Introductions

**READ HERE FIRST**
#834

Hello all!

another frenchman-citizen-of-the-world ;D
My name is Hervé. Originally from Paris, I currently live in London. Two kids, and I travel the world for a living.

I came to rewilding from a long maturation process, which started on 2007 when i first saw a “peak oil” chart. I then moved onto permaculture, which led me to question what was supposed to be an adequate human diet. That led me onto the paleo sphere, then recently the rewilding movement appeared to me to be the missing piece to give some logic to the whole ensemble.

Seeing how far along most of you are on this path, i’m also hoping i’ll learn from you all. :wink:

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#835

I’ve been meaning to get on this forum for a while but was one of the unlucky folks who had trouble registering.

I grew up in a small village of about 1,500 people in eastern Québec. I used to really like walking in the woods, getting my feet wet stepping in the small streams and dreaming of building a cabin there. I also liked walking on the rocky beaches of the St-Lawrence river (which we called “the sea” because you really couldn’t see the other side from where we lived). But I was also conflicted. I hated how people were riding their motocrosses and ATVs, abusing the landscape and making me feel unsafe. I also felt like I was the strange bird with all the other kids living with both their parents, a house and a car while I was living with my 2 siblings under the care of our single mother in the only apartment building of the area. My father was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was only a few years old and I couldn’t find it in myself to share this with potential friends. So I felt like I didn’t belong there and wanted to move to the city where anonymity and diversity were commonplace (and ended up living in Montréal for several years).

Fast-forward to adulthood, I was (and still am) living the life of a privileged white man. I have two kids (8 and 4 years old) who have already learned to live and depend on an urban environment. I’m a software engineer and I think that everyone working in technology is paid too much for the value we provide (which, in a lot of instances, would be negative value). I started learning about rewilding through my learnings about nutrition/paleo/health when I got some early signs of retinopathy in my left eye due to complications of type 1 diabetes. I got that reversed pretty quickly by changing habits and that proved to be very enlightening because the current prescribed way to dealing with type 1 diabetes wasn’t working well at all for me. When you start to doubt one thing that you’ve taken as a given all your life, it’s easy to start questioning more!

I got some introduction to rewilding through Unlearn, Rewild which I bought used at a festival with books about the environment and through Daniel Vitalis’s Rewild Yourself podcast (which I got disinterested in at some point but found useful for some time). I’m not sure which one came first but meanwhile, I was also reading every night trying to go deeper and finding some direction. I forgot to mention that I was living in San Francisco at the time, having moved in 2012. I felt stuck in what I could do because my ability to roam the land/live in the United States was tied to my employment. I felt stuck so we started planning to head back to Canada where we would be a little more free. I’ll spare you the details but we decided at the last minute to stay in the United States, find a new home and accepted to spend a few years locked in the world of a 9-to-5 job while going through the green card process that would allow me to stay without being tied to my contribution to the economy. So last summer, we traveled in our Volkswagen Vanagon on the west coast in search of a place to settle down and we finally ended up in Portland, in great part because of the rewilding community here.

I still struggle everyday with not having the opportunity (unless I were to decide to break the rules) to leave my job and reconnect with nature and live what I’ve been reading and aspiring to. But the biggest challenge for me is sharing this desire with my kids while still living in the city. I want them to learn to live a real life, which means not learning to live as a member of the civilization/system dependent on it. But everyday, they’re learning to get better at living in an urban environment and that probably means more things to unlearn later. We often feel isolated because of our different way of looking at the world (although I’m not sure I can say that about our kids yet) but we also feel isolated because we’re still very new to the area and we’re not as comfortable speaking English, French being our first language. This isolation, you might imagine, creates tension inside the home from not having a group of people to talk to/hang out with.

Fortunately, I got to know a few very nice people through Rewild Portland (:wave:, Peter) and I’m hoping we make more friends going to the free skills share/members hikes/classes. I’m also going to be doing rewild 201 in February which I’m very excited about.

Oh and I haven’t put too much thought in my username of boarkid. I’ve been using this at work after we joked after seeing the picture from a terrible zoo in the 1930s where people were riding animals. Apparently, the kid looked like my son which prompted colleagues to speculate that this was a picture of me as a young boy (disregard the fact that I was born in the early 80s and not the 30s). I started using “boar kid” after that. And when came time to pick a username, I was thinking that boars are cool now so I might just stick with it.

Looking forward to learning and sharing from everyone here!

Update: I decided to drop boarkid and change my username to my real name to make my identity clear. I’m thinking it might be better if I eventually meet more of you in real life :slightly_smiling:

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#836

Welcome boarkid! :wink: Thank you for all your help with this site migration. :smiley:

#838

Greetings fellow rewilders. I know some of y’all in person, and I look forward to meeting more of you as we engage in this journey together.

My birth-parents named me Jeriah, and I have yet to find a better symbol that encapsulates my identity. If you have any ideas let me know :slightly_smiling:

I was initiated onto this path by way of the High Deserts of Pinyon Pine, Juniper, Sage, Coyote, Rattlesnake, and Sage Grouse - the bioregion of the Colorado Plateau and the ancestral lands of the Hopi, Pauite, Shoshone, Ute, Havasupai, Dineh, Zuni, Hualapai, and White Mountain Apache peoples.

I have been fortunate to have worked as a wilderness therapy guide over the past decade, which means that I facilitate wilderness immersion experiences for radically domesticated humans. It is this work and the land itself which introduced me to a way of being that exists outside of civilization.

I do a lot of writing about my experiences as a wilderness guide and rewilder; my essays, books, and projects can be seen at www.jeriahbowser.com.

While we currently live in the PNW (Corvallis OR), my partner and our furry children and I are planning on moving back to the Desert in the next few years, with the intention of liberating some land and creating space for rewilding projects to happen. I want to create space for wilderness healing in a way that is informed by anti-civ thought and fully breaks with the logic and processes of Psychiatry.

As a writer, I find myself influenced by anti-civilization anarchism, primitivism, deep ecology, neoluddism, animal and earth liberation, anti-modernism, ecopsychology, Jungian depth psychology, radical therapy/antipsychiatry, logotherapy, ecofeminism, animism, taoism, and wildism.

I appreciate online discussions and really appreciate meeting people face to face. Thanks to Peter and the Rewild Portland crew for hosting this space!

(also, this intro is my first attempt in writing in E-Prime, how did I do?)

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#839

Well done and well met Jeriah!

#840

Hey all!

My name’s Maddy, I hail from the shores of Queensland, Australia, and I decided to join this forum just today after lurking on and off for a few months. :slight_smile: I currently study ecology in uni and work a day or two a week developing lessons for schoolkids. Eventually, I’d like to either do work in conservation or reforestation, or work for Parks and Wildlife as a ranger. I love the outdoors! I’ve been camping, fishing and spending time in the bush to some extent since I was a kid, but only in the past two years have I realised how important and incredible the natural world really is. I don’t know exactly what clued me in on the term rewilding, but I believe it was through natural movement and primal living channels. I’d encountered little ‘bits’ of rewilding concepts before, but realising that there was a whole framework that encompassed them all was an awesome feeling! My first introduction was Daniel Vitalis’s podcast (which I really enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of but eventually got turned off from). That led me to do some searching, which led me here!

I’m still a complete newbie at rewilding, and I expect to be doing a lot more learning than teaching. Some of the steps I’ve taken include pushing myself to go barefoot as often as possible (around my house and paddocks, on walks in the bush, at local shops - but not yet in the city), walking daily in natural areas and doing longer bushwalks once a week or so, learning to identify my local plant life, keeping chooks for eggs, growing fruit, veg and herbs, beginning to forage and getting more movement in my day. I also ride horses! It’s something I really enjoy and connect to my rewilding journey. I ride for friends who compete in endurance, which means that all my riding is done in the forest, and that I get to ride 40+ kilometres on occasion. I love it!

There’s tons, tons more that I have yet to do and learn. I look forward to encountering new ideas and broadening my horizons here. I can’t wait to get to know you all and share thoughts and discussions with you!

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#841

Hi Everyone, My name is Dennis and I’m excited to teach, learn, and hang out with fellow Rewilders in person. I currently live near Corvallis (like Jeriah, whom I hope to meet up with soon) and I’d be happy to share skills with any nearby Willamette Valley/Kalapuya occupied territory people out there. Maybe I’ll see folks at Echoes in Time in July?

Current stuff I’m trying to learn: willow basketry, bow string making, and buckskin sewing/tailoring.

My bigger goals are creating Cascadian land projects where people can do full time immersion rewilding, and potentially multiple land projects. I’ve lived on rewilding land projects before (porcupine palace and wild roots), and wish to do this again with like-hearted accomplices. Towards that end I’ve been involved with the Feralculture Land Liberation project (http://forums.feralculture.com) in Alaska. But I’d like to start a more Cascadian-centric land trust/land project group in the near future, as I don’t plan on moving permanently to central Alaska (where the Feralculture project currently resides) any time soon.

Thanks for hosting this forum Peter and Willem! (I like the Discourse format too). Take care everyone, Dennis

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#842

I am no one from somewhere. You can blame the world’s problems on me, for I am a homo sapien, born of other homo sapiens - the top apex predator and omnivore on planet Earth.

#843

Well, I won’t be in Vermont when the ramps come up…read a book, got my real info from a friend who works in forestry, but due to circumstances… We’ll be back in Oregon by the end of this month. I’ll plan on going after some invasive plants or some other useful forest maintenance chore there this spring. Weird timing but I will be on the Willamette for the spring salmon run.

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#844

Hello I’m Alec I dwell in the green bay Wisconsin area

#846

Hi everybody, my name is Alex… I have been slightly awkward i think on this site…have mostly read and observed and have enjoyed it a lot actually…Decided that it is probably time i should introduce myself haha

This might be long but i have a lot to share with you guys
I’m a normal white kid grew up in the suburbs around portland oregon…my parents divorced when i was three, My dad being from Greece living there and me living with my mom in portland. I went to Greece VERY frequently (every summer) until a couple years ago… Thats where my obssesion with nature started because my father is a fisherman…My dad would let me do literally whatever the fuck i wanted while he was fishing…sometimes i would fish and whenever i wanted i was allowed to just walk away , in any direction I wanted, for however long I wanted, with no restrictions…This is what I think truly got me into it at a young age …I spent entire days catching frogs, lizards, snakes, fish and turtles, dragonflies, anything I could catch… One day I had a wake up call to not go so far from camp because I ran into a young Brown Bear who was sitting on the other side of the creek just smelling me… I could tell that I was a juvenile, (because it was just so small) and I knew I should get the fuck outta there cause mom has to be around…years and years later,(I was like probably 10 then) I was a senior in highschool and freaking hated civ…Looked up on the internet and found Alderleaf Wilderness College… Went there, Learned what I could, Went to Trackers immersion program as a work trade, and ever since have been practicing all kinds of things and working in communities leading outdoor programs. Currently in Eugene Oregon studying the arts of nature as well as sharing them…If anyone here in Eugene wants to get together let me know…I also go to Portland sometimes so that goes for people up there too… I’m an avid bird/animal photographer and tracker. Also Woodworking is a specialty… I’m interested in all of it but have a lot to share with those three things in particular (tracking/birdlanguage and carving with modern tools)
Alex
P.S. if any of you rewilders here are ever thinking about checking out any european countries, I know greece quite well and it’s actually pretty amazing for us in certain regions… I think I might start a thread on Greece here in the near future to share my experiences there… Many experiences over my lifetime from mountains to riots, anarchism and literally witnessing collapse…Holy crap the shit i have seen there… Kind of like, visions of the future, i’ll share one right now… In greece workers are not afraid of going on strike… I feel like i saw a glimpse of a scary probable future when a couple years ago the truckers driving oil to the gas station went on strike… literally EVERYONE and i mean everyone, was freaking out in athens anyways… There was a line of cars at the gas stations going down the street and around the corner… at every gas stationstrong text****… this was because the truckers went on strike…I can’t even imagine the panic of a full blown oil collapse after seeing that…very intense…

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#847

Howdy. My name is Eric. I’ve been reading for a few weeks now, and finally decided to join the discussion.

Quick background: I, along with my partner and one-year-old child, currently live in Prescott, AZ. We both lived–and met–at an intentional community in Minneapolis. I first discovered the anti-civ critique and the concept of rewilding while living there, and began seeking out like-minded folks. We moved out here to be closer to family, but we’re starved for community. We’re hoping to eventually get out to the Corvalis/Eugene area, and I figured I could start making some accquiantences here. I’ve got a friend out there that some of you might know, named Jeriah. He mentioned Rewild Portland and that’s how I found ya’ll.

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#848

Welcome to the forum! :smiley:

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#849

Hi there,

Name is Richard. I am 25 years of age and have been re-wilding myself for the past few years, though having been invovled around a nature reserve since I was born, thus having a long term fascination with nature. I am based in the east midlands, United Kingdom.

Last year I began to teach foraging… Forage Frolics and this year I have been working at a balance between nature and minimal farming in the form of free range goats who provide us with our raw milk for sustinance, while the rest comes from wild greens and any animals we hunt.

I have gone pretty much raw, including meat, provided that it is my own fresh kill and have never felt better!

I am pushing towards full on self sufficiency while not dismissing modern technologies completely until the time arises, in which case I can fully sustain myself off what we have.

Look forward to being a part of this forum and learning and hopefully also have input from my own experiences.

Regards,
Richard

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#850

Hey, Richard. Welcome!

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#851

##Hello World,

My name is Kevin. I am 29 originally from Guyana (a country that just received a mention in a noteworthy article about Noway completely banning deforestation) and now reside in Asheville, NC.

I feel I was drawn to Asheville as it’s a truly conscious community, hub of rewilding teachers and organic permaculture farmers. My passion has become Permaculture which goes hand-in-hand with rewilding.

It’s a great time to be alive, learn, share and I’m glad to have found this community.

In Lak’ech Ala K’in
Kevinwolf

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#852

Welcome, Kevin! How did you find this forum?

#853

I was thinking of using the domain rewild.com for my own permaculture blog when I stumbled upon this website. Great resource.

#854

Welcome to the forum, Kevin! :slight_smile:

#855

Hi, I am Helen Kopnina, the co-author author of Culture and Conservation: Beyond Anthropocentrism. More info:
http://leidenuniv.academia.edu/HelenKopnina
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helen_Kopnina2

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