Though active feedback is preferable to retro-active feedback, we value both, and are thus soliciting event attendees and organizers alike to submit feedback and report-backs about your experiences at the gathering, both good AND bad.
We'd love to publish folks' report-backs, so please let us know if that is or is not okay with you. If not, that's fine, but we still value and want your feedback. Just let us know to keep it private, and we will respect that.
-Wild Root Feral Futures organizers' collective
———
Following the Call of the Woods: Some Impressions of Wild Roots/Feral Futures 2010
The Wild Roots/Feral Futures gathering took place nestled in the rugged San Juan National Forest of southwestern Colorado, stretching from the first quarter moon on Saturday, June 19th, through the Summer Solstice on the 21st, to the full moon on Saturday the 26th, although many camped out days prior and stayed past the “official” end of the gathering. Billed as “a rewilding gathering of rebel tribes and Earth warriors”, Feral Futures essentially an opportunity to unplug from the consumerist, urban milieu in which most of us live and struggle from day to day, and instead visualize and practice living in communal simplicity, freed from Civilization's technology and social hierarchy and in connection with the rhythms of Nature.
After driving or walking the long, winding red dirt road up the Piedra River Valley, the first sign of the gathering is the upper meadow with its parking spaces and the Welcome Tent, where the volunteer detail greet visitors with the ol' Red-and-Black and Skull-and-Crossbones, stacks of zines and other literature held down by rocks (always in natural abundance), and suggestions on where to put down supplies. In most cases, this means taking a long hike downhill from the parking pasture, past meadows and the deer skeleton hung on a tree and through a series of zigzagging switchbacks, until you reached the sprawling river clearing below. Here amidst the green grass and the towering pines sprawls the entire camp: a fire circle, multiple tents, the “homeless shelter” built of logs, tarps, and pine needle insulation, even a massage table and cache of art supplies, as well as the obligatory shitter trench dug out at the treeline. Unlike your typical weekend car camping site, this is clearly a space that had been occupied, however temporarily, by a community of people determined to live in sharing with one another.
Approaching the fire, one hears a discussion of the recent goat slaughter, of whether or not it was natural, ethical, and compassionate to bring an animal raised on a farm to an unfamiliar environment by truck, kill it under the intent gaze of several onlookers, yet thereby expose many who may have never seen meat and blood aside from a shrink-wrapped grocery store package to the reality of life and death. Meanwhile, several hundred yards upstream at “carnivore camp”, nonchalant meat-eaters share in the rambunctious pleasures of stretching the hide and eating “Rocky Mountain oysters”, bonafide goat testicles hot off the fire griddle.
Throughout the week you could partake in various workshops, freely offered and freely attended. There were opportunities to learn about bowdrilling to start a fire, tying knots to climb and defend trees, get tattoos, participate in the trading blanket (which inspired its own discussions on the comparative merits of gift, barter, and market economics), learn how to defend oneself from the cops using the Russian martial arts discipline, Systema, how to run an underground newspaper like the scrappy Red Pill Journal out of Grand Junction, and many other skills besides. One of the more compelling workshops was on establishing Rites of Passage for the nascent anarchist/primitivist community, filling the vacuum filled by consumerist society's suppression of traditional cutlures while avoiding the co-option of indigenous practices and ways. This sparked a conversation on how adolescents in the “mainstream” find their own “Rites of Passages” through sex, drugs, and alcohol; how anarchists may often replace those with mosh pits, solos in the woods, ideological awakening and forming a countercultural community; and whether there really even is such a community, and how well-rooted and long-lasting it might be. It would seem these are some of the biggest questions facing us in making the anti-authoritarian, pro-autonomy movement cohesive, meaningful, and effective over the long term.
Besides mutual education were many joys and pleasures of living in non-hierarchical community: volunteering to help cook or gather and split firewood; sharing meals, literature, and basic tools; singing along with the banjo to old folk and hobo standbys like “Rattlin' Bog” and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”; dancing and drumming in campfire celebration of the Solstice. And magical moments, too, especially under the beautiful, bewitching wax of the moon: the crystal river shimmering over rocks in the streambed, pine trees somehow towering even taller and more majestic over the meadows under the gentle gaze of Luna, of Diana.
Feral Futures was not for everyone; unfortunately, at least one person had to be taken back to “Civilization”, to leave a situation which was clearly outside their comfort zone. This was a reminder of how deeply embedded we can become in the cheap conveniences and false securities of mainstream society, and of how truly unplugging oneself from the dominant order, whether from its grocery stores or its electronic gadgets, its hospitals or its police, takes practice, time, the acquisition of skills for interdependent self-sufficiency and real, conscious patience and intent.
Other challenges also arose. Having sufficient clean water was an issue, as no one volunteered to bring in the hoped-for water tanks, although a combination of boiling and bleaching largely solved this problem, and could be greatly alleviated with the greater presence of personal water filtration systems. There were occasional tense dynamics between different subgroups, highlighting the need to pursue and discuss mutual understanding and respect. At one point, concerns about a prescribed forest burn possibly getting out of hand were addressed by directly calling the US Forest Service. There were even some who participated yet expressed dissatisfaction or doubts about the real commitment to “primitivism”, as campers relied almost entirely on store-bought foods, soaps, and hand sanitizers. Despite any of these particular issues, though, everyone got along fairly well, and most seemed to enjoy their time in the woods.
The premise of primitivism and anti-civ/post-civ, the call to “visualize vast wilderness” and “actualize industrial collapse”, is interesting, and sure to lead debates as elsewhere in the anti-authoritarian movement, as in markets vs. communes, or insurrection vs. gradual institution-building; and total anti-civ primitivism may (or may not) be more than even many anarchists would pursue. Yet with the camaraderie of hiking to volunteer for the security/welcome watch, or sharing in good conversation, song, and cooking around the campfire, it is easy to see, and to feel, the appeal of being in a tribe, far away from the monotony of Mallworld, the everyday life of alienated work and consumption, and attending much closer to the call of the Wild.
Written by Sean Sanford, Denver
Thanks to the many organizers and participants of Wild Roots, Feral Futures 2010!
0 comments:
Post a Comment