Primeval Programming

[Pict]

“…it felt like something primeval in me came home.” - Khimbar

Khimbar, you hit the nail on the head. Civilized life affords very little opportunity to run the basic level programming. All of our survival problems are solved for us so completely that we aren’t even aware of our needs.

Several times a year I take groups of inner city kids out into the bush for a three-day survival course. I use the various survival skills as object lessons for life. When they first get there they are totally out of tune with the rhythm of the planet and their own needs. They have no real concept of thirst or hunger, they expect to have light to see by until midnight, and they want to play until it is time to go to bed. They’re never too keen on listening on the first day.

The second day they have made enough mistakes that they have all suffered in some way and they start to listen. The second day they start to get in touch with the “basic programming” that is designed ( “design” is a function of intelligence) to keep them alive. I think there has to be a certain shock to the system of having your needs suddenly exposed that forces a person to get in touch with those buried “programs”.

By the third day they really could stay for a week as they become capable of providing for themselves. They are different people running Homo Sapiens 1.1. There is always the tendency to become self-centered and lazy. Attitudes can sour and tempers can get short as the small measure of misery starts to work its magic.

I am always amazed at how much time it takes to get things done right. Surviving is hard work and if you don’t do things in a logical order then you will suffer. I haven’t incorporated friction fire into the equation for them yet. That’s coming as soon as I can teach them how to identify the right woods in our area. I’m getting pretty good with a bamboo fire saw but I’d like to teach the bow drill. Bamboo is not available where I teach the course.

I tell them at the orientation that “You will forget what you did on many weekends of your life but you will never forget what you did this weekend.” Whenever I get together with former students the details of their ordeal are still fresh in their minds and they talk non-stop about it. The pathways to that primeval self are still there long after they return to civilized life.

What experiences have helped you access your primeval programming? Mac

 

[Kath]

An interesting post!

I've always said that life has to have a certain amount of 'bite' to it. When I lived on the side of a mountain this meant dealing with floods when the snow melted and then shovelling away all the rocks that came down with it. Chopping wood for my fire if I wanted heat or hot water. Keeping a good stock of food in for being snowed in or kept in by floods, and then knowing how to cook food when the electricity went off. I wouldn't describe any of that as bushcraft but I know that it certainly fulfilled part of that primative programming in me. Then, like the sheep moving to their winter pastures, I moved to the lowlands and I really missed the element of 'bite' in my life. I'd give anything to have it back. Life is so much more 'on tap' now with central heating and broadband and mobile phone coverage, Tescos just a few miles away.

TBH (and I'll probably getting yelled at for saying this!) Bushcraft doesn't really fulfill that basic need in me as much as my previous life on the mountain did. Apart from a few survival situations (where different rules are in force!) bushcraft has always been an artificial situation for me. A luxury even. Foraging is supplementing other food. Fire by friction is just ignoring the matches in my pack. It's all a choice rather than a necessity. And for the times when it's necessity it's then a survival situation and I would use the matches rather than mess around with bushcraft methods.

I guess modern life is just too simple ... :?:

 

[Adi007]

The element of "real" is interesting. I can hold a flint tool in my hand and feel a certain connection to ... something. I've often thought that primeval programming lies behind why so many of use like knives and other fine tools. Once fine tools might have meant the difference between life and death, now they are mostly a status symbol.

The best "outdoorsman" I have ever come across was my grandfather -but I never saw him carve a spoon or light a fire with a bow drill and I guess the fact that he lived to be well into his seventies meant that the significance of these skills is somewhat overrated. He had skills without the ego and without the need to show off - in fact I would have said that he really didn't think that it was anything special. They were just skills, just like we know to check the weather forecast before going for a hike or pressing the little button on the pelican crossing to make the cars stop, he knew where to stop the rabbit runs, discover the clutch of duck eggs, find the sheep buried in four foot of snow, know where to find the plants that would heal a wound and be able to tell me exactly what the weather was going to be like and when the best field mushrooms would be had just by taking a sniff of the air and scanning the horizon. He didn't have books to tell him these things, never went on a course, never had a survival kit, never needed to remember a set of acronyms and abbreviations to keep warm or to know what was right to eat. It was a way of life. He was a person I think looking back who was running on that kind of programming.

Sadly it's a way of life that is gone, at least pretty much everywhere I've looked. I was lucky to have a glimpse of it while it was real.

Mostly what we do now is try to get back to something that has been.

 

[Kath]

So often you hear people saying they want to get back to 'a simple life' ... but bushcraft (or survival or self sufficiency or whatever you call it) is hardly simple. It's certainly not as simple as turning on a tap, flicking a lightswitch, eating a ready meal, etc etc etc. :?:

As you said 'All of our survival problems are solved for us so completely that we aren’t even aware of our needs.' I do think that it does take a bit of a shock to the system to get in touch with that primative satisfaction of doing for yourself. I wish there was more opportunity to feel that sense as part of daily life ... that wasn't so 'artificial'. I like to sit by a fire instead of using the central heating. And using candles instead of turning on the light. But I am very aware that I don't need to. It is merely an affectation.

Some people feel entirely satisfied living in the modern world. I must confess that I do sometimes entertain the notion that they are better adjusted to reality than I am... :shock: (Going back to carving me spoon by the fire! )

 

[R-Bowskill]

This is a great thread

I'm the son of a farm labourer, trapping or hunting rabbits was often our main source of meat (agricultural workers wages) and lots of other stuff that's now clled bushcraft was just life to me. A christmas hamper was to tide you over when no one could get down the lane to deliver any food etc.

I get sick of people with romanticized views of that life, it was ******* hard but I can do what I can as a result.

Reading the weather meant the difference between coming home wet or dry, In some ways I yearn for those days but with the knoweledge I have now. Sorry if I'm gettin maudlin but that's what having to live in a flat in the city does to someone with the forests in his soul.

 

[Kath]

Sorry if I'm gettin maudlin but that's what having to live in a flat in the city does to someone with the forests in his soul.

:super: I hear you!

 

[khimbar]

I'm glad I've found people that understand. I'm sure SWMBO thinks I'm mad. Mind you, before her I hadn't spent a single night in a tent, so I ought to be thanking her for starting me off. The first time I did I woke at 5 in the morning having got about twenty minutes sleep. When I left the tent to check that the world actually existed at that ridicuous time of day it was like the world had been made anew, clean, pure and mine. Dew on the grass, birds singing, sun shining down. It was only a small campsite near Stratford but to a boy who had lived in cities all his life it was magical. Years later I'm scaring her with plans to go wildcamping in Scotland on my own later in the year! That's a valid and achievable goal...right?

Thanks for saving me a place at your fire.

:You_Rock_

 

[Pict]

Where I grew up in Pennsylvania we had several hundred acres of fallow farmland, forest and swamp bordered by working farms. There was a railroad right of way through the middle with a raised section that ran through the swamp. It was a great place to be a kid. I grew up hunting and trapping this land. Some days I never made it to school. The night before I would stash my 12 ga shotgun in a waterproof bag in the bushes and hunt all day after having "walked to school".

My home situation wasn't the best so I spent a great deal of time escaping to the woods with my brothers. One of our favorite things to do was play hooky, poach game, and cook it at our "fort". It was survival of a different sort. Those ducks and pheasant were the best meals I've ever had.

Later this progressed to extended backpacking trips with my younger brother.
My mom would drop us off in the Appalachians and we would hike the AT or other trails and get picked up a few days later at some trail juncture. It was total freedom, espeically given the situation at home.

There's something that happens to me after I've been in the bush for more than three nights. I remember my brother and I in the middle of an eight day survival trip in PA glancing up and saying "deer" simultaneously. We had smelled them on the wind before we heard or saw them. Sure enough a few minutes later eight white-tails came grazing closer. Later that day we popped one of the King's deer (PA'speak for poaching) and ate like robber barons. We're both fine upstanding citizens now and wouldn't dream of poaching like that... OK, we ONLY dream of poaching like that anymore!

The wilderness is in my blood from a very young age. Later I moved to a city of 4 million. I can see the mountains south of the city from my office window. It's real easy to wander those hills while I should be getting some work done! The bush here has a sweet, sun-baked smell that I wish I could bottle up. When I get out there close to the area where I do my bushcrafting I roll the windows down and just suck it all in! Mac

 

[woodrat]

I'd rather sleep outside than in yearround. don't much care for tents , [ except when mosq. are really bad], I like to hear and see around me. when I'm in the woods I always feel like its my natural enviroment, that I truly belong there, that I am a piece of the puzzel properly placed, Its the only time I feel "whole". my entire personality gears into it and the civilized part of my life falls away like snow from the branches of a tall tree. anyway I feel that I can relate too what your saying here, even If I can't find the words to really exspress it.

 

[R-Bowskill]

Well said,

People at my local pub thought I'd die when I went to the East Anglia meetup...camping in February, not using a tent, Not taking a 2 burner gas stove and folding table to eat at.

But they've never seen the beauty of the dawn through the trees, the stars dotting the treetops and had the satisfaction of eating food they've gathered and cooked using their knowledge. Or the joy of being able to share a meal like that with someone. Knowing everything that's gone into it I don't have to worry about contaminated ingredients.

When I'm bushcrafting it's not that I've got a small space to live in, I've got the whole universe and it doesn't cost a fortune. How many non bushcrafters can have a living room and kitchen / diner hundreds of acres in size? (don't think even Bill Gates could afford a house that big).

 

[greg2935]

I always am amazed by the fact that when I spend the majority of time indoors, I tend to feel the cold much more quicker than once I have been in the countryside for a few days.

Like that american bloke on the Mississippi said, 'we are all outdoors people, this is the way we all lived for thousands of years and our bodies have not changed yet'.

Greg

 

[tomtom]

when ever i am in the out sider for 3days or more i have to sleep with the windows wide open and the covers of for a few days to re-climitise for a while after i get back... however i always see this as a complex thread of though and just to think that humans have anything other than the 'primeval programming' wich is deep inside us often blows my mind. when most other species only have this programing..?

sorry babbleing.. i will edit this lated on!