Monday, April 02, 2007

Don't ask me how I found this, I just did

Wildroots
Wildroots is a 30-acre radical homestead adjacent to the Pisgah NF in Madison County, Western NC. (about 45 minutes from Asheville). Our focus is on experiential learning and living, while practicing, developing and sharing skills for rewilding and reconnection.
At Wildroots, we live off the grid, carry our water, and practice "earthskills", or earth-based lifeways. Our interests include permaculture, gardening by the moon, natural and primitive shelter building, hide tanning, herbal medicine, nature crafts, and wild food foraging. These skills are rapidly falling into disuse in our throwaway culture, but we see them as crucial to our future survival, and we intend to help keep them alive. Some of these skills are as old as the human species itself. The surest way to protect earth based lifeways, or "earthskills", is to practice them, and pass them along as we move through this alienated modern life. Just as we can propagate endangered native plants in the ecosystems from which they have been displaced, or re-introduce wolves into areas from which they have been extirpated, we can reclaim our species' lost knowledge of living with the earth.

OK, first and foremost, my question is this: if these people are living off the grid, and if they poo-poo all modern civilization, what are they doing with a web site? My guess is they have a guy like the Professor on Gilligan's Island. Evidently he's invented an internet hook-up using vines and coconuts.

MM and I actually knew a couple that were planning to move off the grid in Northern MN just before Y2K hit; we never did hear if they followed through. I don't care whether these people want to live this kind of lifestyle; but, I do wish them luck trying to convince close to 6 billion other people on the planet to join them in living in huts and foraging for roots and berries.

Just what the heck is 'gardening by the moon?' OK, I just googled it, and found this web site: Gardening by the Moon (help, I'm slipping into the twilight zone)

Anyway, if you're interested in living like some South American aborigines in the Amazon rain forest, this seems to be a good place for you to start.

1 comment:

Bike Bubba said...

Take a close look at the link; these guys are advocating more or less the same things as the Khmer Rouge. This is funny at one level, but incredibly scary at another.