When “Primitive” is Considered a Compliment

By Kevin Haney, Coordinator, Mid Atlantic Primitive Skills Group

Printed in the Great Outdoors Magazine, Fall 2001 issue

In most of today's technologically empowered outdoors sports, to call someone’s gear or technique primitive would be just about the worst thing you could say to them, something you might say if you were looking to pick a fight. There is a certain out-of-the-mainstream circle, however, where the adjective “primitive” is not only considered not an insult, but in fact is viewed as high praise. The adepts of this circle shun man-made tools and dependence on technology and attempt to enter Nature with little or nothing, and to thrive there. However, this is definitely not the “survivalist” crowd, that holdover from Y2K that borrows their exploitive philosophy and dependency on man-made supplies from the heyday of the western continental land rush, but rather a community that has adopted the Native American philosophy of living gently with the land while cultivating a respectful attitude of being able to use the gifts of Nature to survive while at the same time having an overall positive impact on the natural world.

Interest in primitive skills (also sometimes referred to as “earth skills”) has increased rapidly within the last two decades. More and more people are seeking their ancient roots, and there are now many schools that teach subjects such as primitive shelter construction, friction fire making, hide tanning, flint knapping, edible plants, and tracking. Perhaps the grandfather of all these schools, at least on the East Coast, is The Tracker School, run by Tom Brown Jr. out of western New Jersey. Tom has trained over 30,000 students since his school was begun in 1978. For over 10 years, from age 7 to 17, Stalking Wolf, a Southern Lipan Apache Indian schooled Tom in primitive skills. Stalking Wolf traveled over the entire North and South American continents many times over a 60-year period, learning the ways of aboriginal tribes from the Amazon to Alaska. He passed down this accumulated knowledge to Tom, who in turn has passed it down through his classes and the many books he has authored. And many of Tom’s students have gone on to open schools of their own. (See the forth listing in the below on-line resource guide for a good listing of primitive skills schools.)

And, true to the tribal instinct, there are groups of these primitive skills practitioners that regularly come together to share and learn new skills and spread the aboriginal philosophies that stand behind them. One such group is the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group (MAPS), formed in 1997 by a group of Tracker School students living in Maryland. Meeting every couple of months, the group provides a venue for those interested in learning about primitive skills in a supportive and friendly environment. Meetings usually take place at a primitive camp in the Catoctin Mountains. Recent events have included sessions on making stone tools, weaving baskets out of natural materials, fishing with primitive, hand-made tackle, traditional archery, and identifying, harvesting, and preparing wild edible plants. Interspersed between these meetings are occasional “semi-primitive” overnight excursions, where participants take a blanket, a knife, some basic food, and little else and spend the weekend at a wilderness camp.  (See the first listing in the below on-line resource guide for a list of primitive skills groups nationwide.)

The high goal of many primitive skills enthusiasts is to be able to go ‘naked into the wilderness’ and survive, making all of your own tools, clothes, shelter, and harvesting all of your food from the land. Not many of us ever reach that point - most folks are content if they can learn to build a shelter to keep them dry, start a fire without matches, produce some basic stone flake tools, and know enough edible plants in their area so they wouldn’t starve. Even if you never reach the ‘Naked into the Wilderness’ goal, however, your life can be enriched by just knowing that it is possible, that we ultimately don’t have to depend on society for our livelihood and well being. And that realization can be very liberating.

Contrary to what many people think, being able to find edible plants and kill game with a throwing stick are not the most important things to know in a survival situation. Practitioners learn what is called the “Sacred Order of Survival”, which states that in order to survive in the wilderness, you need four things in the following order of importance – shelter, water, fire, and food. Most important is being able to find or build a shelter to shield you from the elements, as hypothermia and hyperthermia are perhaps the biggest killers in a wilderness survival situation.  The basic survival shelter that most schools teach is the debris hut, simply a framework of sticks slightly larger than your body, covered by a large pile of whatever debris is at hand such as leaves, moss, grass, and branches, up to several feet thick. In effect, it is a big sleeping bag made out of natural materials. Such a shelter, properly situated and built, can keep a person warm without a fire at temperatures down to 0 degrees F or lower.  More advanced shelters include thatched huts, scout pits, and bark-covered wigwams.

Water is the next important element for survival, as a person can survive for weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Fire is next, both for warmth and for cooking and tool making purposes. One of the first skills usually taught to primitive skills students is how to make a fire by friction using an apparatus called a bow drill. Using a medium-hard hardwood (cedar, cottonwood, soft maple, and willow are excellent choices) you make a spindle and fireboard with a carved recession for the spindle to ride in and a notch to collect the resulting dust. You have a bow and handhold gripping the spindle so that you can rapidly rotate the spindle back and forth on the fireboard raising its temperature and eventually producing a glowing coal made up of very hot wood dust. This coal is then transferred to a tinder bundle of fine combustible materials, then blown on to produce a flame. More difficult in execution but simpler in concept is the hand drill, which is just a woody plant stem twirled by the hands on a notched fireboard to produce a glowing coal (yucca stalks make an excellent fireboard and mullein stalks make a very good hand drill). After some practice, it’s actually possible to make a fire in the rain with these materials.

Food is actually the last item in the Sacred Order of Survival, and is really only important in a long-term survival situation. Most people are surprised to learn that they are literally surrounded by edible plants. Just in the little strip of green going down the middle of my driveway there are at least a dozen plants that can be eaten or that have medicinal uses. And most of the so-called ‘enemies’ that herbicide companies try to get you to kill in your lawn are in fact edible and nutritious. Among the common plants that make a good meal are dandelions, plantain, thistle, purslane, lamb’s quarters, chickweed, burdock, wild mustards, and coltsfoot. Even seemingly inedible plants like milkweed can be eaten after boiling to remove the unpalatable milky white sap. And almost all acorns make an excellent meal after leaching to remove the bitter-tasting tannins.

The modern gear-head may remain skeptical. So why bother, he asks, to learn all of this interesting but seemingly archaic information? Isn’t it a lot easier just to make sure that you always have your modern tools and food with you? After all, a steel knife works a lot better than a flint one, and it’s a lot easier to pitch a tent than it is to make a primitive shelter. For even the most careful, however, there may come the time when your pack falls over a cliff, a bear runs off with it, or you survive a stream dunking only to find that you are bereft of all of your cherished gear. Then, it is entirely possible that knowing some of these primitive skills may in fact save your life. However, for many people, even this basic preparedness is not what it is really all about.  What it comes down to, is that we practice primitive skills not because we want to be able to survive some future apocalypse or leave society behind and live in the woods forever, but because doing so strengthens our connection to the natural world however we may have to live. It shows us that Nature really does provide all we need to survive, and gives us an immediate experience of the interconnectedness of all things. Plus, it’s just a whole lot of fun!”

For more information about the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group, contact Kevin Haney at info@mapsgroup.org, or 301-271-5023.

On-line Resource List

Primitive Skills Groups/clubs - http://koransky.com/Trackers/TrackerClubs.html

Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School - http://www.trackerschool.com/

Earth Connection School - http://earth-connection.com/

Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School – http://www.hollowtop.com/

Society of Primitive Technology - http://primitive.org/

Abotech, The Cyber-Shelter for Primitive Living Skills  - http://www.abotech.com/

Primitive Technology Home Page - http://ic.net/~tbailey/Primitive.html

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