Latest / Salish Wolf / #79 Luke McLaughlin on Project Quiver

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#79 Luke McLaughlin on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

• 0:06
  Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
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  the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
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  world's finest traditional bow carvers.
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  I'm Todd, the father. Ella is my daughter.
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  Together we're on a mission to create a stunning coffee table
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  book that profiles more than a dozen master bow years and their
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  unparalleled skill. For each chapter, we travel to
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  the Bow Years workshop. Carve a bow under his guidance,
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  photograph his woodcraft in detail and share his story here
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  on the Salish Wolf Podcast. The book is called Quiver the
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  Art of Life. Through Bow Craft and this
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  journey, our living story is Project Quiver.
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  Thanks for joining me today, Luke.
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  Yeah, thanks for having me done. How are things going?
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  Things are great. Yeah, Spring is spring in here
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  and my my busy seasons kind of starting off with teaching.
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  So it's it's a good time of year.
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  I like this. And you're doing all the
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  survival stuff right? Yeah, yeah.
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  Survival School. Yeah, yeah, my survival, I have
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  holistic survival. School is my school and it's
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  survival, perhaps in a different way, kind of the quick, quick
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  and dirty way I describe it is, you know, how many people do you
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  actually know that have been in survival situations?
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  Probably very few. You know where they've been lost
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  in the woods or grizzly bear attacked them or any of those
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  scenarios. But how many people do you know
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  that have ailing health or feel isolated and lonely and don't
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  know how to work with their emotions?
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  Almost everyone I know is is in a survival situation because of
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  our culture every day. And so holistic survival school
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  is more about, while I do teach survival skills, it's more about
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  how do we survive every day? How does our how do our how do
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  we keep our souls alive in a culture that eats souls, in my
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  opinion. And yeah, how do we live happy,
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  healthy, connective lives as humans in our modern?
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  That's awesome, I love that. Yeah, yeah, different.
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  A different angle of survival. Yeah.
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  So what sort of things do you bring into the mix then?
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  What are you teaching? Yeah, I mean, I teach
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  everything. I combine everything from, you
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  know, modern psychology. I was in evolutionary biology in
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  in college, you know. So I kind of combine with more
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  science based background looking at humans as a species.
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  Like what do we need, you know, which is basically the
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  fundamentals of rewilding. You might have heard that term,
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  but also things like breath work and bioenergetics, things to
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  help bring vitality back into our lives so we can be happy,
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  healthy humans. But, you know, skills wise, I
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  found that skills are one of the fastest ways to help people
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  connect to our landscape and ourselves and to get out of our,
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  you know, out of our minds and into our bodies.
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  So things like bow building, you know, is one of my favorite
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  forms of therapy as a way of, yeah, just being in our bodies
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  instead of being stuck in our minds and our stories.
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  When did you start this work? I've had my school for, yeah,
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  like 14 years now. Nice.
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  But I got started before that in wilderness therapy.
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  I was a, I mean, before that I was a teacher very short while
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  in public education, got my degree in education and biology
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  and physics and went into public education.
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  And I was like, this is not it, this isn't the answer.
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  And started looking for other ways to help people you know and
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  mentor people and found a wilderness therapy job that
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  focused on ancestral skills or primitive skills.
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  However you want to phrase that as a form of therapy.
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  And I will just fell in love with that job and worked there
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  for like 4 years and pretty much about 3 months into that job I
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  dedicated my life to these skills which like this is it I
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  found my happy place. I'm just going to teach this the
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  rest of my life, so and. Are you teaching all the
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  components or do you bring in experts to teach some of them?
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  Yeah, I definitely am not. I'm kind of a Jack of all trades
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  master and none. I say as a survivalist, I'm a
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  really good Boyer. As far as boyers go, I'm a
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  pretty bad Boyer, probably, yeah.
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  So I teach a lot of the skills, but there's definitely some I do
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  not. There's just such a wide
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  variety, you know. So my kind of my jams are Flint
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  knapping, stone tools, high tanning, fire building, fire
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  making, bow building. Those are like my, my favorites.
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  Those are the ones I'm just like, absolutely.
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  And then when it comes to like fiber arts or basketry, you
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  know, I, I usually bring in friends.
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  Luckily, I have a lot of lot of homies in the area that that
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  teach similar things. I'm lucky in that way.
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  Yeah. And then what's the structure
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  like? Is this an intensive that people
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  come in for or what's it look like?
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  Yeah, I, my flagship kind of main program is a 10 month
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  program for people who want to do a deep dive.
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  So I have a program called Deep Remembering which combines all
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  the things I named before into one program.
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  So you learn almost all the skills I teach, you know, grow,
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  learn, do it with community, try hard things, do blindfold games,
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  scout games, you know, throw it all in there.
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  But I also offer individual workshops, just like 3-4 day
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  classes on little skills, so if people want to take a little
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  bite out of it, you know they can also do that.
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  And so the 10 month is more of, I guess it's more available for
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  people who are willing to travel there every month or for local
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  people. Yeah, we have some people that
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  travel. I'd say it's it's hard.
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  So it's only four days a month. So it's like a mini gathering
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  every month. So it's a Thursday to a Sunday.
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  So we've had people fly in for classes for the full 10 months,
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  but it ends up a lot. Where are you?
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  I'm in Asheville, NC OK. I need to, like, get students, a
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  lot of students from Atlanta, a lot of students from the
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  Piedmont, you know, Virginia into Tennessee.
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  So we're kind of central to a lot of places.
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  That's that's handy. Yeah.
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  And you're in Costa Rica, is that right?
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  How long you been down there? I'm in my fifth year.
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  Yeah. Yeah, it is awesome.
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  It's a magical place, which if you got there.
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  I can make questions but I'm just curious.
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  Oh, you can ask anything you want.
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  It was basically leaving a country of lockdowns.
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  It was during during the lockdowns.
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  And my family and I, just my wife and I just decided now this
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  isn't what we want to do. So let's go somewhere where we
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  can still breathe fresh air and, and live our own lives.
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  So that's what brought us here. And then we fell in love with
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  it, which we thought we might. It felt like it was a good time
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  to make a transition, and sure enough, we did.
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  Awesome. Well done.
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  Yeah. Thank you.
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  Yeah. Have you been?
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  Have you been in Asheville your whole life?
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  No, I grew up in Michigan. Yeah, I grew up in Michigan and
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  lived in Utah for a number of years doing that wilderness
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  therapy job. And I've been in Asheville now
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  for 10, yeah, 10 years now. Do you know Jared Parkinson?
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  I don't know that name. I feel like you guys are in
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  similar paths. I interviewed him the other week
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  but I don't think that podcast has been out yet but he he does.
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  His Instagram is called Primitive Alchemist.
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  Yeah. No, I don't know that.
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  OK, anyway, I think you guys are doing some similar things.
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  Yeah, he's a really cool guy. And he does basket weaving, too,
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  in addition to bow carving. Sweet.
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  Nice. Yeah.
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  Tell me a bit about your bow carving.
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  When did you get into that? Yeah.
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  So, yeah. So let's see, I grew up, I grew
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  up doing some hunting in Michigan.
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  My dad was a big outdoorsman, my grandpa and grew up compound
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  shooting. And when I kind of stopped
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  hunting when I went to college and then kind of came back into
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  it. So I was about 25 and I got back
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  into hunting and in Michigan there's a lot of deer and
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  there's a heavy, heavy pressure, a lot of deer.
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  But I went out with a compound and like second day, didn't
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  prepare much. Just kind of haphazardly put up
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  a stand and little buck came in and shot out with my compound.
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  And I was stoked. You know, obviously got got a
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  success, but it felt a little off and like, I don't know, like
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  I didn't earn it or something. Yeah, I hadn't.
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  I kind of had memories of my dad bringing back animals and me
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  being really excited to see like a dead rabbit or a dead pheasant
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  or, you know, a goose or, you know, but being freaked out kind
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  of nervous system wise. And I remember my dad kind of
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  perhaps being a little rough with the dead animals or, and
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  even as a kid I felt that was like, oh, that feels like off,
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  you know, like. And so at 25, kind of getting
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  back into it, I wanted to bring a little more respect and
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  reverence into the hunt. And so that's kind of been my
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  wound and my, and my mission as a hunter is how do I bring
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  sacredness back into hunting? And so after that left of that
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  little buck with a compound, I was just like, I'm, I'm giving
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  away this compound like that didn't feel right.
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  It didn't feel like I earned it. It didn't feel fair.
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  So I gave that bow away and I was just like, all right, I'm
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  going to figure out how to do this.
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  I was already into the skills already had my school going, but
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  it was like, OK, now I'm going to really focus on first before
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  the hunting is like, how do I, if I do get a deer, how do I
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  process that? And so I went into like hide
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  tanning, bone tools, sinew, you know, like how do I process my
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  own animal? How do I make my own stone
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  tools? You know, how to make my own
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  stone arrowheads, How do I make my own bow?
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  And so really it was like a 10 year journey from 25 to like 35
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  years old of like getting everything in order before I
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  even went, you know, and started hunting with my own stuff.
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  And about 10 years ago now, I was really into hide tanning.
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  That was one of the big skills I learned and tanned a bunch of
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  hides every year. Try making, you know, my own
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  buckskin. And I met a fella named Todd
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  Smith up at a gathering up in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan
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  skills gathering. And we really just kind of
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  connected spiritually, you know, talking about hunting in a
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  different way. And yeah.
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  And he shot his monster, this monster buck in northern
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  Indiana. And he really wanted to turn
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  into buckskin. And so we did a trade.
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  I would tan this this beautiful buck that he shot.
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  And he would teach me to make my first Osage bow 10 years ago.
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  That was Todd Smith, who's up in Michigan now.
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  But yeah, he was my first teacher.
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  And it was like such a sweet, sweet initiation into bow
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  building. It was just, you know, intimate
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  and really slow. Bought a beautiful stave.
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  I wish I could remember who it was, who was set.
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  It was at a, there's a big traditional archery Expo in
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  Michigan every winter. And I remember going there and
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  it's all Chad bows and all laminate bows.
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  And there was one guy selling staves, you know, Osage staves.
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  And I was just like, I don't even know what Osage is.
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  And Todd took me and he was like, you should buy one of
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  these staves. And it was, it was already
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  roughed out my first bow and it was like 150 bucks or something,
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  you know, and I was like, I don't know, that's pretty
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  expensive. Todd's like, no, it's not.
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  Shut up. And like, that's a great deal.
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  It's like perfectly spliced together sister, sister staves.
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  You know, they were that were really not free.
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  It's up here. You want a first bow.
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  But yeah. And so the for four days I hung
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  out with Todd and all I did was just Tiller, you know, just
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  that. Cause Todd was just like, Hey,
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  this is the heart of bow building is really watching the
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  band, really taking your time stalking Tiller, listening to
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  the wood. And ever since then I just
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  caught the bug. And so yeah, so Todd was my
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  first teacher and had different teachers since then.
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  But yeah, that was that was the first one like 10 years ago.
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  That's really cool, and with all of the therapies that you bring
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  into your survival school, maybe therapies isn't the right word,
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  but they're all therapeutic in their own way.
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  Have any of those? Is there?
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  Is there a single one that resonates most strong with you
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  as far as helping with your personal growth and development?
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  That's a good question. I think everyone's different.
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  You know, I like what I tell people is like in my program,
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  Ioffer like a smorgasbord, a buffet of skills.
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  I'm like, here's here's 20 different skills, bird language
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  and tracking and this and that and this and that.
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  And I'm like, if you're lucky, you'll resonate with one and
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  you'll spend your whole life dedicated to it.
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  And maybe before you die, you won't suck at it.
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  You know, like that's a lucky, you know, like that.
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  And so I for me personally, bow building, bow building and
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  hunting, I mean, just that, you know, like there's a whole
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  another kind of subset of nature guidance, nature mentoring
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  called nature connection, which is developed by John Young and
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  Tom Brown Junior, if you've heard of that name, and
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  survival. And it's really about like, what
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  are the practices that help people connect to their
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  landscape the fastest? And it's things like fox
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  walking, you know, learning how to walk on the tips of your toes
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  in a meditative state. It's learning bird language
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  because the birds are the nervous system of the forest.
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  So how do we like pay attention to the birds and know what
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  they're saying? So we understand our ecosystem,
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  you know, just awareness and mapping, like mapping out your
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  landscape. So these are all like what we
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  call core routines of nature connection.
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  And what I love about it is that when you go hunting, it's all of
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  them. It's like a burrito of all the
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  skills. It's like, oh, I'm these are
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  connective because we are hunters, you know, like people
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  are hunters and this is what helped develop our brain and
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  going into the, you know, the evolutionary psychology of
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  hunting. And, you know, I've been lucky
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  enough to do some TV things and go around the world and and
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  hunt. And that's like, I mean, so
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  connect, I'm, you know, stranger to a landscape and all of a
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  sudden in a few weeks, I feel like I know every bird, every
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  animal, every sound because hunting demands it, you know?
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  So, yeah, and you mentioned TV for hunting.
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  You've been. Yeah, I've done three different.
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  I've done three different. You know the show Naked and
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  Afraid? You ever heard of that?
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  I've heard of it I think. It's it's, it's, it's silly in a
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  lot of ways. It's over dramaticized, but it's
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  basically one man, one woman, go into the wilderness, meet each
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  other butt ass naked. You maybe one or two items to
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  go, you know, survive with and you try to survive in the new
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  landscape for 21 days. I did 40 days in Columbia and
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  South America and then got to hunt my third Making It Afraid
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  TV show. I got to hunt in South Africa
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  with a self bow. So that was like the coolest
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  thing that's ever happened to me and was a real blast, so.
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  What were you hunting? Originally they said anything
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  and then I got there and all of a sudden there are a lot of
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  rules of what I could. I was like, oh, there's a young
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  zebra. I'm going to take a shot at the
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  zebra and they're like, you can't shoot a zebra.
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  It looks like people love horses and I'm like, don't shoot
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  anything. And then I'm like, I'll shoot a
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  baboon and they're like, you can't shoot a baboon that looks
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  like a human monster. Like I'm starving, like I will
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  eat anything right now. So they were kudu.
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  I only had my bow, was only pulling like 52.
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  And so I didn't feel good about taking some of the larger
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  animals. But really, I actually only was
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  getting a good looks at Impala, which are very similar to
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  whitetail almost exactly. Thighs replace antlers with
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  horns and you pretty much got Impala.
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  So yeah, so that was the main thing I ended up hunting.
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  What self bow are you using? One that you made or one of they
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  provided. One I made yeah, yeah, don't I
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  would not trust Hollywood to give you a good I've learned
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  anything about Hollywood. And so it's I got to yeah, I got
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  to teach them everything. And that was the that was part
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  of the journey was not only was I hunting in a land I didn't
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  know with a self bow, you know, while starving and butt ass
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  naked with lions and hyenas all around.
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  You know, I had a camera crew following me, never haunted a
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  day in their life. And they're like, I remember
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  sitting on Dave Cherie. I'm like sitting in this little
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  blind, this little like understory where like litter
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  leopards and lions use in an as an ambush spot.
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  And I'm sitting there. I'm just waiting all day, you
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  know, just chilling, waiting at the water hole where the Impala
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  and animals come in for a drink all of a sudden and there's
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  slime roan over me from what? What the fuck are y'all doing?
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  He scared away all the animals for like 3 days you know, so it
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  was ridiculous. No, I've not seen this show.
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  What's the Do you put on clothes at any point?
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  Do you get to make your own clothes or is it you just?
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  Want to that's. Part of it you just got to stay
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  naked. No, it's, it's like I said,
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  it's, it's I'm, I'm so lucky and so blessed that I got to go on
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  the show because I get to travel.
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  I went to Namibia, I went to Colombia, I went to South
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  Africa. I got to hunt, you know, like,
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  come on, this is amazing. And the TV show, in my opinion,
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  is a little sticky. You know, it's like if Luke
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  doesn't survive tonight, you know, it's like super dramatic.
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  I'm like, it's already dramatic. I'm starving.
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  There are lions next to me, You know, they're not helping me
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  out. It's intense.
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  And but it is a, it's a, it's, you know, it's a little sticky
• 18:15
  for my, my, my taste, but. So the camera crew follows you
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  everywhere. Yes and no.
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  That last one I did 21 days in South Africa with my bow.
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  They it was the pilot for this new thing where they're like,
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  oh, we're going to have it be alone.
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  And then I'm like being followed around by a camera crew.
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  I mean, some of it was safety because the lions and you know,
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  there's a giant dude with an elephant gun next to me at all
• 18:40
  times because it's it that dangerous?
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  But eventually they were like, you know, I got pissy because I
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  was hungry and I'm just like, y'all leave like I can like
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  every day. They'd come with like freshly
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  linen clothes and I could like smell them from like a mile
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  away. I'm a rub an elephant shit on
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  me, you know, and I can smell they're like laundry detergent.
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  I'm like, get the fuck. Like let me hunt.
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  Let me actually be alone, you know, Eventually I ended up
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  being alone, just sitting in trees all day, basically just
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  waiting for the Impala to come. So while you're starving, what
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  they're having like lunch breaks and catered meals are coming in,
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  they're. Basically, yeah, yeah, they,
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  they were, they were sweet. Most of the crew is super,
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  super, super sweet. And it sucks to watch people
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  suffer, you know? And they would be in there like
• 19:31
  lodge or the the hotel at night and it's like raining all night.
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  And they're thinking of me, you know, just like huddled around a
• 19:38
  fire, shivering. And then they come in the
• 19:40
  morning and they're like, oh, dude, I'm so sorry.
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  You know, like they want to help.
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  You can see their hearts are breaking and you know, like,
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  yeah, they're just like there's a little safety spot, you know,
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  where all the crews hanging out like 1/2 mile away and they're
• 19:54
  grilling and grilling food. And, you know, so both I, I
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  fasted for so long, I didn't have a lot of food both times in
• 20:02
  Africa for like, I don't know, 10 days, 14 days, I didn't eat
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  hardly anything. And my sense is like.
• 20:10
  Kicked up a notch, like an unbelievable amount.
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  And I would, we used to play a game where the camera crew would
• 20:15
  come in and then I'd be like, for, for lunch today you had
• 20:20
  bacon and Turkey sandwiches. And like, I was like getting it
• 20:24
  right. Like it was insane how powerful
• 20:27
  my sniffer was because I was starting and this primal animal
• 20:31
  body comes online. You know, my vision, my senses,
• 20:35
  my yeah, my ability to sit still.
• 20:37
  I was, I was a different creature.
• 20:39
  So it's pretty fun. Is he?
• 20:41
  Yeah. Back to the original question,
• 20:44
  your answer was bow building and hunting.
• 20:47
  What? What I'm I'm not a hunter, So
• 20:50
  what aspect of the hunt beyond or is it all just that
• 20:53
  connection to the nature or is there something beyond that that
• 20:57
  is therapeutic for you? Yeah.
• 21:00
  I mean, how much time we got? It's like lots of got.
• 21:05
  At least an hour. Let's see.
• 21:10
  I'm not done 4 hour episodes so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:13
  No, I'm not going. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that
• 21:15
  to you. I think for me it's I'm, I'm not
• 21:22
  a very good hunter, you know, like the animal number of
• 21:25
  animals I've taken with self bows has been limited.
• 21:27
  You just play 1 on TV. Yeah, exactly.
• 21:30
  Those are my first self bow kills.
• 21:33
  Wow. We're on TV Make it seem like
• 21:37
  I'm like some sort of professional and like it's
• 21:40
  hilarious to. I'm just like, Oh my God, I
• 21:42
  can't like, but it was, I think it was because I was starving.
• 21:47
  Like that's how I got, I had no business to having as much
• 21:51
  success as I did. And I think it's part of that
• 21:56
  process. So like, yeah.
• 21:57
  So why is hunting? It's just, it's just feels
• 21:59
  spiritual to me. It just feels like it's, it's a
• 22:03
  natural consequence hunting, you know, in order to have a
• 22:07
  successful hunt, you have to be 100% per like everything has a
• 22:11
  million things have to line up, including my arrow and including
• 22:15
  my scent and including the way I walked into my stand and
• 22:18
  including, you know, how noisy I was.
• 22:21
  And if I'm just off just that much, you know, like it just
• 22:24
  doesn't work. It falls apart.
• 22:26
  And so it's like this very like young, like masculine, if I'm
• 22:30
  going to use those words like challenge, you know, that
• 22:33
  nature's like, Nope. Like if you don't, if you are
• 22:35
  not 100% awake and aware and intentional, it's not going to
• 22:39
  work. And I just love that like
• 22:41
  natural challenge. Yeah.
• 22:45
  It's, it's so hard and everything put together.
• 22:48
  And so it just feels so rewarding when it finally does
• 22:53
  come together. Yeah.
• 22:55
  Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of like the
• 22:57
  Japanese concept of one mind motion, which is just like
• 23:02
  you're, you're in it. There's nothing else.
• 23:04
  You're fully immersed. Everything is online and you're
• 23:09
  connected. You're connected.
• 23:11
  Yeah, what I would what modern psychology calls flow state,
• 23:14
  what ancient people would call trance state, Right.
• 23:18
  Like I was saying, like getting out of our, we get stuck in our
• 23:20
  minds. Like our minds are our greatest
• 23:22
  strength as a species and our minds are our greatest weakness,
• 23:25
  you know, like we get stuck in there, we get stuck in stories.
• 23:27
  It's all made-up, you know, But when you're like truly in it,
• 23:32
  I'm in the in state for several days or weeks.
• 23:36
  It's just the most therapeutic thing I think I could.
• 23:39
  Yeah, I can name or do in my life.
• 23:42
  Yeah, people often mention that too when they're doing
• 23:44
  something, especially like a sport or an activity where they
• 23:47
  just get immersed in it. Like for me, I used to do a lot
• 23:49
  of rock climbing and when I'm, when I'm up there, I'm not
• 23:52
  thinking about anything else other than what am I holding on
• 23:56
  to and where's my next move? Because it's scary.
• 23:58
  You know, no matter how much I I did it, it was still like there
• 24:01
  was an element of fear to that. And so I was immersed a lot of
• 24:05
  people, you know, archery surfing on every day when I'm
• 24:08
  surfing, like that's what I'm doing.
• 24:10
  I'm just surfing. And so getting in that flow
• 24:13
  state is, I think sadly, it must be something that a lot of
• 24:17
  people don't experience on a regular basis, which I find just
• 24:22
  devastating really, because I think it's so important for us
• 24:25
  to have that connection and to be immersed in whatever it is
• 24:29
  that we're doing that we're passionate about.
• 24:31
  And I find it just, it's, I think it's society.
• 24:36
  It's like what we have created this sense of you've got to do
• 24:39
  the, you've got to do the things that you don't want to do so you
• 24:43
  can make the money, so you can buy the things that you don't
• 24:46
  need. And it's none of it is about
• 24:49
  holistic survival. It's all manufactured survival.
• 24:53
  But they're not, most people aren't surviving.
• 24:56
  They're, they're suffering. And it's, it's really sad to see
• 25:00
  what's happening. So something like Bo carving, it
• 25:05
  just brings us back into that, you know, that primeval
• 25:08
  practice, that our primitive practice that our ancestors have
• 25:12
  done for literally like 10 millennia.
• 25:16
  And so it's it's wild. It's really like, yeah, yeah.
• 25:21
  I feel for people who don't get to experience that.
• 25:24
  Totally. Yeah.
• 25:25
  I mean, it's I think you're, I think you're nailing it and I
• 25:28
  couldn't agree more. And I think it's an essential
• 25:33
  part of human survival to be entrance in one form or another.
• 25:37
  It's so important that people around the world would do crazy
• 25:42
  painful shit together to get into trance.
• 25:46
  You know, like, hey, let's put mittens on with fire ants
• 25:51
  around. You know, like, hey, let's do a
• 25:54
  circumcision at 12, you know, like crazy what we would
• 25:57
  consider crazy stuff now in our modern times.
• 26:00
  But, you know, the Comfort Crisis is one of my favorite
• 26:02
  books. And he talks about, you know,
• 26:04
  like, we're just living in comfort and we're all like, numb
• 26:08
  because of it. And if we were being hunted by
• 26:10
  an animal like we were for most of human history, like when I
• 26:13
  was in Africa, if I didn't pay attention, you know, like I, I
• 26:17
  could be in trouble. And yeah.
• 26:20
  The Bushmen who still live in their traditional ways in Africa
• 26:23
  talk about that all the time. Like, Oh yeah, well, we have to
• 26:26
  be aware and awake and not numb because there's danger right
• 26:30
  there. And my reframe is like, we don't
• 26:32
  have lions and tigers and all that shit anymore, for most of
• 26:35
  us in the Americas at least. But culture eats your soul.
• 26:39
  If you don't pay attention, your soul will be devoured by the
• 26:43
  bullshit and by the 9:00 to 5:00 and all that crap.
• 26:47
  And so it's like guard it with your life because it is your
• 26:50
  life. So that's why I want people to
• 26:53
  get outside and go on adventures on how to build bullshit.
• 26:56
  Well said. So back to the original question
• 26:59
  again at this time, let's apply it to no, I want to apply this
• 27:03
  now to the people who actually come to the survival school.
• 27:06
  Have you found of all the offerings in your so-called
• 27:09
  smorgasbord, are there any that you're like, OK, this one has
• 27:14
  the greatest impact generally with the most people?
• 27:18
  Yeah, I say making fire from your landscape fire, fire.
• 27:24
  Yep, friction fire. So bow drill, hand drill.
• 27:28
  How do we rub 2 sticks together to make a fire?
• 27:31
  Because the the impact of fire on our nervous system is
• 27:37
  unmatched. It, you know, you when you sit
• 27:39
  around a campfire, There's, there's literally science has
• 27:42
  proven that we have a different brain wave.
• 27:45
  Like, you know, there's alpha waves and make Oh my God, and
• 27:47
  all those different meditation waves.
• 27:49
  When you sit around a fire, there's a different brain wave
• 27:51
  that your brain functions differently.
• 27:54
  And since, you know, our ancestors have been sitting
• 27:56
  around a fire for millions of years, multiple million, it's,
• 28:01
  it's just so powerful and to like carve and to make and to
• 28:05
  pay attention and to like have to rely on the resources around
• 28:09
  you. I think it's the like quickest
• 28:12
  and fastest way for people to feel connected to themselves, to
• 28:16
  their efforts, to their landscape, to ceremony, if you
• 28:19
  want to call it that. Bow building is great, but it's
• 28:23
  limiting and tool usage and strength.
• 28:27
  And, you know, I teach a lot of beginners and it's like it's,
• 28:29
  it's a high, there's a high threshold to get to it, to want
• 28:34
  to do it, you know, and fire building I think is a little,
• 28:37
  little lower, you know, it's like easier to get into.
• 28:41
  So yeah, the number one. OK, Yeah.
• 28:45
  And I guess there's not really the same penalty system for
• 28:49
  making mistakes in fire building.
• 28:50
  It's either you have a fire or you don't, and until you have
• 28:54
  one, you keep going. But with bow building, you don't
• 28:57
  that that doesn't apply. Yeah, you might go a bit too far
• 29:01
  on One Piece and end up with a broken stick.
• 29:04
  Right, and you just spent 40 hours, you know, like 40 hours
• 29:07
  for beginners. Pretty common for a bow, you
• 29:09
  know, from start to finish. And they're like, I spent 40
• 29:12
  hours and like now I'm defeated. Now I'm like, fuck, fuck this.
• 29:15
  I don't ever want to do this again, you know.
• 29:16
  So bow building or fireman, you're like, yeah, go get
• 29:20
  another stick. We'll we'll try again.
• 29:21
  So it's a little more inter friendly I'd say.
• 29:25
  And have you seen, I'm sure you have seen the transformative
• 29:28
  impact of bow building, despite what we just said, I'm sure
• 29:31
  there are some people who have massively resonated with it.
• 29:35
  Absolutely. Oh, my goodness.
• 29:36
  Yes, Yeah, it's yeah. The draw to, you know, make your
• 29:42
  own bow and shoot. It is.
• 29:45
  It's just so primal, you know, people just come to me and
• 29:48
  they're like they're working 9:00 to fives and they're like,
• 29:51
  I have. I've never done any primitive
• 29:53
  skills. I don't know I saw all the
• 29:55
  classes you offer and I need to do this one and I'm like hey,
• 29:59
  this is really intense class like you up for it.
• 30:02
  You know they're just like I have to be because my soul is
• 30:05
  like demanding make my own bow. I'm like, great, as long as you
• 30:09
  got that and as long as, you know, like some people need the
• 30:11
  big challenge, you know, but absolutely.
• 30:14
  I mean, that trance state, like we talked about at the end of
• 30:17
  four days, I'm like, hey, y'all, like we just went through four
• 30:19
  days. Like, do you remember the first
• 30:21
  day? And everyone just like, it's
• 30:23
  like a time warp, you know, like what just happened?
• 30:26
  Then all of a sudden, like, you know, they're flinging their
• 30:28
  first arrows and they're just like, I love seeing that moment
• 30:31
  the first time. You know, they shoot their bow
• 30:33
  and those arrows fly. They're just like, I can't
• 30:36
  believe I did this, you know? So yeah, that's definitely one
• 30:39
  of my favorite parts as a Boyer. Cool.
• 30:42
  I could, I could ask you tons of questions about all the other
• 30:44
  things that you do. But I guess the next 30 minutes
• 30:47
  anyway, that's kind of drill it down more into bow crafts and
• 30:50
  that's what most of our listeners are interested in.
• 30:53
  What are you making primarily? How like do you have particular
• 30:58
  styles that you like to make a bows, particular woods you like
• 31:01
  to work with? Just take me, take it away.
• 31:04
  Yeah, I I am all Osage all the time after that first bow just
• 31:11
  hearing, yeah, the stories and the connection to Osage, I've
• 31:15
  never really messed with anything else.
• 31:17
  And part of me feels guilty for that like, but I'm just like, I
• 31:20
  just love it too much. I harvest my own staves, which
• 31:25
  is I think different than a lot of people teaching classes.
• 31:29
  And that's one of the things I really pride myself on is like
• 31:31
  every year it's a ceremony need to go and find Osage doesn't
• 31:35
  grow abundantly around me. So I got to go on a little
• 31:38
  pilgrimage with my good buddy and Co teacher and we, yeah, we
• 31:43
  go talk to the trees, you know, walk lands, form relationships
• 31:48
  with people. But yeah, So what I'm building,
• 31:51
  I'm I'm mostly you know what, what I what I'm strong.
• 31:55
  I'll say what I most experienced in is, is staves, kind of a lot
• 31:59
  of Osage find a lot of staves and then teaching, you know,
• 32:03
  that's where I feel like I've taught so many people how to
• 32:06
  build their first bow. You know, I got a handful of
• 32:09
  bows under my belt, but I think it's really cool to learn the
• 32:12
  process through teaching. So we're mostly making flat
• 32:16
  bows, you know, nothing too crazy, you know, for beginners,
• 32:20
  you know, 60 to 68 inch bow. Flat bow.
• 32:25
  Yeah. So nothing too crazy design
• 32:27
  wise. Trying to trying to become a
• 32:30
  good flat bow Boyer before I get too much into recurves.
• 32:33
  I mess with recurves and yeah, I got humbled pretty quickly a few
• 32:38
  years back. But yeah, I got some Recurs back
• 32:41
  here that are better shooting Great.
• 32:42
  So yeah. So that's that's primarily Osage
• 32:45
  flat bows. OK.
• 32:47
  Are you finding the Osage in North Carolina or are you
• 32:49
  heading more West? We.
• 32:51
  Have some down in the Piedmont, so down the mountains.
• 32:54
  I'm in Asheville, up in the mountains.
• 32:55
  We have some that are remnants of old homesteads.
• 32:59
  There's one Monster, Osage. It's probably 250 years old,
• 33:03
  close to me. I go and visit every now and
• 33:05
  then. But primarily I've harvested
• 33:10
  Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio.
• 33:16
  These are all the places, some in Georgia.
• 33:19
  And I love, I love the story of Osage.
• 33:22
  You know, like, how when you find it, it's like, oh, it's
• 33:25
  remnants of, you know, old homesteads and old farms.
• 33:29
  And when I still find it, it's often like, in a straight row,
• 33:32
  you know, it's a hedge row that people were planting to keep
• 33:34
  their animals in. And so, yeah, I love that
• 33:38
  history of, you know, originally spread by megafauna and then now
• 33:41
  it's like we are the megafauna. Like I am with the humans were
• 33:44
  the ones that spread it. So yeah.
• 33:47
  So we go on fun, fun trips to go sniff it out and see if we can't
• 33:50
  find any. And what's the harvesting like?
• 33:53
  Are you on public land or you asking private land owners about
• 33:58
  harvesting? Yeah, almost always private land
• 34:01
  owners. I talk about and obsess about
• 34:05
  Osage enough. Like it is my, like, sacred
• 34:07
  planet, you know? So I'm just like, talk about it
• 34:09
  all the time. And people are like, oh, Luke's
• 34:11
  the Osage guy, you know? And so someone would be like,
• 34:14
  Oh, my family's got a farm in Kentucky, and they hate Osage,
• 34:18
  you know, and it's a nasty tree. And I'm just like, like, this is
• 34:22
  it? No.
• 34:23
  And I get to the land and there's like, whatever you want.
• 34:25
  I hate this tree. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh,
• 34:28
  Like how, you know, And I think it's changing.
• 34:31
  I think there's, you know, from my experience in the last 10
• 34:34
  years, there seems to be a big growing self bow Osage, you
• 34:38
  know, acceptance and understanding of it.
• 34:41
  So yeah. So it's private land.
• 34:43
  We get to walk and we're really lucky.
• 34:45
  So once again, human relationships are formed from
• 34:47
  this, from this, you know, obsession.
• 34:50
  So. Yeah, I haven't had much
• 34:51
  experience with Osage in nature. Is it?
• 34:54
  Does it dominate the landscape where it grows?
• 34:59
  Sometimes what I where when it's abundant, it's very abundant and
• 35:05
  it from my experience it where it's abundant is really rocky
• 35:12
  limestone rich soils. So it's where other trees it it
• 35:18
  can compete with other trees ish, but not super well.
• 35:22
  So where it really thrives is limestone soils, which is cool
• 35:26
  because limestone is the chemical reaction of created
• 35:31
  creation of chert or Flint, right.
• 35:33
  So Flint nappable stones, what I make my arrow out of.
• 35:36
  So when I go to these landscapes and there's limestone, I know
• 35:38
  there's chert nearby and then I know there's Osage near.
• 35:42
  And so I'm like, Oh, I'm in the rich.
• 35:45
  All my things are right here in one spot.
• 35:47
  That's cool. Yeah.
• 35:48
  So they do pretty well there when other trees don't do as
• 35:51
  well. So I'll see them on rocky
• 35:52
  outcrops. You know, Osage has more silica
• 35:55
  in it, which is what chert is also made of.
• 35:57
  And so it's like this, you know, to get a little woo woo on it.
• 36:01
  It's like the bridge between the rocks and the living things.
• 36:06
  You know, it's like, it's like rock tree like really does
• 36:10
  bridge the gap between the living and not living in my
• 36:13
  opinion. And they get pretty big, right?
• 36:17
  They can. Yeah, they can.
• 36:19
  I'd the last one we just harvested in the Raleigh,
• 36:23
  Durham, I guess Durham area, North Carolina.
• 36:25
  This last year, my buddy and I, we we found some monsters big
• 36:29
  beautiful Osage. And I'd say it was, I think it
• 36:33
  was 22 inches in diameter, which is big for an Osage.
• 36:37
  And it's probably, I don't know, 25 feet tall, 30 feet tall.
• 36:42
  So decent for Osage. But Osage tends to grow like
• 36:46
  this, you know, it tends to twist and spin and not and flex.
• 36:51
  Yeah. So to find the straight one, my
• 36:53
  buddy and I are walking, you know, 500 looking at 500 trees
• 36:57
  before we pick one if we're lucky.
• 37:00
  Wow, I know you're only working with straight ones.
• 37:02
  Or do you work with snaky ones as well?
• 37:04
  Snaky's fine, right? So Snaky would be like this
• 37:07
  where it's like still growing. Still relatively linear, yeah.
• 37:11
  Relatively in the same center of mass as we go.
• 37:15
  But yeah, we're any twists. It's doable.
• 37:17
  But like I said, most of the staves I'm using, I have
• 37:20
  whatever 300 staves sitting out there right now and drying and
• 37:23
  in the process. And the vast majority of those
• 37:26
  are going to be for students. OK, students need are pretty
• 37:30
  Dang straight Osage. Yeah.
• 37:34
  So how many? That's a lot.
• 37:35
  How many students are you having coming through on?
• 37:39
  I don't know if you're calling it monthly, annual basis.
• 37:41
  I don't. I don't know what year.
• 37:42
  Class is a year, it's a big push.
• 37:44
  So I don't, I don't tend to do too many.
• 37:48
  I get 20 to probably 20 to 30 students a year.
• 37:51
  So 20 to 30 staves is what I need minimum, you know, and I
• 37:56
  need to let them drive for a couple years.
• 37:57
  So every year I'm trying to get at least one big big tree maybe,
• 38:01
  hopefully with a couple sections, but yeah, minimum of
• 38:05
  12 or something. In all other Bowood gets the
• 38:11
  snub. Yeah, my buddies, my other Boyer
• 38:15
  buddies make fun of me because I got like, I got locust, I got
• 38:18
  Hickory. It's grown in my backyard, you
• 38:20
  know, And they're like, dude, you're supposed to be connected
• 38:22
  to your landscape. And these like epic journeys to
• 38:25
  go find Osage. And I'm like, I just just just
• 38:29
  what, you know, one day I'll get there.
• 38:31
  You know, I want to build some, do some primitive builds, you
• 38:33
  know, so I want to build like with stone tools, you know, I'm
• 38:36
  working towards that. And so I think Hickory would be
• 38:39
  a little more forgiving in some ways not but yeah, so I'll get
• 38:44
  there. I got a whole bunch of Elm.
• 38:46
  I got Mulberry. I'm in, I'm in such a rich tree
• 38:48
  area. I got, you know.
• 38:51
  Hoping to have it. And so I'm sure one day I won't
• 38:53
  be able to go on such epic adventures and have to make.
• 38:57
  Mulberry and Osage are the same family, right So.
• 39:01
  Yep, yeah, yeah, Locust acts really similarly.
• 39:04
  A little weaker impression for my understanding.
• 39:08
  OK. And then are these very basic
• 39:11
  primitive, Not basic, not in a bad way.
• 39:14
  Are these very primitive bows? Are you putting any grips on
• 39:18
  them? Any tip overlays Any.
• 39:21
  Yeah, I. Flare.
• 39:23
  I love, you know, like this one here.
• 39:26
  I love like just like super simple.
• 39:28
  I love, you know, just seeing all the Osage lines and growth
• 39:32
  rings and so I tend to just I don't cut a shelf.
• 39:35
  I'm shooting off a knuckle, you know, got the Dean Torgis style.
• 39:39
  That was one of Todd Smith's my teachers influenced Dean Torgis
• 39:42
  handles. I just like them, you know,
• 39:45
  super simple. I do tan my own leather, you
• 39:48
  know, so when I started like capitalism is a funny thing,
• 39:52
  when I started trying to sell a few bows, I was like, well, I
• 39:54
  got to make these look fancier, you know, so this is some deer
• 39:57
  deer leather that I've tanned trying to think, do I have Osage
• 40:03
  also tans, you can make leather with Osage, which is another
• 40:06
  like love of mine leather making.
• 40:09
  And so just another cool thing about Osage.
• 40:12
  But now they're pretty simple, You know, I, I, I try to get
• 40:15
  people shooting off the knuckle. I guess I'm a.
• 40:18
  Knox. Yep, self knocks.
• 40:21
  Yep, Yep. And mostly because once again,
• 40:23
  it's a class and I'm just like, I don't, we don't have time to
• 40:25
  do, you know, yeah. So just making sure they don't
• 40:29
  mess up their bow. That's mostly the bow classes,
• 40:31
  like don't mess it up, just keep going and don't mess it up.
• 40:35
  So. And outside of that work, how
• 40:37
  often are you making a bow? I make about two a year.
• 40:42
  It's not a ton, you know, but I've been elk hunting the last
• 40:48
  few years. I've been making a new bow every
• 40:50
  year for my elk hunts. I go out to Wyoming and get to
• 40:52
  hunt on some land out there and that's been really fun.
• 40:56
  So, yeah. So I, like I said, I'm, I'm a
• 40:58
  Jack of all trades, you know, I, I feel self-conscious about how,
• 41:02
  how many or how few bows I've made in the last, you know,
• 41:05
  number of years. But teaching is really where,
• 41:08
  yeah, teaching in state. So you know.
• 41:11
  Well, there's a lot of teachers of very many disciplines and
• 41:14
  crafts who are far better teachers than they are in the
• 41:17
  actual discipline, so. That's actually, you know,
• 41:19
  that's like one of my big takes is when I first got in the
• 41:22
  skills scene, there were so many.
• 41:24
  The people who are teaching were the ones who could do it because
• 41:27
  there was the only people, you know, the only person who knew
• 41:30
  out of tan hides. They were the teacher, whether
• 41:33
  or not they were a good teacher or not, just because they knew
• 41:35
  the skill. And so I really love pedagogy
• 41:38
  and understanding how to make this skill, you know, the skills
• 41:41
  intimidating. And it's like, I want to be
• 41:43
  really friendly. I want to get more people in the
• 41:44
  door. I want to build this community.
• 41:46
  So how do I actually make it approachable for people and
• 41:49
  understand it? Yeah.
• 41:53
  And make it accessible. So I really love that process,
• 41:57
  whether it be Flint knapping or bow building.
• 41:59
  Just like, yeah, what's what's, what's the best way to convey
• 42:03
  this information? Yeah, are you with your Flint
• 42:08
  knapping? Are you actually making
• 42:09
  arrowheads? Yeah, yeah, that's what I've
• 42:12
  been hunting with the last. Really.
• 42:14
  Your own Flint? Wow.
• 42:15
  OK. Yeah, yeah, I.
• 42:17
  That's cool, I take it to a whole another level.
• 42:20
  Yeah, this is, you know, like this is the strength and the
• 42:24
  weakness of my idealism is, you know, it's pushed me in like
• 42:27
  such beautiful ways to get all my stuff, like really tuned in.
• 42:32
  And it limits my limits, my success.
• 42:35
  You know, I have like a running total of like how many animals
• 42:38
  would I have killed if I had or, you know, but yeah, I, I Flint,
• 42:44
  Flint at my own points and have been hunting with those elk
• 42:47
  hunting and pig hunting. Yeah.
• 42:49
  So that's, that's the next level for me.
• 42:53
  I, I, I, you know, I pick up like roadkill.
• 42:55
  Like people are like, oh, if I want meat, I'm like, well, I got
• 42:58
  roadkill all over. I pick up deer all the time.
• 43:00
  There's like during rut, I'm picking up, you know, four or
• 43:03
  five deer a year and just like it, that's my freezer.
• 43:05
  Great. And now that leaves hunting to
• 43:07
  be my spiritual pursuit, the thing that push kills.
• 43:11
  How do I make my bows faster? How do I make my Arrowhead
• 43:13
  sharper? How do I make my arrows, you
• 43:15
  know, more pristine? So yeah, yeah, I got.
• 43:19
  One under. My life, yeah.
• 43:21
  So there's some Danish, Danish Flint.
• 43:23
  I went to Denmark. Wow, yeah, that looks sharp.
• 43:26
  Yeah, this is some river cane, our native bamboo species, So
• 43:29
  OK, yeah, that's one example. I was next going to ask about
• 43:35
  flesh and EUR, so that's one of Euros.
• 43:37
  Yeah, yeah. Beauty.
• 43:39
  Yeah, OK. And how long have you been Flint
• 43:43
  napping? About 10 years more seriously,
• 43:49
  I'd say about 8/20/20 and the, the the lockdowns were the best
• 43:56
  thing for my Flint knapping. Got everything that was just I
• 43:59
  got to sit at home and just really break a lot of rocks.
• 44:02
  Had a lot of good teachers. Yes, I'm living some some past
• 44:06
  now. And yeah, but it's bow building
• 44:10
  is hard. Like there's, it's a 3
• 44:12
  dimensionality. You got to listen to the wood.
• 44:14
  You know, there's like all these beautiful qualities of learning
• 44:17
  how to build a really pretty bow that also shoots well.
• 44:20
  But Flint knapping is of all the skills I teach, Flint knapping
• 44:23
  is a million times harder. It's just, it's such a
• 44:27
  challenge. Yeah, that's something Ryan
• 44:30
  Gautier was telling me, that after 30 or 40 bows, he felt
• 44:35
  like he was fairly proficient as a Bowyer.
• 44:38
  Flint knapping, he's like, he's never going to get there.
• 44:41
  Like it's something that's just, you do it again and again and
• 44:44
  again and again and again, and it's so much to learn, so much
• 44:48
  challenge. Yeah, it's, it's, I say it's a
• 44:51
  Rubik's Cube that changes every time you adjust it.
• 44:56
  So it's like I shift the Rubik's Cube and then the colors jump
• 44:59
  around. So I have to reread it again.
• 45:02
  Every time I strike it, it changes the, the way this, the
• 45:06
  energy is going to travel through the stone plus or minus.
• 45:08
  And so it's just every stone is different.
• 45:11
  You hit it with a different thing.
• 45:13
  It reacts differently. It breaks differently.
• 45:16
  Yeah, it's it's insane. It's it's, it's stupid, really.
• 45:21
  So to have time for pursuing such challenging pursuits and
• 45:29
  hobbies, is this what you're doing full time?
• 45:32
  You're a holistic survival school and yeah, so basically
• 45:36
  your life is this is it. It's figuring out these things,
• 45:39
  learning how to live off the land and be self-sufficient, and
• 45:43
  learning these hard. Skills.
• 45:44
  Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's I'm so lucky.
• 45:48
  I don't know how I got so lucky, but yeah, I, I play with sticks
• 45:54
  and stones for a living and then, you know, like, get so
• 45:57
  stoked. Like my excitement, my job is to
• 46:01
  get so excited that other people get excited about sticks and
• 46:04
  stones and the whole world that, you know, we think was dumb,
• 46:08
  dumb savages made these things. And I'm like, do you see how
• 46:12
  genius this is and how beautiful it is?
• 46:15
  And yeah, it's, that's my life. So pretty sweet.
• 46:19
  Are you doing all the building then on?
• 46:22
  Do you have? Are you on land that you own?
• 46:25
  I do, yeah. I got 20 acres up in the
• 46:27
  mountains just just north of Asheville.
• 46:30
  My classes, I have a buddy who's a timber framer just down the
• 46:35
  road. So Asheville, NC is kind of a
• 46:38
  Mecca for these skills. So kind of stumbled upon this
• 46:42
  place and you know, a lot of my neighbors are into rewilding and
• 46:46
  unschooling and skills and you know, and grief rituals and
• 46:51
  ancestral lifeways and like, you name it, you know what's going
• 46:54
  on. And so my timber frame buddy,
• 46:57
  he, he wanted to get into traditional archery and self
• 47:00
  bows. And so I'm like, hey, let's,
• 47:01
  let's do a trade. And so he's really generous and
• 47:03
  lets us use his beautiful timber frame two-story barn and he's
• 47:09
  got all the tools and band saws. And so it's a great, it's a
• 47:12
  great connection. So you build a lot of the the
• 47:17
  buildings on your property then? Or all of them.
• 47:19
  I don't. My buddy's in the timber frame
• 47:21
  and yeah. I'm sure you've been helping,
• 47:23
  right? Him timber framing.
• 47:26
  Yeah, no. No, I got, I'm like I got a
• 47:30
  Flint nap, man. I got to learn.
• 47:32
  I'm busy. He's doing his craft, I'm doing.
• 47:36
  No, he's got his own business. That's his job.
• 47:38
  A lot of my buddies, I got a couple buddies that work over
• 47:40
  there, you know, work for him, but it's a whole another skill
• 47:44
  set. Like that's what I say.
• 47:45
  Like I'm I get FOMO because I'm like, I want to learn this
• 47:47
  skill. I want to learn this skill.
• 47:49
  You know, I want, I'd love to do timber framing in another life.
• 47:51
  I'm like, I would love to. And I'm like, yeah, like this
• 47:55
  bows and Flint knapping and high tanning and fire making.
• 47:58
  That's more than enough for my lifetime.
• 48:01
  And I'm still just an amateur in it, you know, So I love.
• 48:05
  That with all of those that you mentioned except for fire, now
• 48:08
  our fire making, I can see the never ending complexity and
• 48:14
  growth at fire making. Is that something where you're
• 48:17
  still learning no matter how many times you've done it?
• 48:19
  It's tell me more about that. Yeah.
• 48:26
  I mean, just infinite possibilities, infinite
• 48:28
  combinations of woods that can work, right?
• 48:31
  And then there's like when I first started building fires
• 48:36
  from the land, you know, I thought it was like this
• 48:39
  disposable thing, you know, like, oh, I'm just gonna like
• 48:42
  make a bow drill kit and then use it and then throw it away,
• 48:45
  you know? But it's really similar to bow
• 48:47
  building that if I am truly listening to the qualities of
• 48:52
  the wood and the seasons, when I harvest it, I end up feeling
• 48:56
  more like a really like fancy gourmet chef, right?
• 48:59
  Where I'm like, oh, this ingredient and this ingredient
• 49:01
  and this ingredient. So there's just like infinite
• 49:04
  combinations of how to make fire, how to do it with limited
• 49:08
  tools, what season to harvest this plant.
• 49:13
  And then that's not even, that's just gathering the materials,
• 49:16
  you know, and what's my like, mindset?
• 49:17
  What's my, what's my state as I'm gathering these materials?
• 49:20
  But then when I actually go to do it, right?
• 49:23
  So like, what, what is my, how, how is my body moving?
• 49:27
  How am I, you know, like it, I call it inner and outer games,
• 49:30
  right? There's the outer game of making
• 49:32
  the fire. That's one game to play.
• 49:34
  But then what's my inner game? How is my mindset?
• 49:36
  What am I noticing? How am I reacting to my failure?
• 49:40
  It's all just a game of awareness because there's so
• 49:43
  many things that can go wrong with fire making.
• 49:45
  So it's really just paying attention.
• 49:48
  And in my mind, it's praying. You know, I think it's the
• 49:50
  original prayer. This is like one of my shticks,
• 49:54
  you know, one of my like favorite things to talk about
• 49:57
  when we're doing hand drill, you know, I get down on one knee.
• 49:59
  I put my hands together to make the spindle spin.
• 50:03
  And then I I go, I bow over and over and over.
• 50:07
  And I'm like, you do that posture anywhere in the world,
• 50:11
  everyone's going to say, oh, you're praying like that is the
• 50:13
  prayer posture. So my hypothesis is that this
• 50:17
  hand drill fire posture was the original prayer.
• 50:21
  And it's like we pray this way because that's how you make fire
• 50:24
  the old way. Interesting.
• 50:26
  Who knows if it's true, but I'm just like it is sure.
• 50:29
  It is. That sounds true.
• 50:30
  Yeah. Let's just go.
• 50:32
  The way you describe it, it sounds very true.
• 50:34
  Let's just go with it, don't question it.
• 50:38
  Wow. And so when you are doing this,
• 50:42
  are you, you know, had to pardon my total ignorance about fire
• 50:47
  making. Are you gathering all of your
• 50:50
  resources each time? You're not, you don't have any
• 50:53
  sort of kit that you're carrying with you.
• 50:55
  It's like fire building. You're starting from scratch.
• 50:59
  No, like I said it, it's it's kind of like when I get the good
• 51:03
  stuff, I'll bring that with me. You know, it is a fun challenge
• 51:06
  to build it from the land every time, but it's just like, like
• 51:10
  if you, you know, build a bow every time you go out, like
• 51:13
  that's exhausting. And the same as, yeah, might do
• 51:16
  it. But that's that's a lot of work.
• 51:18
  So when I get the good stuff, I bring it with me.
• 51:21
  But there's also the argument why not just you just use a
• 51:24
  lighter. So you're you're, you're
• 51:26
  choosing to go about it in a very complicated way.
• 51:31
  Obviously there are reasons for that.
• 51:34
  So I guess why why would you bring the good stuff with a kit
• 51:40
  versus no, I'm doing this from the earth every time it just
• 51:47
  seems like you're, you're either like all in or you just flicking
• 51:51
  a lighter and lighting it. Why would there be that in
• 51:53
  between? Uh huh.
• 51:56
  Well, I think it's a spectrum, you know, like I think with
• 52:00
  Boyers, especially when you get in the premier skills scene,
• 52:05
  it's like people are like, oh, I don't want to use a compound.
• 52:09
  And then there's a spectrum of like super modern, right, and
• 52:12
  super primitive. And then people think they're
• 52:14
  super primitive. And I'm like, how did you make
• 52:16
  that bow? What steel tools did you use?
• 52:19
  How did you cut that tree? And they're like, oh, with a
• 52:21
  chainsaw. And I used a draw knife.
• 52:23
  And I'm like, yeah, you're only here on the spectrum of
• 52:25
  primitive, you know, And so my idealism tends to take me this
• 52:31
  way. But like I'm, when I hunt, you
• 52:33
  know, I'm still using, I got a plastic string, you know, like I
• 52:36
  haven't gotten to the, the, the, the primitive part of that yet.
• 52:39
  And I'm still using metal tools. So I think the same applies to
• 52:43
  fire is like, how far do you want to take it?
• 52:45
  And it's totally up to you. And I try not to yuck people's
• 52:49
  yums. You know, I try to celebrate
• 52:51
  like wherever you're at in the hunting journey, wherever you're
• 52:53
  on the primitive skills journey, if it, if it's connected for
• 52:56
  you, do it. You know, like that's the point
• 52:59
  in my opinion, is to connect. So if you can connect while you
• 53:02
  hunt with a rifle, sweet, do it, you know, but for me personally,
• 53:07
  whatever it was, it, it, it didn't feel quite right.
• 53:10
  So see, so I I tend to find the in between yeah and challenge my
• 53:16
  times. I know for me, bow building and
• 53:18
  archery, even, often those are pursuits where I just feel like
• 53:22
  I I need to take some time and go do this.
• 53:25
  Like it's calling to me right now.
• 53:26
  I need to go build a bow maybe to de stress or whatever it is.
• 53:30
  Is that ever something you get with fire making or you're just
• 53:32
  like I need to go make a fire? Yeah, yeah, to clear my head to
• 53:37
  get in that trance. To go in your prayer state.
• 53:40
  Yeah, totally. Go to my prayer state, smell the
• 53:42
  smoke. You know, all cultures around
• 53:44
  the world said, you know, smoke was our was our way to carry our
• 53:47
  prayers. You know, it's like, oh, they go
• 53:48
  up to the ancestors or the heavens or whatever you believe.
• 53:52
  And so I put out a little prayer a lot of times with my fire.
• 53:55
  So yeah, it's my it's my spirituality.
• 53:57
  All these skills are my spirituality.
• 53:59
  So yeah. That's so cool.
• 54:03
  Do you have kids? Not yet, my wife and I are
• 54:06
  trying been been trying to get there for a while so hopefully
• 54:09
  hopefully it happens soon. And do you have kids who come
• 54:12
  and do your survival school? Yeah, my immersion we've had as
• 54:17
  young as 17 had some almost 18 year olds come and do the 10
• 54:21
  month program. My bow building actually just
• 54:26
  had, it was like two classes ago I had like, I don't know, maybe
• 54:31
  like 514 to 17 year old boys and I loved it man.
• 54:38
  They were awesome. I was just like, you know,
• 54:40
  worried they weren't going to be able to stick with it and you
• 54:42
  know, make a nice bow and pay attention to the grain and all
• 54:46
  that stuff. And they did awesome.
• 54:48
  And now that's like our thing, you know, I'm in, I'm involved
• 54:51
  in men's work and I do boys rites of passage work.
• 54:54
  And it feels like a rite of passage for those boys to get
• 54:59
  away from mom and dad and like, go build something beautiful and
• 55:02
  then shoot with me later, you know?
• 55:04
  And are you for your rite of passage stuff?
• 55:06
  Are you leading things, bringing in OK?
• 55:09
  So you are working with youth beyond your survival school on a
• 55:13
  regular basis? Yeah, the way I describe it is,
• 55:19
  I know we're getting off of bows a lot here, so.
• 55:21
  That's OK. It's.
• 55:22
  Going to ping me back it's like I.
• 55:24
  Gave up. That's all right.
• 55:25
  There's there's too much interesting stuff to talk about
• 55:28
  so. You talk to holistic survival
• 55:30
  school, you're going to get holistic.
• 55:31
  I'm sorry. Yeah.
• 55:36
  What was the question? We're going to.
• 55:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The youth.
• 55:40
  Are you working with youth a lot?
• 55:41
  Yeah, so I I learned quickly in this rewilding thing, right?
• 55:47
  So like, to be a happy, healthy human, I believe we need to make
• 55:51
  fire from our landscape. In order to be a happy, healthy
• 55:54
  human, we need to make things with our hands like bows, right?
• 55:57
  And that's like the individualist part of it.
• 56:00
  And that's beautiful. People need individual skills to
• 56:03
  feel competent in the woods to be able to get their needs met
• 56:06
  from their local landscape. 100%.
• 56:09
  But that is the building block to something much bigger that I
• 56:12
  think is what's missing in our modern life.
• 56:16
  So if we look at ourselves evolutionarily, we're built to
• 56:18
  be around 100 people, 100 to 120 people that we relatively know.
• 56:22
  We're meant to be in a small village, right?
• 56:25
  And there's tons of cultural things that are beyond the
• 56:29
  individual that are built into our psyches.
• 56:32
  And rites of passage is one of the biggest ones, mentoring,
• 56:36
  ceremony, rites of passage. So rewilding all of a sudden
• 56:39
  goes from this individual, I need to learn these skills,
• 56:43
  which is great to this cultural, what do we need to build as
• 56:47
  healthy adults in this world to create a healthy culture and to
• 56:50
  create the next generation of healthy men.
• 56:53
  And so I do a ceremony with other men in my community.
• 56:58
  We've been training for years. We've been, you know, we got it
• 57:01
  from our teachers who adapt it from their teachers and it's
• 57:04
  shifting and growing, but it's a 24 hour solo for their boys to,
• 57:09
  to sit with fire and to step into adolescence.
• 57:14
  And what does that mean? What does that look like?
• 57:17
  You know, there's a whole bunch of metaphors we use, but they,
• 57:20
  they tend to fire for 24 hours by themselves in the woods to,
• 57:24
  to Start learning the lessons of, of adolescence.
• 57:28
  Wow, that's great. Most of the things, if not all
• 57:32
  of the things that you're teaching, mostly adults.
• 57:35
  I have a 13 year old son. He loves all of these things.
• 57:39
  And so I would, I would just imagine that there's a lot of
• 57:44
  people like him, a lot of youth who would love to learn these
• 57:47
  survival skills. And really, I probably know more
• 57:50
  kids than I do adults that want to do this stuff.
• 57:54
  Yeah. And it's, it seems like such an
• 57:56
  important fundamental building block for them from the rites of
• 58:00
  passage work and then just continuation to learning all
• 58:04
  these things. Growing up, I remember I had a
• 58:07
  neighbor who he was a part time neighbor.
• 58:10
  He would show up at random times and he had this little cabin.
• 58:14
  We lived on a, on a lake in Maryland.
• 58:16
  And he had his little cabin that he built.
• 58:18
  And he was this big burly, like lumberjack type of dude and
• 58:23
  didn't really know him. He was one of my dad's good
• 58:25
  friends, but I just didn't spend much time with him.
• 58:28
  But every now in my memory, I remember getting glimpses, like,
• 58:32
  inside his cabin, and it was all, all this stuff, like
• 58:36
  everything. Like, he would have been doing
• 58:38
  all these things that you're talking about.
• 58:39
  But at that time, I didn't have any influence or inspiration to
• 58:44
  show me that this is stuff that's really valuable to learn.
• 58:47
  Instead, I'm out on the boat learning how to do flips on a
• 58:49
  wakeboard and things like, yeah, it's great, It's fun, but it
• 58:54
  hasn't necessarily helped me survive.
• 58:57
  It's giving me some good doses of adrenaline and skills that I
• 59:00
  still use today, which are great.
• 59:02
  You know, I learned some sports, and I think sports are very
• 59:04
  important. But I've always, in my
• 59:08
  adulthood, and especially once I started Bo carving, I've always
• 59:11
  looked back on having that neighbor who would then spend
• 59:13
  most of the time in a cabin in the woods and hunt for his own
• 59:16
  food and totally off the grid. And I just have a bit of regret
• 59:20
  that I never really got to know this guy and I never got to
• 59:24
  learn what he had to offer. His sister would come and visit
• 59:27
  from Colorado for like 2 weeks every year.
• 59:29
  She would make her own baskets. And I just had zero interest.
• 59:35
  I was like, oh, that's just weird stuff.
• 59:36
  These people are not let's, let's go ahead the lake and
• 59:39
  let's. And it's, yeah, it's sad for me
• 59:42
  in a way because it now I'm, I've come around and I see the
• 59:45
  value in these things. But I think getting our kids
• 59:48
  interested in the stuff earlier and I think they are interested.
• 59:52
  They just need exposure to it. So sounds like you're doing a
• 59:56
  great job of getting your kids into it and getting them
• 59:58
  shooting and playing and, and because I think it's there for
• 1:00:01
  most kids, you know, it just gets shut and we got to sit in
• 1:00:05
  school and, you know, so. But the thing like school, yeah,
• 1:00:10
  you have the holistic survival school, which I think is far
• 1:00:13
  more of a real school than most schools that are out there.
• 1:00:16
  I would much rather see my two kids go spend time with you then
• 1:00:22
  go off to college or university because it's like, what, what
• 1:00:26
  are they learning there? It's there's nothing real world
• 1:00:28
  really that they're getting any more.
• 1:00:30
  Whereas what you're teaching as is so fundamentally important to
• 1:00:36
  our survival and as you say, our holistic survival, our
• 1:00:39
  well-being. Because it's really hard to be
• 1:00:43
  great humans if we're not connected and most people are.
• 1:00:46
  And I don't mean connected to Wi-Fi.
• 1:00:48
  And that's the way most people are connected.
• 1:00:49
  But not, not the modern technology, but connected to our
• 1:00:52
  roots and our ancient technology.
• 1:00:54
  The technology of Bose has been around for 9 or 10,000 years and
• 1:00:58
  maybe longer. You get it.
• 1:01:02
  Yeah, we, we totally. Yeah, that's it.
• 1:01:05
  That's it. We've forgotten.
• 1:01:07
  We've forgotten the basis of what it means to be human.
• 1:01:11
  Oh, you know, we're, we're not allowed to poop in the woods.
• 1:01:14
  You know, it's illegal to poop. It's illegal to, you know, walk
• 1:01:18
  barefoot in stores. Not in Costa Rica, but yes.
• 1:01:26
  You know, we don't know how to walk, we don't know how to
• 1:01:27
  breathe, we don't know how to take care of each other.
• 1:01:29
  We don't know how to shake off the trauma.
• 1:01:32
  We don't know how to build things, you know?
• 1:01:34
  But we'd know how to create a simulation where we can have a
• 1:01:39
  computer program inside of a computer program.
• 1:01:41
  You know, like it's like Holy Lord, like where are we headed
• 1:01:45
  y'all? I'm an acupuncturist by that's
• 1:01:47
  my my main occupation and clients who come to be in their
• 1:01:51
  feet are horribly disfigured with bunions and toes are
• 1:01:54
  pointing like in the wrong direction.
• 1:01:57
  The toes should be pointing. I just what are you like?
• 1:02:00
  Have you thought about maybe just going barefooted for a
• 1:02:03
  while? And I have clients who do that.
• 1:02:05
  They just start going barefooted and they're like, wow, this has
• 1:02:07
  changed so much. Like my feet don't hurt.
• 1:02:10
  And at first I couldn't walk on the gravel, but now I don't even
• 1:02:12
  think about it. And just that alone, connecting
• 1:02:16
  to the earth through our feet is profound.
• 1:02:20
  Like I don't wear shoes period. If I'm on my skateboard, I have
• 1:02:24
  shoes. Outside of that, I don't even, I
• 1:02:27
  don't take shoes with me anywhere.
• 1:02:28
  And I fortunately live in a place where that's totally
• 1:02:31
  doable, but I think it's doable everywhere.
• 1:02:35
  We've just gotten in this in these cultures where it's not
• 1:02:37
  acceptable. And all these other things seem
• 1:02:41
  to be more important than staying connected to our roots,
• 1:02:45
  which is just, it's kind of infuriating.
• 1:02:49
  It's really sad. And listening to you like it's
• 1:02:52
  something, especially with the way the economy is going in the
• 1:02:54
  world and the way it's inflation.
• 1:02:57
  It's, you have a neighbor who does timber framing and so you
• 1:03:00
  did a trade with him and he builds you things based on his
• 1:03:04
  expertise and you build him things based on your expertise
• 1:03:08
  that can't be taxed. That's just a beautiful
• 1:03:11
  reciprocity and it's allowing you guys to survive and be the
• 1:03:14
  best versions of yourself. And I we've totally have lost
• 1:03:18
  sight of that, 100% lost when it comes to that.
• 1:03:23
  Yeah, it's, it's terrifying. Yeah, it's it's.
• 1:03:26
  And that's how I think that's what makes communities like
• 1:03:28
  yours and where I live so valuable, because people want to
• 1:03:33
  be in those places where people are more aligned and more
• 1:03:37
  connected and willing to do things like help out a neighbor.
• 1:03:41
  And yeah, so it's I'm so happy for you.
• 1:03:45
  It's. Yeah, sounds like you're in a
• 1:03:47
  good spot too. Yeah, I need to learn more of
• 1:03:49
  the things that you're teaching. So I might be coming to visit
• 1:03:53
  kind of around bringing my kids with me too.
• 1:03:57
  Yeah, we got my buddy runs a nature school for kids that is,
• 1:04:01
  you know, for home school kids. And yeah, happy to happy to
• 1:04:04
  connect them in any way. And I always say if I don't know
• 1:04:06
  how to teach it, I know someone who does.
• 1:04:08
  You know, my neighbors teach in permaculture and other neighbors
• 1:04:11
  and master herbalist and you know, we got, we got all the
• 1:04:14
  sticks, you know, so it's great. Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  And, and these are things I think more and more people are
• 1:04:19
  going to come back to realizing this is stuff that actually is
• 1:04:21
  valuable to learn. I was chatting with Steven
• 1:04:25
  Bieber and Provision longbows. Yeah, Steven's great guy and
• 1:04:30
  he's a Waldorf teacher and teaches sustainable food systems
• 1:04:34
  as well as is an amazing Bowyer. But just like sharing, having
• 1:04:39
  conversations with people like you and people like him, it's
• 1:04:42
  just, it's so beautiful. And knowing that there are
• 1:04:47
  people who are teaching these things and getting our youth
• 1:04:50
  excited about getting off of their screens and getting back
• 1:04:53
  out into nature. It's I, I could just, I could
• 1:04:57
  just like go on and rant and thank you for the next 30
• 1:05:00
  minutes. I, I won't do that, but I'm just
• 1:05:02
  very grateful that people like you existed are doing what
• 1:05:05
  you're doing. So thank you.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah. I think it's, you know, I get
• 1:05:09
  down on it and I freak out sometimes.
• 1:05:11
  And if I was watching the trend in the last 10 years since I've
• 1:05:16
  been, you know, in Asheville, the last 15 years since I've
• 1:05:18
  been in these skills, it's trending in the right direction.
• 1:05:22
  You know, the one of my favorite phrases is the illness seeks the
• 1:05:27
  medicine, right? Or we get fucked up and the more
• 1:05:31
  we get lost and the more we forget, the more that soul pull
• 1:05:37
  to like I got to make above, you know, that person who's just
• 1:05:39
  like I, I can't explain it. I got to be barefoot.
• 1:05:42
  I got to learn how to make my life.
• 1:05:44
  It just it just it comes because that's who we are.
• 1:05:47
  Like it can never be lost. So that gives me some faith that
• 1:05:52
  it's going to be OK. And I think it's the pain before
• 1:05:54
  the realization. Yeah, I I agree it can't be
• 1:05:57
  lost, but I do think it can be permanently drowned within us
• 1:06:02
  through all of the distractions of most people.
• 1:06:05
  Don't, don't turn this corner and make this realization.
• 1:06:07
  Most people just continue on with the misery that is trying
• 1:06:12
  to get by day-to-day. The way I see it, you are
• 1:06:17
  thriving and that's just not a reality for most people.
• 1:06:20
  And yet it's it's the most natural way for us to be.
• 1:06:25
  We've just, we just stepped away from that.
• 1:06:27
  We've lost sight of that in the home.
• 1:06:29
  The homeschooling you mentioned, it's so cool that you have all
• 1:06:31
  those opportunities. One of the things that my
• 1:06:33
  daughter and I were shocked about when we were traveling for
• 1:06:36
  Project Quiver, especially when we are in Europe, is
• 1:06:38
  homeschooling is illegal in so many countries.
• 1:06:42
  Yeah. And I was like, what do you mean
• 1:06:45
  it's illegal? And like, you cannot homeschool.
• 1:06:47
  Your kids have to go into the school system.
• 1:06:50
  And if they don't, you might lose them.
• 1:06:52
  I'm just OK. It is not a country I want to
• 1:06:57
  live because that is insane, but it's kind of the norm
• 1:07:00
  throughout, like Germany, like Austria, like Spain, Most of the
• 1:07:05
  countries actually where we were.
• 1:07:06
  It's I think most of the European Union countries, it's
• 1:07:10
  illegal. And that's just wow, that's sad.
• 1:07:15
  Yeah, totally. And I want to go back to like
• 1:07:17
  when I was like, oh, that can't be a race.
• 1:07:19
  I'm like, well, that I, there's a nugget.
• 1:07:21
  Like it can be a race. And it has been a race through
• 1:07:23
  genocide and through colonization and like, you know,
• 1:07:27
  indigenous skills from around the world, right, Whether you're
• 1:07:30
  white or black or Native American or whatever that was,
• 1:07:33
  this was all our birthright at one point.
• 1:07:35
  And eventually war, like agricultural dominator culture
• 1:07:39
  came in, regardless of their skin color and said, Nope,
• 1:07:43
  indigenous these we're not going to do this hunter gatherer
• 1:07:46
  indigenous lifeway anymore. We're going to do this farming
• 1:07:48
  lifeway. And so just want to put that out
• 1:07:51
  there that that's a real thing and it has been and we can still
• 1:07:55
  refind it and that's what we're doing.
• 1:07:57
  But just to. Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  And it, and I think what you're saying is the spirit of it can't
• 1:08:02
  ever be fully erased. It's within us.
• 1:08:06
  We'll figure it out and we'll remember it and we'll, like,
• 1:08:08
  piece it together, but the amount of ancestral knowledge
• 1:08:11
  that has been lost because of dominator culture is, yeah, it
• 1:08:15
  might. I was, I've been really touched
• 1:08:20
  and amazed by the so I don't know if you are familiar with
• 1:08:24
  Project Quiver, which is this project my daughter have been on
• 1:08:27
  to write this, this coffee table book and bring it to the world.
• 1:08:31
  In the process of doing that and writing it and going through all
• 1:08:35
  these thousands of photos, I realized how important this is
• 1:08:38
  for the legacy of primitive bow craft.
• 1:08:40
  And that wasn't, I don't think that was my original intention.
• 1:08:45
  My original intention was I want to go study how to carve cool
• 1:08:47
  bows with a lot of people around the world.
• 1:08:50
  And I also needed like I was at a point in my life where I
• 1:08:52
  needed some, I needed that in our work too.
• 1:08:55
  I needed to be able to go inside and just be with the wood and
• 1:08:57
  carve. But as it evolved into something
• 1:09:00
  where we were actually giving a gift to the world, which I think
• 1:09:03
  it is going to be, I realized like how how important it is to,
• 1:09:07
  and not just with this book, but how important it is to take
• 1:09:10
  these ancestral skills and knowledge and technologies and
• 1:09:13
  make sure that people do know about them and and bring them
• 1:09:17
  forward. That was something like the
• 1:09:18
  traditional Bowyers Bible series.
• 1:09:20
  I think they were so important when they came out because
• 1:09:24
  primitive bow craft was pretty much dead at that point because
• 1:09:27
  nobody needed it. Because you could go to the
• 1:09:29
  store and you could buy your bow and then six months later you
• 1:09:32
  could buy the upgraded bow and 12 months later you get the
• 1:09:34
  upgraded bow. And it's just, of course, why
• 1:09:37
  would we need these pieces of wood that and so coming back to
• 1:09:41
  that is so important. Yeah, it's our, it's our
• 1:09:47
  sovereignty, right? I would say if you can't, if you
• 1:09:49
  can't fix it, you don't own it. So it's like, I don't own my
• 1:09:53
  car. I don't know how to fix cars.
• 1:09:55
  Like I just, I rent that thing. I just rent my computer like,
• 1:09:58
  but this is one of the few things I actually own, this
• 1:10:01
  arrow and this thing because I harvested all from my land, you
• 1:10:04
  know? So it's like, that's one thing I
• 1:10:06
  actually owned and that's valuable.
• 1:10:12
  Luke, thank you. Thank you for doing this.
• 1:10:14
  Do you have anything else that you want to share before we go?
• 1:10:17
  And I am going to ask you one final question.
• 1:10:19
  I want to think of what it is and I'm going to bring it back
• 1:10:21
  to bow craft, but I'll I'll see if you have anything you want to
• 1:10:24
  say first. Yeah, let me pause.
• 1:10:25
  Let me think. I think what it was just one
• 1:10:33
  little inspiration that what you shared about like, Oh, I just
• 1:10:37
  needed to go do this thing, you know, I needed to go make this
• 1:10:40
  book. I think that's the biggest thing
• 1:10:43
  I teach when I'm helping people to reconnect to their soul, to
• 1:10:47
  their live to, you know, this this thing called life is
• 1:10:52
  follow, like trust that what you're excited about the juice,
• 1:10:56
  I call it. That's what your soul needs.
• 1:10:59
  So you know, you're like, Oh my God, I have to build up do it.
• 1:11:01
  You know, if you're like, oh, I have to go travel to Norway for
• 1:11:04
  whatever reason, do it. You know, like, I think that's
• 1:11:07
  the like paradox of helping our culture is like allowing
• 1:11:11
  yourself to play, allowing yourself to be that kid again.
• 1:11:14
  And just like whatever draws you, go do it.
• 1:11:17
  You know, I think that's a huge missing piece of Ultra is just
• 1:11:22
  following your joy. Massold you so I like that,
• 1:11:25
  yeah. Yeah, all.
• 1:11:28
  Right. So back to bow craft.
• 1:11:31
  How about as you are, you're teaching a lot.
• 1:11:34
  You're you haven't crafted as many bows as there's a lot of
• 1:11:38
  Bowers out there, but you have a lot of experience with it.
• 1:11:40
  What, if anything, still challenges you with building a
• 1:11:47
  bow? Like how with each bow you make,
• 1:11:49
  are you still learning something?
• 1:11:55
  And I think it's especially apropos for you because you're
• 1:11:58
  building bows from one material only.
• 1:12:01
  Like a lot of Bowers are learning because they're every
• 1:12:04
  time they build a bow, it's a different, a different mature
• 1:12:07
  type of wood. But since you're using Osage O
• 1:12:10
  Orange, it would seem to reason for someone who doesn't do this
• 1:12:13
  a lot that they would think, well, it's just that must be
• 1:12:16
  pretty easy to do. You're just like whittling a
• 1:12:18
  spoon. You just repeat, right, right,
• 1:12:20
  right. I don't think you find it that
• 1:12:21
  way, right? No, definitely not.
• 1:12:24
  I think it's around, yeah. I think it's around attuning,
• 1:12:27
  you know, attunement to the individual piece of wood.
• 1:12:30
  And there are similarities every, you know, OK, yeah, we're
• 1:12:33
  making the similar dimensions. And, you know, but especially
• 1:12:37
  when I'm harvesting my own Osage, every piece has a
• 1:12:40
  character to it. You know, there's a knot here
• 1:12:44
  and A twist here and the, the wood grew in different soil.
• 1:12:50
  So like, you know, the density, the ring difference, you know,
• 1:12:53
  there's just like every bow is, is just so unique.
• 1:12:56
  And so I think for me, it's still that that has kind of been
• 1:13:01
  a theme I've been talking about. Like with fire making, it's
• 1:13:04
  attunement. It's like, can you really
• 1:13:05
  actually see what's in front of you?
• 1:13:08
  Don't go on autopilot, right? But actually look, oh, there's a
• 1:13:11
  knot here. So we're going to have to change
• 1:13:13
  that. All these tips are a little
• 1:13:14
  thicker. Oh, this is just heavier Osage.
• 1:13:16
  You know, this is lighter Osage. Let's change the let's change
• 1:13:19
  the design. So in that way, people come to
• 1:13:23
  my classes and they're like, oh, I thought it was going to be
• 1:13:24
  like formulaic, you know, or just like this dimension here
• 1:13:28
  and this dimension here. And that's where's your.
• 1:13:30
  Template. Lay it down, trace it out.
• 1:13:33
  I'm like, hell no. Like it's the most like artistic
• 1:13:36
  with Osage because of the twists and the turns and the grain and
• 1:13:39
  the bumps and you know, the growth rings are thick heat on
• 1:13:42
  this end. But up here the growth rings are
• 1:13:43
  actually thin. It's just really, really, yeah,
• 1:13:48
  all about attunement. So that's, I think that's what I
• 1:13:50
  learn every time. So how do you do that?
• 1:13:52
  How do you return to each stave? I whatever that is, right?
• 1:14:00
  Whatever there's like, wake up, you know, like what, what do I
• 1:14:03
  see? You know, embodiment.
• 1:14:07
  I hit like I call it the hitting the refresh button on your web
• 1:14:10
  browser. You know, I don't, I don't know
• 1:14:12
  what that is or yeah, it's an interesting thing, but how do I
• 1:14:17
  do that, Make mistakes? I do a lot, a lot of that, you
• 1:14:22
  know, make a lot of mistakes and learn how not to do it and then
• 1:14:26
  just keep checking to make sure. Yeah.
• 1:14:29
  Listening. Is patience important?
• 1:14:33
  My God, Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:14:35
  Patience is yeah. Watching myself, watching my own
• 1:14:39
  nervous system. When do I feel rushed?
• 1:14:41
  When do I feel off, you know, and just setting it down and
• 1:14:45
  taking a breath and. But yeah, patience and endurance
• 1:14:48
  and yeah, listening, That's that's always what I'm.
• 1:14:51
  Listening and you find sometimes you spend an extremely long
• 1:14:55
  amount of time before you even put a knife to the stave just.
• 1:14:59
  But yeah. Being with it kind of heading.
• 1:15:04
  I I tend to sit with a stave for a year like I'll have it if
• 1:15:08
  he's. Sleep with it.
• 1:15:10
  It's. Not quite that way, but I put it
• 1:15:15
  next to my wood stove in the winter, how I heat my house, you
• 1:15:17
  know, and I'm letting it dry and I'm reading it and I'm just
• 1:15:20
  feeling it, holding on to it, trying to really listen, you
• 1:15:23
  know, like I'm probably, I would like to think I'm maybe the most
• 1:15:27
  woo woo Boyer out there. So that's maybe my claim to
• 1:15:31
  fame. How much I sing to my bows and
• 1:15:34
  the slaves and the trees and how many prayers I put into it and
• 1:15:39
  trying to trying to find, you know what I what I consider our
• 1:15:42
  our birthright, which is relationship with the wood and
• 1:15:45
  the animals, hunting and, and through prayer and through
• 1:15:49
  dedication and devotion. So yeah.
• 1:15:51
  Well, there's your brand if you ever decide to sell bows on a
• 1:15:54
  more regular basis. Woo woo bows.
• 1:15:57
  I was going with dad bod bows I I had a big boat start to draw
• 1:16:02
  some and my gut was hanging out at the Bob all coming dad bod
• 1:16:07
  bows this night my brand. Thank you.
• 1:16:12
  How can people find out more about you?
• 1:16:14
  Holisticsurvivalschool.com Holistic survival school at
• 1:16:19
  Gmail. You can always shoot me a
• 1:16:20
  message. Yeah, always teaching and
• 1:16:23
  helping people connect to this greater scene.
• 1:16:25
  So even if you're not near me and this cool scene that's
• 1:16:29
  that's forming, this rewilding and primitive skills community,
• 1:16:32
  there's gatherings all around the world that are happening
• 1:16:34
  that teach fire, fire building and basket weaving and all the
• 1:16:38
  things they teach. So I'm happy to help people that
• 1:16:41
  are inspired to to find little sub communities around them.
• 1:16:46
  Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the
• 1:16:47
  time and to talk with me today, but especially for taking the
• 1:16:51
  time to teach the things that you teach.
• 1:16:53
  Absolutely. It's my, it's my honor.
• 1:16:55
  And yeah, thanks for compiling us.
• 1:16:57
  Thanks for yeah, hanging out with all the masters and
• 1:17:00
  learning from them and put it all together.
• 1:17:01
  And thanks for living a different way and raising kids
• 1:17:06
  in a good way. Thank you, Sir.
• 1:17:17
  Thanks for listening to Project Quiver on Salish Wolf.
• 1:17:20
  Follow our journey on Instagram at Project Quiver as we seek out
• 1:17:24
  the world's most extraordinary traditional boat years and join
• 1:17:27
  our newsletter at projectquiver.com.
• 1:17:30
  Our coffee table book, Quiver, The Art of Life through Bow
• 1:17:33
  Craft, arrives in 2026. We are honored to share with you
• 1:17:37
  the beauty, history, and magic of traditional archery.