjaminRush said:
Great story and photos! Cheers!
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pertinux said:
Incredible work you're doing, here.

Thanks for sharing this.

~ P.
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Thanks guys, it is something I am finding extremely rewarding. The first few hours were on knives: handle types, and blade geometries, and uses of. No pics of that, Leslie was too busy paying attention to how Alex was doing with the knife skills lessons to try to take any photos of it. None of these photos are mine, they were all taken by his mother for their journal.
 
Very cool and a well deserved brew!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
By the way, the kid also has good tastes. Of all the knives there during the cutlery discussion, the one that caught his attention first was the black ash burl wood on the Wingman handle.
 
mistwalker said:
By the way, the kid also has good tastes. Of all the knives there during the cutlery discussion, the one that caught his attention first was the black ash burl wood on the Wingman handle.
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He definitely has good taste :thumbup:

Great work passing on these skills Brian.

Sometimes I wonder if the rat race people like me get stuck in is really that important & worthwhile.
 
Scotcha said:
He definitely has good taste :thumbup:

Great work passing on these skills Brian.

Sometimes I wonder if the rat race people like me get stuck in is really that important & worthwhile.
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Thanks Abe. We are all in the same rat race, no matter what we do. But we can still do worthwhile things at the same time :)
 
Love to get my one or both of my girls in a class like this. I was thinking about starting with the one of the Red Mountain intro courses handled by Randalls Adventure in AL, but if your still teaching, me and my oldest would be interested.
 
Very nice, Mist.

Just today I was thinking that my grandfather had so much to pass on to me. I realize now that I only had the attention to learn 10%, if that, of what he had to teach. I'm glad you are taking some time to pass on knowledge and perspective to the next generation.
 
ndmiller said:
Love to get my one or both of my girls in a class like this. I was thinking about starting with the one of the Red Mountain intro courses handled by Randalls Adventure in AL, but if your still teaching, me and my oldest would be interested.
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How close are you to Chattanooga would be the first question.


Rotte said:
Very nice, Mist.

Just today I was thinking that my grandfather had so much to pass on to me. I realize now that I only had the attention to learn 10%, if that, of what he had to teach. I'm glad you are taking some time to pass on knowledge and perspective to the next generation.
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Thanks Jack. For me it is not my grandfather or father. I had lots of time with them and learned much. For me it is one of my grandfather's friends, Miss Anny. The amount of knowledge she had with herb lore was amazing, and I was just too young to grasp much of it at the time.
 
Awesome. And what a way to celebrate, with cheese and alcohol. Doesn't get much better
 
Give him a few weeks and he will likely outpace many of us here. I am notoriously terrible with a fire steel. If not for Vaseline soaked cotton I would be out of luck.
 
Panthera tigris said:
Give him a few weeks and he will likely outpace many of us here. I am notoriously terrible with a fire steel. If not for Vaseline soaked cotton I would be out of luck.
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He is a very quick learner, but it's just the beginning. Starting a fire with organic tinder as hot and dry as it has been here this year is pretty simple with the right sparking technique. The wet weather stuff will be more of a challenge for him, but he seems to like challenges.
 
Outstanding,

It always excites me when a young one shows interest. The look on their face when their first spark catches is priceless.

Equally awesome, is the fact that the mom sees value in educating her son in more than downloading software and the internet. That is a huge victory in itself.

Kudos to you for finding the time to make it all work.
I would say young Alex is in an enviable position. He is learning skills that he can carry for the rest of his life.

I find your comment on the attraction to animals particulary interesting. I remember my parents talking about my early years. I don't really remember the actual events. But my dad was a boatman. Gone for a weeks at a clip.

Apparently, my mom was growing very concerned about my ability to speak. She was worried there might be something wrong. Just what a new father needs to hear after a long stint on the water.

After some observation during his time off. He informed her there was nothing wrong with my speech. He said in fact, that I spoke rather well. Unfortunately for my mom, and the rest of the world. At the time, I chose to only converse with my dog. His advice was. He will talk to us when he is ready. Leave him alone.

I have always had a higher comfort level in the woods and among animals, than I do with people and traditional civilization. Dogs and other animals have always seemed more real and honest to me. They possess no hidden agenda and carry no ulterior motives.

Nice to see it come together for all of you. Everybody gains from a situation like this.
Cheers to you for making the effort. And for helping to pass your skills on to another generation.

For me personally, it is beyond cool that there are younger ones coming up, who can see past all the fog of today, and seek out more grounded traditional activities. It is very refreshing.

A win/win for all.
 
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Brian,

You are a good man. I spent the past 22 years working with kids in and out of classrooms, and I'm still humbled by the things my former students say. We don't have a clue as to the difference we make sometimes. And what you are doing there is life changing in so many ways.

What I would give to spend time walking the woods with you.
 
ndmiller said:
We're in north Atlanta...100 miles.
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I will PM you.


LostViking said:
Outstanding,

It always excites me when a young one shows interest. The look on their face when their first spark catches is priceless.

Equally awesome, is the fact that the mom sees value in educating her son in more than downloading software and the internet. That is a huge victory in itself.

Kudos to you for finding the time to make it all work.
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Thanks L.V. It does me too. I turn down far more clients than I take on just due to the interest level. I love to teach, but only when there is a genuine interest in the subject matter. I have a pretty crazy schedule of important projects going on right now, and I am not as young as I once was... So for me to undertake the endeavor has a few prerequisites: there must be a genuine interest in the subjects being taught and minors must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, release forms and waivers must be signed, the parents have to be able to financially cover my time in the field, and they have to understand that Saturdays are simply not an option for me with my current schedule. It's much easier for local parents to cope with these prerequisites, and that's one reason I stopped working with groups traveling in from any real distance. The time constraints are too much of a pain for all involved. That said, there is more of a market for this sort of thing in the home school crowd here than I realized. I have already been contacted be a few other mothers in Alex's home school circle that I am trying to sort out now.
 
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