From Earth, Spirit, & Anarchy:
I
have sat down several times to try to write this report-back from Wild
Roots Feral Futures 2012 and have found that putting such experiences
into an essay while sitting in front of a computer is fairly difficult.
To try to represent our time together in written word and place the
experiences we had in the woods of Occupied Ute Territory (in a part now
called southern “Colorado”) into the context of an article to be read
on the internet by those of us living in techno-industrial society is
quite a challenge, and so I begin by conceding that my efforts to
describe my experiences are severely limited, more so even than the
usual limitations offered by the written word.
After
having to miss last year’s gathering as a result of my own poor
planning I swore to myself that I would make it to Wild Roots Feral
Futures 2012, so when offered the opportunity to travel with a group of
anarchists heading there from Oregon I jumped on it. After about a week
on the road, I arrived at the trailhead pretty exhausted and drained.
The hike in, though long and hot, forced me out of my head space and
into my heart space by the time I got to the encampment and met up with
others in attendance. Upon arrival I was met with a calming, loving,
caring, and generous presence. It was as if people had checked a lot of
their baggage at the trailhead. Politics and ideology faded into the
background and real, communal, lived experience took a turn at the wheel
in a way that is rare in so-called radical spaces. It didn’t matter if
someone was an old school Earth Firster!, DGR, anarcho-primitivist,
hillbilly, or hippy. We were there to learn, to grow together, and to
build a community (albeit a temporary one) and when that is really the
goal, politics, economics, and ideologies have to return to their
rightful place in the theoretical and the abstract.
I was so
overjoyed to discover the heavy emphasis our temporary community chose
to place on personal, communal, and ecological healing. While primitive
skills and eco-defense are definitely essential to the pursuit of
anarchy (not to mention the survival of our species and many others)
healing must hold a prominent place of importance in our lives and in
our communities. We are constantly traumatized, triggered, and
retraumatized by life in civilization. Through the profoundly anti-life
and anti-community institutions of civilization, our natural and healthy
social relationships are destroyed and rebuilt. What was once natural,
wild, organic, free, and anarchistic becomes organized and ordered.
However, Mother Earth’s natural tendency and our individual bodies’
natural tendency is towards restoration and healing. All we have to do
in most cases is to stop engaging in activities that are destructive to
ourselves and to our Mother and the healing process can begin
immediately. It is largely because we continue to inflict wounds upon
ourselves and our Mother through civilized living that we find her and
ourselves in a state of disease and pain.
Another
pleasant surprise, and certainly closely related, was the emphasis on
spirituality that so many brought. Traditionally, radical circles have
been dominated by the same stale, lifeless, scientific fundamentalist
atheism. The folks at this gathering, however, brought many different
spiritual (though not religious, at least not that I encountered and if
there were any religious folks they didn’t impose it upon anyone else)
beliefs to the table. Some were more pagan, some more
animistic/shamanic, but nearly all having a personal spirituality
influenced by many different beliefs and/or traditions mixed with their
own personal experience. Ceremonies were more or less general and
allowed for people to engage or not engage as they chose. If someone was
actively seeking something to be offended by, they could find it or
manufacture it because spirituality is so personal and because the
dominant culture says that if someone else is freely expressing a
spirituality that is different from yours then they are oppressing or
dominating you in some way. For true seekers, however, space was
definitely created where each person could engage or not engage
according to their own heart and consciousness.
For me,
personally, a moment that really stood out was when I had the
opportunity to co-facilitate a discussion about invisible disabilities.
As a result of scheduling and the fire ban that came into effect during
our time there, the discussion ended up being held around some glow
stick and head lanterns. I had originally worried that the darkness and
the inability to see who we were talking to might be a trigger for some,
or at least detrimental, but it turned out to be a blessing in
disguise. The dim light allowed people to open up and make themselves
vulnerable in a way that might have been impossible were we all able to
look one another in the eye or stare at the speaker. At one point I
invited everyone who identified as having an invisible disability to
stand and raise a fist with me. It was so empowering to see all of those
with conditions including PTSD, fibromyalgia, traumatic head injuries,
learning disabilities, and more share their experiences, their anguish,
their struggles, and their strength with the rest of the group.
It is
incredible the change that simply living a different way can bring to
one's heart and spirit. I heard a saying once "If you want it bad enough
you'll find a way, if not you'll find an excuse." I began to realize
that my life was a series of excuses. I want my life to be like a group
of 70-year old white men! No buts! Before heading to feral futures this
year, a lot of what I believed only existed to me in the abstract.
However, actually laying my hands on wildness, immersing myself in it,
living in anarchy, swimming naked in wild water, dancing around and
jumping the fire (an old european pagan ritual, the idea is that your
demons can not follow you through the fire) to the pounding of drums,
and living in a community of humans and non-humans alike attempting to
reconnect to our Earth Mother and Sky Father in such a profound way...
one simply can not walk away from such an experience unchanged. When I
needed water, I went to the river. When I needed to shit I dug a hole. I
didn't go to a faucet or a toilet where I would abuse water, my
relative, by fowling her up with my waste and making her carry it to a
cesspool. I didn't wipe my ass with slaughtered rainforest trees. I
didn't carry a phone or a computer. I had a profound meeting with a wild
moose. I ate bugs right from the ground or from my own body as they
crawled on me. The simple act of pulling an ant off of your leg and
eating it is really quite the experience.
Even in
the short time we were there, we began to develop a relationship with
that land base. Because the Pine River was where we got our water, we
didn’t want to dirty her up and pollute her. She put us to bed at night
as she flowed over the rocks in the riverbed. She cleaned us off and
offered communal recreation during our group swimming times. She kept
our bodies hydrated with her crystal clear body. Many of us used local
plants and herbs to heal wounds. Some successfully treated allergies by
eating local plants. This is a relationship one can not have with a
washroom, grocery store, or pharmacy. This is reconnection.
One of the
most surprising things for me was the ease with which this temporary
community came together and the cohesiveness of that community.
Community life was relaxed and pleasant, often with banjo or guitar
music, friendly conversation, and laughter wafting through the air along
with the sounds of the dogs who were in attendance running and playing
together. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the community was able
to address specific needs for specific groups and individuals without
getting into the Oppression Olympics or identity reductionism. Though it
is often presented as being nearly impossible to build such a
community, we did it. Granted it was only for a short time, but from
what I experienced I truly believe that it is both possible and
necessary to keep what we were building there alive and not allow it to
die at the close of a gathering, but help it to grow and spread.
I
found that I am a completely different person in the wilderness. When I
am not listening constantly to electrical hum, when I don't have to
hear cars driving by or the air conditioner kicking on or the
refrigerator running but instead hear the rush of the river, the call of
the birds, the wind rustling through the trees... then and there I am
myself. I am human. I feel parts of myself that I have rarely or never
felt. I hear the forest and her children speaking to me in tones no
longer silenced by the leviathan. The change I experienced, however, was
not something that only changed while I was in the woods. I walked out a
very different person that I was when I walked in. My time there made
living in civilization intolerable to me.
Each of the
technological devices and civilized norms that we are sold as
conveniences and ways of staying connected are in reality chains that
weigh us down and keep us isolated. To me it is no longer a matter of
"lifestyle choice" but a literal fight against the forces of
domestication and civilization for my life, my humanity, my existence.
For so long I have been complicit, albeit perhaps as a squeaky wheel,
but the squeaky wheel is still part of a functioning machine. We must
find other ways of life while dismantling this civilized way of death.
It is no longer enough for me to be merely a dissident, a squeaky wheel.
Our Earth Mother and all of our relatives are already engaged in
active, direct resistance and they need warriors fighting in solidarity
with them. If I am not one of those warriors then I am simply walking
dead. Without community, without my connection to my Earth Mother, my
Sky Father, and all my relations, I am simply a shell, a drone, a cog in
a death machine bent on genocide, specicide, ecocide, and ultimately
omnicide. This I can take no more. Give me wildness or give me death.
Until the Earth is Wild Again,
Bison Wilder
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