- Joined
- Aug 30, 2007
- Messages
- 5,483
Well, I'm back from the Medicine Bow Wilderness class. The one I went to this weekend was the wild edible and medicinal plants class. It was terrific.
We arrived on Saturday morning at 9am in the middle of nowhere, parked, and hiked with all of our gear about a half mile back to the camping area. The camping area was pretty big. It was situated on some mountains with a few "prepared" spots, a crapping hole way up the hill downwind, and a nice common area fire pit and cooking spot not far away. We all set up camp spaced pretty far out from each other. I guess everyone wanted that "on my own" feeling at night, and it also made it easier to pick up animal sounds in the night. Since no one was close to you, if you heard a rustling sound, it was wildlife close to your sleeping spot. There had been a LOT of bear activity lately. We had one or two come by while we were out there, but none came anywhere close enough that we needed to scare it away.
After we set up camp, we all met back down at the firepit and got to know each other for a while. Then the class started. Mark Warren is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. They way he explains things is great and he has that real calm voice like Mr. Rogers. We spent a couple of hours around the firepit and he explained a lot of stuff and started introducing us to edible wild stuff that was around the camp area and other uses it had. Then we set off into the woods and spent the rest of the day walking, indentifying, eating, smelling, learning uses, etc.
About an hour or so before dark, we made it back to the firepit and Mark brought over a section of tree and we all made baskets out of the bark and made a bunch of cordage out of various inner bark from other trees and plants.
After we finished our craft time, we had dinner, which consisted of some roots, tubers, and leaves we had all collected, some Hemlock new growth tips, pine tea, and some of us brought a little something extra from home like noodles or something. Then it was time to hang around the fire and exchange stories and jokes. Then, off to sleep. We all became fast friends around the fire. There were some vary interesting characters out there. I'm sure they thought the same of Donovan and I. There was nine of us all together.
The next day, we all woke up with the sun. Some of us went ahead and took down whatever tents, debris huts, shelters, etc. we had slept in and got our stuff ready to take off.
Then, off we went for another day of the same learning/hiking we had the day before. We learned a TON of stuff, way more than we could have remembered so all of us carried notepads with us and wrote everything down. It was a lot of fun. I'll definitely be making it to another one. I certainly recomend Mark's classes to anyone in the area who can make it out there.
On a side note, the knives I took out there were my Ranger RD9 which was perfect for a lot of batoning we had to do, a little FB necker I was using to eat my dinner, a Leatherman Charge TTi, one of my Mora wood handle laminated knives which was perfect for all of the tight wood work, and I took a few extra Moras just in case anyone else needed a sharp knife and didn't bring one. It was a good thing I did. A couple of the people out there just brought what I'm sure was their only knife and it was inadiquate to put it nicely. The whole camp, other than Donovan, passed around my Ranger for their own batoning and the extra Moras saw plenty of use.
There was a kid named Alex out there with us. He was a fifth grader sent by his school. Pretty nifty kid. He had with him a decent little FB skinner and a set of throwing knives. Mark was teaching him how to throw them. He was a little scarry to watch with his FB, but he was using it correctly. He definitely had the technique down, but he still had the young kid motor skills and attention span. Anytime we stopped and Mark asked us if we knew what something was, that kid had the answer. When he grows up, I have no doubt he'll be able to kick Rambo's ass any day. I was impressed. It was nice to see someone his age as interested in all of it as he was.
We arrived on Saturday morning at 9am in the middle of nowhere, parked, and hiked with all of our gear about a half mile back to the camping area. The camping area was pretty big. It was situated on some mountains with a few "prepared" spots, a crapping hole way up the hill downwind, and a nice common area fire pit and cooking spot not far away. We all set up camp spaced pretty far out from each other. I guess everyone wanted that "on my own" feeling at night, and it also made it easier to pick up animal sounds in the night. Since no one was close to you, if you heard a rustling sound, it was wildlife close to your sleeping spot. There had been a LOT of bear activity lately. We had one or two come by while we were out there, but none came anywhere close enough that we needed to scare it away.
After we set up camp, we all met back down at the firepit and got to know each other for a while. Then the class started. Mark Warren is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. They way he explains things is great and he has that real calm voice like Mr. Rogers. We spent a couple of hours around the firepit and he explained a lot of stuff and started introducing us to edible wild stuff that was around the camp area and other uses it had. Then we set off into the woods and spent the rest of the day walking, indentifying, eating, smelling, learning uses, etc.
About an hour or so before dark, we made it back to the firepit and Mark brought over a section of tree and we all made baskets out of the bark and made a bunch of cordage out of various inner bark from other trees and plants.
After we finished our craft time, we had dinner, which consisted of some roots, tubers, and leaves we had all collected, some Hemlock new growth tips, pine tea, and some of us brought a little something extra from home like noodles or something. Then it was time to hang around the fire and exchange stories and jokes. Then, off to sleep. We all became fast friends around the fire. There were some vary interesting characters out there. I'm sure they thought the same of Donovan and I. There was nine of us all together.
The next day, we all woke up with the sun. Some of us went ahead and took down whatever tents, debris huts, shelters, etc. we had slept in and got our stuff ready to take off.
Then, off we went for another day of the same learning/hiking we had the day before. We learned a TON of stuff, way more than we could have remembered so all of us carried notepads with us and wrote everything down. It was a lot of fun. I'll definitely be making it to another one. I certainly recomend Mark's classes to anyone in the area who can make it out there.
On a side note, the knives I took out there were my Ranger RD9 which was perfect for a lot of batoning we had to do, a little FB necker I was using to eat my dinner, a Leatherman Charge TTi, one of my Mora wood handle laminated knives which was perfect for all of the tight wood work, and I took a few extra Moras just in case anyone else needed a sharp knife and didn't bring one. It was a good thing I did. A couple of the people out there just brought what I'm sure was their only knife and it was inadiquate to put it nicely. The whole camp, other than Donovan, passed around my Ranger for their own batoning and the extra Moras saw plenty of use.
There was a kid named Alex out there with us. He was a fifth grader sent by his school. Pretty nifty kid. He had with him a decent little FB skinner and a set of throwing knives. Mark was teaching him how to throw them. He was a little scarry to watch with his FB, but he was using it correctly. He definitely had the technique down, but he still had the young kid motor skills and attention span. Anytime we stopped and Mark asked us if we knew what something was, that kid had the answer. When he grows up, I have no doubt he'll be able to kick Rambo's ass any day. I was impressed. It was nice to see someone his age as interested in all of it as he was.
