permaculture

[EFMonaco <EFMonaco@compuserve.com>]

Ava,
I didn't see 'animals' in your list of teachings, and only a little bit of
'caretaking'.  There's a wealth of teachings on those subjects.  Start with
tracking.  Who lives in the neighborhood?  What do they eat.  Find a track.
 How old? Male or female? Old or young? Belly full, part full, or empty? 
Bladder full, part full, or empty?  Any diseases? Environmental stresses? 
Where is the next track, and the next?  Where are they leading to?  Why was
this animal making this trip? Grazing?  Hunting?  Running for its life?  Or
out for a Sunday stroll?  Can you follow the tracks and find the live
animal at the other end of it?
Look at a plant, a blade of grass.  Notice any incision marks on it? 
Sheared off or torn? Who munched?  How long ago?  Find some scat.  Who
dunnit?  How long ago?  What did they eat?  See any parts of the plants you
noticed earlier that have come through in tact?
Find some roadkill.  What did it eat?  Was it healthy?  Make a sand box and
form a track with the foot.  Draw this in a notebook.  Make a sand box and
put one track each day.  Come back every four hours and notice the
weathering patterns; make sketches. Collect some hair and feather samples. 
Make a notebook.  Now find a hair on a fence.  Does it match the hair in
your notebook?  Is it shoulder hair, or belly hair, or nose hair, or ear
hair, or rump?  Collect feathers from a dead bird and notice the different
types.  Put them in your notebook and study.  Now find a lone feather. 
What kind of bird?  What part of the body?  How big a bird?  How old?
Find a group of tracks.  What happenned here?  Did a fox chase a mouse? 
Who got away, who ate, and who didn't?  Is this good or bad?  Can you see
the balance of nature at work?  How about the influence of man?  Can you
see it, and is it good or bad?  What can you do to foster this balance? 
Where is your place in the system?  Now go do a vision quest and figure out
what you need to do next?
Teach them about shelter.  Make a debris hut.  And sleep in it without a
sleeping bag.  Teach them to find water.  Build a solar still.  Learn to
spin fibers into cordage.  Learn to flake chips off a rock and make a
knife, arrow heads.  Make arrows.  What kind of wood to use?  Make fire
with the new knife and cordage.  Learn to make a bow.  Learn to hunt, and
to appreciate every part of the animal and its contribution to your
sustainance.  Make clothing from the leather.  Make a medecine bag, a drum
head, a rattle.  Feel the pain of the animal as it dies for your life, then
feel the same way about the blade of grass as you rip it away from its
roots.  See the life force in everything.
This is just a start.
For some good books visit  http://www.trackerschool.com, especially the Art
and Science of Tracking, by Tom Brown, Jr.
Hook up with the medecine people you will find and enjoy your journey.  You
are making a difference you can not know.

Gene Monaco
Knoxville, TN

Message text written by "permaculture"
>
They know native plants and their importance to the land, how to use them 
for tea, food, medicine, how to wildcraft with integrity and always put 
something back.

What more can I teach them?  Or, should I now begin to learn 'from' them?
<