A
Field Guide To Starting A Primitive Skills Group
By Kevin Haney, Coordinator
Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group
Published in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology, Spring, 2003, No. 25
You’ve always been enamored with the idea of being able to survive in the wild using just your own knowledge and ingenuity. You’ve taken a few primitive skills classes and read a bunch of books on the subject. You can start a friction fire (most of the time), build a passable shelter, and find enough food in the woods to prevent you from starving to death. What now? Where do you go from there? How do you get beyond that wall that seems to come upon all of us sometime or other in the course of our primitive skills development?
I’m a firm believer that no matter what you’ve managed to accomplish by yourself, a person’s proficiency in primitive skills really doesn’t start to come into it’s own until you are a part of a community, a group where everyone has skills that they do better than most, where everyone pushes everyone else to exceed their current skill limits, and where everyone supports everyone else in their efforts. It can be said that no primitive skill was created or exists except within a community of practitioners. How to find or create that community will be the subject of this article.
If you are lucky, a primitive skills community already
exists close enough to you that you can become part of it.
It’s surprising how many such groups do in fact exist.
The best place to find a group is Andrew Koransky’s web page that lists
over 40 such groups all over the country (see the online resource section at the
end of the article for the address). Another
great place to seek out like-minded compatriots is the Bulletin Board section at
the back of each issue of this Bulletin. If
you’ve taken classes from a school, it may have class lists available so
students can contact each other. There
are also a number of Internet primitive skills email lists where you can meet
people that have similar interests.
However, if you are not lucky enough to find what you are
looking for within easy traveling distance, you are faced with the prospect of
creating your own group, more or less from scratch. This prospect is not as daunting as it may sound.
However, certain ingredients are needed in order to create a group that
will stand the test of time (countless groups come into existence and then fade
away after a year or two). On a
practical level, the basic ingredients needed for a successful, sustainable
group are a leader or coordinator, enough core people that are skilled enough to
share their skills, a place to meet, and effective modes of communication.
On a conceptual level, you also need to have clear goals for the group,
what it is trying to accomplish and where it is trying to get to.
We will deal with each of these areas in turn.
Goals
Since it is necessary to have an idea of where you are
going in order to know if you are there or not, we will first talk about group
goals. The most important point to
remember here is that your goals are not static and unchanging—they are a
moving target that evolves over time. As
the group membership changes and grows, its goals will naturally change and
evolve as well. Your group will of
necessity be different after it has been around for a number of years than when
it was first created. A natural
progression of goals might be as follows:
1. Trying to get enough core people to hold periodic meetings
2. Trying to become large enough to be sustainable into the foreseeable future
3. Trying to increase the base skill level of the group as a whole
4. Reaching out to the general public to share skills
5.
Fulfilling some higher purpose by doing all of these things.
Some personal history may serve to illustrate this succession of goals. The Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills (MAPS) Group was created back in 1997 as a result of four people (Joe Schilling, Carl DeMarco, Cheryl Miller, and myself) talking on an Internet email list (yes, the irony of a primitive skills group getting started over the high-tech Internet has been pointed out to us). At first, it was tough just to get a handful of people together regularly to share skills. Over the course of the first several years, the group slowly grew to the point where that was no longer a problem. Our problem then became getting enough teachers to share skills with all of us neophytes. Eventually, enough experienced people became connected so this was less and less of a problem. At that point, the goal became to raise the skill level of the group as a whole to the point where now, if someone requests a person to teach a certain skill or craft for an event, there are at least several MAPS folks that can step up to the plate. Once your group reaches that point, it then becomes feasible to start doing programs for the general public by reaching out to outdoors, hiking, scouting and other nature-oriented groups. You may even decide to do a big, multi-day primitive skills rendezvous. However, it takes time and a lot of perseverance to get to that point.
Making a fire at the MAPS primitive camp Jim Roaix teaching pottery
Coordination
Perhaps the first thing you must have to get your group going is a leader or coordinator. You need one person who is willing to take on the organization of the group and just be the momentum that keeps it going. It is less effective if this responsibility is shared, as then the multiple coordinators may not fully take ownership of the process. Not that the coordinator shouldn’t seek out and get help, but ideally there should be one person willing to assume the ongoing responsibility of running the group. The coordinator doesn’t necessarily have to be the person with the best primitive skills. They should, however, be the person with the best organizational and communications skills (and having good people skills doesn’t hurt either). The coordinator must not be easily discouraged as there will be many times, especially in the beginning, when they will want to give up. Perseverance is thus perhaps the most necessary quality.
Passing it on to the next generation...
Even with all the perseverance in the world, however,
events may intervene and you may need to designate a new coordinator at some
point, maybe because the present one is moving away or just can no longer spend
the time needed to keep your group going. While
you may not have any choice in the matter, I will warn you that your group is
never more vulnerable than when passing on the mantle of leadership.
If the new coordinator can provide stability and keep the momentum going,
then the change may indeed work out. However,
a lot of groups fold after a new person takes charge that is not really up to
the task.
In addition to a coordinator, you will also need a minimum
number of folks that are skilled enough to share their skills with others.
If you don’t have at least a half dozen people like that, you will be
handicapped from the beginning. These
experienced people will form the core of the group.
This core will change and hopefully grow over time as people move away
and come in, but its size should be kept from decreasing if the group is not to
atrophy. If the group as a whole
consists of less than about a dozen people, the normal fluctuations in
attendance that occur will make it very difficult to sustain periodic meetings.
With regard to another issue you will have to address, MAPS encourages
the participation of children in our activities because we believe that it is
one of our highest duties to pass along these skills to the next generation.
However, if the children are younger than about 8 or 9, their attention
span may be too short to really get much out of it and they may distract the
older folks.
Location
Of course you will need a place to meet.
Ideally, it should be a fairly large piece of private land that is wild
enough where you can practice your skills without raising the eyebrows (or ear
hairs) of your neighbors. If you
try to build a debris hut or make a fire in a local park, for instance, you may
meet resistance from some of the less-than-sympathetic rangers out there.
However, it may be possible to work out an arrangement with local park
officials, perhaps trading the right to meet in the park periodically for doing
skills demonstrations for park programs. While
such an arrangement may work out in the short term, it is not the ideal
situation.
If you have more than one suitable location, rotating the
meeting place spreads the responsibilities around a little, but something can be
said for having a permanent location as well. You will most likely at some point want to construct a
primitive camp and long-term shelters and work areas, and if this is done on
public land (no matter how remote), it is only a matter of time before they are
found and destroyed. MAPS has a
primitive camp on six private acres in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland
consisting of a tipi, a debris hut, various fire pits, a knapping pit, a pottery
firing pit, a primitive cooking complex, and other work areas. The area is secluded enough that the police have never shown
up due to reports of noises or strange activities going on in the woods, even
though we are in the shadow of Camp David!
You will have more success attracting a sustainable number
people if you are close to a major urban area.
If you live 100 miles from nowhere, even though you may have the ideal
physical location, primitive skills practitioners within driving distance are
going to be few and far between. In
short, the place does not really matter as long as it is readily accessible by
your group and you can do what you want to do there.
Communication
Having effective means of communications is one of the most
important requirements of a viable primitive skills group.
And by “effective”, I mean electronic.
I will go so far as to say that if your group has to rely on the post
office, stamps, pieces of paper, and other relics of a bygone era to
communicate, you will ultimately fail. MAPS
does all of its communication electronically via email lists and a web site.
This is essential in order to pass on all the information on events and
other things that come along on a daily basis.
It’s also necessary if you want to plan something on the spur of the
moment, say go out for a survival outing next weekend.
Since probably 90-95% of people these days have access to a computer,
hardly anyone is left out of the loop. Even
those few folks that don’t own a computer can go to the public library and get
a free email account (e.g., Hotmail) and receive email.
I would recommend that you have both a private, moderated
email list and a public discussion-oriented list. As the MAPS Coordinator, I maintain a private email list that
functions as the main method of communication for MAPS and currently has almost
200 people on it (just try mailing out that many flyers or newsletters on a
regular basis!). Only I can send
messages to this list, which is preferable because some level of moderation is
needed in order to prevent spam, viruses, and just plain old inappropriate
messages. MAPS also has a public
Yahoo discussion list that anyone can send a question or message to, or join in
a discussion already in progress (see the online resource section below).
Anyone can create and use these free groups.
The second most important method of communication is a web site. Creating a site should be one of your first orders of business after your group is put together. When MAPS created its own web site back in 2001, it greatly increased information dissemination and participation in events. Besides posting a schedule of your events, a web site also provides a great venue for publishing articles and other writings, selling primitive items that your members have made, and posting pictures of past events, which helps generate interest for future events. These days, you can easily set up a professional-looking web site for less than $100 per year (including domain name registration), even if you are not a computer expert. When you do so, you’ll start getting contacted by people from all over the world and draw in many more local folks as well. The only suggestion here is to keep the site, especially the main page, clean and simple with a clear navigation menu—too many sites try to cram too much information onto the main page with the result that the site is confusing and the information hard to find. After you’ve created your site, you can become linked to all of the other primitive skills sites out there and thus further increase your public exposure.
Two things that help with the email lists, web sites, and
communications in general are to have an easily remembered name and a good logo
for your group. The name should
convey what you do and, although not absolutely necessary, it helps if it has a
good acronym like “MAPS”. After
you choose a name, you should try to register for the corresponding domain name
for your web site—even if you don’t create one in the beginning, you
probably will later. A good logo
provides immediate identification of information from your group, makes a nice
identifying feature for your web site, and provides other opportunities like
letterheads, banners, and t-shirts.
Another potentially effective, but much more labor intensive method of contacting interested people is by placing flyers for your group up at local outdoors and sporting goods stores, colleges, and other public places. The flyers should clearly state who you are, what you do, and how to contact you. It is also useful to print up and carry around some business cards with the contact information for your group so that you can give them to interested individuals you might meet. You can easily print these yourself on a computer without having to go to a professional printer. One last suggestion on publicity--it is very helpful to create a relationship with someone at your local newspaper. The editor of the Outdoors and Recreation section would be a good place to start. A story about your group or one of your events can generate significant local interest.
Joe Schilling demonstrating the bow drill for the camera at a powwow
Planning Events
When you’ve decided what you want to do with your group,
got a coordinator, a place to meet, and a way to communicate, you will of course
want to start getting together and sharing your skills and having fun!
You shouldn’t do this on a willy-nilly basis, however.
There is something to be said for setting aside a regular meeting date,
say the second Saturday of every month, but in my experience that rigidity soon
becomes a weight that holds you back. I
would recommend scheduling a meeting whenever you can get a good number of folks
together, as often as you would like to. If
you strive for monthly or more frequent meetings, that pace will be hard to
sustain over the long run. MAPS
tried monthly meetings in the beginning and it soon became apparent that such a
schedule would just be too hard to keep up, both on the event host and on the
small number of skills teachers. Consequently,
we now meet every couple of months and as a result, our attendance went from
5-12 people per event to 15-30 people per event, drawn from a five-state area.
It is essential that you schedule your events far enough in advance so
that people can work them into their own schedules.
One month before the event is a minimum and two months is even better.
Any less and you will be lucky to get even a few people to show up.
Some groups choose to concentrate on a single skill or
craft for each meeting. However,
that usually will work to reduce the attendance because there will inevitably be
a number of folks that aren’t interested in that particular topic.
MAPS usually has a two-day event and we schedule 2-4 different people to
share skills with us for several hours each over the course of the weekend.
That way, someone is more likely to find something they are interested in
and attend. In addition, we always
cook a primitive dinner and have an evening campfire and work drumming, story
telling, and blanket trading into the event.
Many of the best times are shared around the fire at night, after all of
the more formal learning of the day is over (and then there are always the night
stalking games!).
We also try to intersperse these general events with more formal classes, especially for skills that require a longer period to really learn the basics. If you have experienced people that would like to run a day or weekend class on a specific topic, that will provide more in depth experience than can be obtained from a brief introductory session. Some of the classes we have had recently include primitive blacksmithing, moccasin making, hide tanning, flint knapping, and bow making. These are areas for which you really need at least one or two whole days to produce a finished product.
Speaking of classes, if there is a primitive skills school in your area, you should try and develop a good relationship with it (see the last section for a list of schools). MAPS has such a relationship with Tim MacWelch’s excellent school called Earth Connection in Warrenton, Virginia. The complimentary, symbiotic relationship is good for both parties as MAPS funnels students to school classes and many school students wish to participate in MAPS activities.
Mac Maness teaching brain tanning
Public Programs
At some point, after you have been meeting for a while and
your membership grows to a sustainable level, you will likely want to have a
larger event open to the general public. While
a primitive skills rendezvous can be a very good thing, one word of
warning--before you attempt a large public event, you need to have a group that
is large enough so that the event would be successful with just your own members
even if not many other people attended. For MAPS, that point didn’t arrive until we had been in
existence for five years. When we
reached the point where our regular meetings were attracting 20-30 folks, it
began to seem feasible to attempt a larger public event.
Last year we took the plunge and organized the Mid-Atlantic Primitive
Skills (MAPS) Meet 2002. The event
turned out to be a huge success, drawing 100 participants and 30 instructors and
staff from all around the country.
Putting on such a big public event takes a lot of work but
the rewards are great as well. You
should start planning at least six months in advance. The key ingredients that went into making our 3-day
rendezvous a success were the following:
1) we found a great, low-cost place to hold the event (a Quaker nature camp with excellent facilities)
2) we lined up about 15 high quality instructors that committed to teaching at the event for not too much money
3)
volunteers stepped forward to handle the registration and event
coordination responsibilities.
Consequently, we were able to keep registration prices low
(an important point for these kinds of events). Based on last year’s success, we’ve decided to make this
an annual event and expand it to four days (see the MAPS web site for
information on MAPS Meet 2003). If
you do decide to host a large public event like this, advertising in this
Bulletin and other related magazines like Wilderness Way and Primitive Archer
would be recommended as they offer a pretty good bang for the buck.
However, you need to make sure that your event doesn’t overlap another
similar event, either geographically or by being held at the same time.
Another issue you will have to address is the need for liability
insurance; however, an adequate policy can be obtained for just a few hundred
dollars if you shop around.
Speaking of money, all groups must face this question
sooner or later--Do you want to try to turn a profit with your activities?
While it would be nice to be able to get paid for doing what you love to
do, the hard fact is that a given area can only support so many professional
primitive skills instructors, and that number is pretty small.
The MAPS philosophy has been not to charge for anything unless we
absolutely have to. We do what we
do because we love to do it, not because we want to collect pretty little
pictures of dead presidents. We
only charge a fee if there are raw materials that need to be purchased
beforehand, or if a professional skills instructor wants to do an intensive
class in one of their areas of specialty, something for which they would
ordinarily receive pay for. It’s
surprising that even what you may consider to be a low fee for an event will
turn away a significant number of people (primitive skills practitioners seemed
to be mysteriously grouped on the lower economic rungs for some reason).
Once your group is firmly established, there are many ways
that you can reach out and introduce primitive skills to the general public, if
that is what you decide you want to do. You
can do knapping demonstrations at gem and mineral shows, do skills programs for
scouting and school groups, build authentic aboriginal shelters for display
purposes at parks and museums, do tracking and nature awareness programs for
hiking clubs, and connect with local reenactors (which are a large community in
themselves). Volunteering for these
types of events will serve the greater purpose of spreading a knowledge of
primitive skills, but it will also serve the ancillary purpose of bringing
people into your group as they discover that there are people out there with
interests and beliefs like them.
Another connection that you might want to try to make is
with the Native American community in your area. While it may be necessary to first build some bridges and
establish trust, they may be receptive to what you are trying to do and you may
be able to create a mutually beneficial relationship. MAPS took its first step in this direction when we were
invited by the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape to demonstrate primitive skills and crafts
at a powwow on Assateague Island last year.
The demonstrations were well received and a number of beneficial
connections made. It might be
worthwhile to reach out to powwow organizers in your own area and offer your
services.
There are many possible measures of success in these types of endeavors. In the end, what it comes down to is that your group will be successful if it accomplishes what you want it to. And for most of us, that includes helping as many people as possible become more proficient at the whole range of primitive skills and living in harmony with the Earth. If we can serve as a constructive counterbalance to the destruction, misunderstanding, and non-appreciation of the natural world that is all around us, that’s a pretty good legacy to leave, and its also a pretty good reason to go out there and create your own group!
Online
Resources
Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group web site – http://www.mapsgroup.org
Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group Yahoo site - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MAPS-meet/?yguid=120440611
Primitive Skills Groups/clubs - http://koransky.com/Trackers/TrackerClubs.html
Primitive Skills Schools listed by state - http://www.hollowtop.com/schools.htm
Earth Connection School - http://earth-connection.com/
Society of Primitive Technology - http://primitive.org/
Primitive Technology Home Page - http://ic.net/~tbailey/Primitive.html
Primitive Skills Listserv - http://pages.infinit.net/afb/priskar1.htm
Kevin Haney is one of the founders and the Coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group. For more information about them or their activities, see their web site at www.mapsgroup.org or call Kevin at 301-271-5023.
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