Seed Camp Report-Back

Seed campers here, reporting back from set-up. There are just a few things we wanted to make a note of for everyone.

First off, the mileage previously listed was underestimated. Whereas Vallecito proper is located about 20 miles from Durango, after driving around the lake and up the dirt road, the trailhead is more like 33 miles from Durango, give or take a mile or two (depending where in Durango you begin counting).

When you leave Durango, you will likely be greeted by a large sign proclaiming the extremely high fire danger. You will also be driving through burnt timber from the 2002 Missionary Ridge fire. Due to other fires in the Southwest, you may also experience smoky skies. Don't worry! Though fire danger is indeed very high, we are taking every precaution to be safe and aware with our cooking and social fires, and are closely monitoring local wildfire conditions. We are asking that folx refrain from making personal fires at their camps and enjoy the main communal fires at the base camp. Thanks!

We also want to once again encourage everyone, due to the hike, to make multiple trips and request help if you need it. We recommend a first load consisting solely of sleeping gear, enough warm clothing, enough food to last for a day, and whatever other minor items you might want to bring along. Other supplies, tools, food, gear, etc. can be hauled in during subsequent trips. Don't over-burden yourself! There's no need to carry everything in one trip. If you see other feral folx, see if they need any help hauling anything!

And as always, STAY HYDRATED!!!

Site Location & Directions!

Los Piños - Pine River

The time has come! Scout Council came to a consensus on a site location on the Full Moon, and now that the Transit of Venus is underway for the last time in any of our lifetimes, we are prepared to announce the location info and directions!

This year, Wild Roots Feral Futures will be taking place in the Weminuche Wilderness, amongst the mixed pines (including old-growth Ponderosa for tree climbing trainings!), firs, spruces, quaking aspen, and willow thickets along the upper Pine River, aka Los Piños, northeast of Vallecito Reservoir, about 35 miles from Durango, CO.

If you're driving in, please check in with the ride share board to see if there's anyone from your area or on your route who is seeking a ride. Also, keep your eyes peeled for feral hitch-hikers!

Directions:

From Bayfield: Turn North off Highway 160 onto County Road 501 towards Vallecito Reservoir.

From Durango: Take 15th or 32nd Street off Main Ave./Highway 550 in Durango to Florida Road (County Road 240), towards Vallecito Reservoir. Turn left onto County Road 501.

Take County Road 501 all the way to and around Vallecito Lake to FR 602. Continue until the road ends at a trailhead for Trail 523, where you will pass a fee site campground and find free and plentiful trail-head parking. We may not be able to have an established presence at the trailhead, but at the very least we'll put some visible welcoming info in the windows of some vehicles. (If anything appears unclear to you in these directions, please email us for clarification.)

Barbed wire fencing along Granite Peaks Ranch

The trail leads you past three miles of barbed-wire fencing on the right-hand side of the trail (we recommend keeping your animal friends leashed so they don't chase squirrels and get cut by it like our dog friends did!) past the Granite Peaks Ranch, and then through about a mile of day use area to the wilderness boundary, which is well-marked and can't be missed. The trail is relatively flat and easy-going (particularly compared to past years), but take your time and make multiple trips if necessary. Likely we'll have some significant communal gear to haul in, so help out if you're able!

The site location begins pretty much as soon as you enter the wilderness area, but the main base camp where the community kitchen will be located is up the trail about a mile, on the edge of a large meadow on the right-hand side of the trail, at an already-impacted site. The valley continues onward and upward into the wilderness, so explore and find yourself a nice spot! We're asking folks to try to stick to the established campsites and avoid creating new ones, as well as new fire pits. Having one main community fire and only a few neighborhood campfires elsewhere helps with group cohesion dynamics, as opposed to many fires at each camp that keep us more isolated and has a greater impact on the land. We're asking everyone to practice good low-impact, leave no trace, dispersed camping, which we will talk about in the woods as well.

Several dynamics are significantly different from past years, perhaps most significantly the absence of car camping at the parking area. While folks can most likely get away with sleeping in their vehicles at the trail head parking, you cannot set up camp at the parking/trail-head (pitch tents, make fires, etc.). There is a pay campground just before the trail-head, but staying in such a travesty more or less defeats the purpose of attending such an event in the first place. Regardless, because we cannot otherwise set up a welcome center camp at the trail-head, we will possibly utilize some of our funds to get the camp site closest to the trail-head for the duration of the event, which will serve as our welcome station. If we opt against this, we'll at the very least leave some welcoming info inside the windows of some vehicles.

We would also like to note that we have also come to a consensus in the selection of a back-up location site, should some unforeseen event beyond our control (be it "natural" or imposed by the State) lead to our eviction or evacuation from this location.

Again, we are asking everyone to arrive prepared for self-sufficient wilderness camping (be prepared for cold and rain as well as heat, etc.) and are requesting that folks bring as much potable water and communal supply donations (tools, food, etc. - see our initial call-out post) as possible. Also, please come with as much water purification and/or filtration capacity as you're able. Though we may get a significant amount of potable water at the trail-head, all water at the site itself will either have to be hauled in, filtered, boiled, or otherwise purified. Bring your own filter if you can, and share it if you're able! For communal use, we're looking into utilizing communal funds we've raised to purchase some sort of quality, high-capacity backcountry outfitter's water filter. If you have or can acquire anything of the sort, please bring it! Most importantly, stay hydrated! We will be at a high altitude and some folks will need to acclimatize to the elevation. Hydration is key in this.

Off the computer, into the woods!

May the forest bewitch you...

—the Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers' collective

Final Call for Workshops, etc.

Hey there feral folx! It's time for one final shout-out for workshops, skill shares, performances, discussions, etc. for this year's Wild Roots Feral Futures, taking place in the Weminuche Wilderness, June 16-24, 2012.

If you would like to commit to facilitating a workshop or discussion, or would like to book a performance, etc., email us at feralfutures@riseup.net and/or post them yourselves on our forums. Also, please let us know if you'd like us to post your workshop or performance (etc.) here on our blog, via the email address above.

Thus far, confirmed workshops include a two-day action medic training with Colorado Street Medics, forest defense tree climbing (and maybe platform rigging, etc.), discussions on the struggles at Black Mesa and the San Francisco Peaks (amongst others), wild plant walks, discussions on decolonization and dismantling civilization, assorted ancestral earth skills and crafts, and a possible visit by the Occupy Caravan!

This is but an incomplete list, and many more workshops etc. will emerge organically and informally in the woods. We also have various musicians and performing artists who will be sharing their craft with us in the woods (in the case of music, acoustically of course). We will announce workshops verbally on a daily basis at the morning circle, and will have a workshop scheduling board where workshops can be listed for further reference.

If there is anything we can do to help facilitate what you have to offer (such as trying to acquire certain materials and supplies, etc.), please contact us or post a general request that everyone can see on the forums.

Also, last night on the Full Moon, the Wild Roots Feral Futures site location scout council came to consensus on a site! Stay tuned for the location announcement shorty, which is again near Durango, but take note that it is not at the same location as previous years. But worry not, it's an wildly amazing location, and you won't be disappointed!

Off the computer, into the woods!

May the Forest Bewitch You...

-the Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers' collective

Call for Musicians & Performing Artists

In the past, Wild Roots Feral Futures has featured some amazing musicians and performing artists from with a wide variety of skills and talents, and would like to make a special appeal this year for even more to join us to share their muse.

If you are a performing artists, traveling troupe, or band and would like to commit to formal or informal performances at this year's Wild Roots Feral Futures, please email feralfutures@riseup.net, or just show up in the woods and do your thing!

This year, one musician who will be present and informally playing when the desire strikes is Bobby Whittenburg-James:

Last year, and with any luck again this year, we were graced by the presence and musical riotousness of holy!holy!holy!:

So, if you'd like to perform for us, let us know or just c'mon out! See you in the woods!

Help fund Wild Roots Feral Futures 2012!

Online fundraising drive closed!

Many thanks to all our donors! After service & processing fees, we raised nearly one thousand dollars! We'll put it to good use, as consented upon by all present at funds councils (which will also take place in the woods, for supply runs, and will be consensus and open to all).

 

Wild Roots Feral Futures is an informal, completely free and non-commercial, and loosely organized event operating on (less than a) shoe-string budget, formed entirely off of donated, scavenged, or liberated supplies and sustained through 100% volunteer effort. 

This year, we are reaching out to the greater community in an appeal for funding donations. All proceeds go directly to acquiring essential collective supplies and food, as well as reimbursing trainers, speakers, teachers, performers, medics, and others who are traveling long distances to provide us with their services, knowledge, skills, and expertise.

Donation records & expense reports will be openly reviewed on the ground at Wild Roots Feral Futures by the organizers' collective and any other attendees/participants interested in such transparency and accountability.

Every dollar helps. Thank you in advance!

The Art of Group Reliance

From our friends at This Is Primal War:

Primitive skills are not merely niche hobbyist and macho survivalist concerns, rather are the birthright of every human today, much as knowing how to navigate thousands of miles each season is the birthright of the Monarch Butterfly. It is precisely these skills that kept our asses alive for the millions of years of human existence, but they did much more than just allow us to survive. These most basic of skills created and sustained communities of people, built ties, strengthened relationships and allowed us to be more fluid without the constraints of an anxiety racked, alienated work force of producers and mind-numbed consumers.  Today, these skills are written off by many in the left as the toils of reactionary, right-wing militia types, hell-bent on individualist living.  How short is the memory of those dependent upon forgetting?

The basics of our survival: food, water, shelter, containers and cordage, are now available in finished, plastic wrapped, mass produced form to any first world person with the money to buy them. The concept of need is tormented in it's false projections and the joys of wants are as manufactured as the cheap filth products that abound to fulfill them. This process requires the enslavement of a production society, the enslavement of a service society and the enslavement of a consumer society, married to the absolute destruction of the land bases of us all through industrial extraction, waste, and the civilization borne illness of a disposable society. We have ourselves a recipe for insanity. The division of labor is not only a division of who does what work, but a division of self to the land in which we were born to thrive in. The passing of primitive skills helps to break the barrier of the frightened co-dependence of civilized life, and welcome in a wildness that is not only all around us, but inside of us. 

The battle we are in constant struggle with is the innate hierarchies in civilized living. There is much argument to when these began. Some say with the advent of agriculture and some with the concept of marriage, others with gender roles and religiosity. No matter where it began, we cannot argue that hierarchy is a cornerstone of civilization. Without it we cannot domesticate, subjagate, persecute, or enslave. One of the greatest benefits to primitive technologies is their decentralizing force. Who controls your ability to survive, controls you totally. If the elements of survival are shared with all, or at least grasped by all, then there is an automatic liberation in it's beginning. If we take even a cursory glance at the functions of our societies today, one will see an intentional hording of information. Whether this is for profit or control, or both, varies by situation. Power dynamics are  prevalent in most civilized relationships, necessitating the constant struggle towards liberation.

  Children are kept segregated from society, in small boxes where they are taught anything BUT the methods of survival. Advertising uber alles ensures that an entire nation will be under the firm choke-hold of consumerism. We are taught to want, and what to want, but not how to create. Elders, many of whom do not even have the skills to survive themselves, are also pushed away into packing houses of the sick and dying.  We are taught to navigate THEIR systems of life, to ignore the natural systems from which we are being ever torn. By the age of 5 we are all too familiar with the Logos of fast food poisons, while simultaneously taught that the forest is the place where the big bad wolf lives. This elemental disconnect begins our journey away from the community of life, and into the assylum of alienation. Food comes from those lighted signs and danger comes from the dark places. Most people I know that are between the ages of 17 and 28 do not know how to prepare their own food, let alone how to grow, forage, or hunt for it. This is a primitive skill that has been taken away, refined and left to the experts, this case being the corporate giants, to handle. We were once these children too, and we were taken away from this world at birth. We are taught to see our history in the rear view, always receeding, and not allowed to understand that the story of our lives is alive, albeit in much danger of extinction. Everyone from the age of 18 to 65 is stuck in the middle ground of not knowing where to put their ass or their face, and end up covered in shit.

As our family has taken steps to break from societal confines over the years, none of our choices have been so beneficial as seeking out primitive skills.  You cannot begin to know what it feels like to sit with a group of your family and friends and rediscover hand to mouth skills from the land that surrounds us until you do it. Political discussions are a great form of intellectual masturbation, but little brings more joy to resistance than holding life in your hands and feeling at home. In the vast sea of Green Anarchist critique, most of which I very much enjoy and take part in discussing often, I have seen a disconnect from the skill aspect of primitive living. Without this element we are flinging shit in the wind of academia, hoping to not get hit on it's return. There is no philosophizing needed when my 7 year old daughter teaches me how she knapped a flint scraper with elk antler. Maybe for some of you, there is too much philosophizing to grasp it. As for me, I am content with it being what it is. A child who is not only grasping an ancient skill, but having a hell of a good time doing it. It is a few hours she is not being slammed with billboards and adverts. An hour she is not being made to feel less than another because her clothes are dirty, or she is not quite as strong as another kid. It is a time that negates time, and begets confidence, skill, tools, and re-creates memories that are older than us all.

One myth of primitive skills is that  the classes are costly, and the instructors are all macho hetero males. While there is a lot of truth to part of this, being that organized classes with specific "tracker" groups are quite overpriced, and many of the "leaders" of these classes are capitalist macho pricks, this, of course, does not need to be the case. Many of the skills I learn are from books or friends, for free. Being that I don't have any macho prick friends, I skirt the latter and since most of my friends have no money, and are quite content, I dodge the prior. It is not that I am opposed to paying for certain classes, or gatherings, as I understand that the filthy lucre of the king has taken over most of our daily exchanges, it's just that we don't have any money, so it is not an issue. If you do have the money to take a course or a few courses from a good tracker school, by all means do! Take every thing you learned and share share share! Your friends will love it and if you are savvy enough to make a zine, youtube videos or a blog, you can guarantee I will be reading it at some point. In the meantime, there is no end to the amount of free information that exists on these subjects. 

Click here to read more...

Basic Street Medic Training at Wild Roots Feral Futures 2012

We're excited to announce that Colorado Street Medics will be facilitating a two-day Basic Street Medic Training this year at Wild Roots Feral Futures. The training will take place June 17th & 18th.

Who & What are Street Medics?

You’re among thousands at an antiwar demonstration when police start using pepper spray and firing tear-gas grenades. You’re choking and blinded. People around you are shouting and panicking. Ordinary fire and rescue services are standing idle–they are instructed never to enter areas until police declare them secured, and to tear-gas a crowd is to define it as insecure.

Who will help? The Street Medics. A band of volunteers with varying levels of medical credential but all specially trained in the treatment of the injuries most common at demonstrations. Street Medics walk purposefully alongside frightened crowds, urging them to “walk!”. They move in buddy pairs, carrying medical supplies and wearing eclectic uniforms–a fishing vest with MEDIC and a star of life emblazoned on the back or a jacket with a Red Cross made of duct tape.

Street Medics aren’t just at protests. We travel wherever we can to offer medical care. Be it an anti-war demonstration, a natural disaster or a war zone, the Street Medics will travel to help those in need.

Colorado Street Medics are one of the original street medic collectives organized to assert that healthcare is a human right. We band together as medical providers ranging from herbalists and paramedics to doctors and acupuncturists. We believe in participating in solidarity, not charity. We participate in events as community members, not saviors or heroes. We work to deconstruct oppression in ourselves and our communities as well as supporting social movements that work to do the same.