At its simplest definition, earth skills are the skills needed to survive on planet Earth. These skills are ones that very few of us human animals still possess today. How many of us can start a fire, or make our own cordage or tools?

In trying to be mindful of sustainability, our attention is often focused on our homes, our cars and our consumption patterns. We look around at the dominant culture we live in and try to make good choices: we try to eat organically and buy locally, to be conscientious about our impact on the Earth. But how often do we think about survival? I confess I don’t think about survival until the season shifts to winter, the time when we, as human animals, are vulnerable to the cold and can know true scarcity.

Fortunately, there are people who still have a knowledge of survival skills and a passion to teach them. And, fortunately, there are opportunities to learn from these skilled instructors and to teach our hands what our ancestors’ once knew not far from the communities we live in. (See the sidebar on the next page for more information on these opportunities.)

Earthskills Rendezvous in Lafayette, Georgia, is one such opportunity. Personally, I was finally prodded to move beyond interest to action a few years back when signs saying “out of gas” were hanging from most of the pumps in the country. Since then, I have attended four Rendezvous.

I continue to attend because I have found the experience too important to allow life to keep me from it. Fuz Sanderson, the event coordinator and an endangered species biologist, and I spoke recently. On the question of why people should attend, he said, “Attending Earthskills provides a perspective in understanding our place in the world, in history, in human evolution; it provides an understanding of where we are by looking at where we’ve been. To repeat the old saying, if you don’t know your past, how can you understand your future? It’s applied anthropology. And it’s just plain fun stuff combined with an amazing cast of characters.”

The Rendezvous is an experiment in modern people using old skills to attempt something new. There is something compelling about the time spent there, a sense of simplicity. Beyond knowledge, there comes a dawning that perhaps what makes much of modern life complicated is the modernity of it. After all, we haven’t always been able to flip a switch or turn a knob to make fire appear, and acquiring a week’s worth of food for a family didn’t used to be as easy as taking a ride to the grocery store.

Earthskills Rendezvous was founded in 1985 by Bob Slack, Jr., Stephen ‘Snow Bear’ Taylor and Darry Wood. The idea was conceived as a way to preserve and promote indigenous primitive skills, like making white oak baskets, foraging for wild foods, and tanning deerskins. The three founders eventually invited their Cherokee friends to share their living traditions of basketmaking, pottery, weapons and music. Their weekend experience has since evolved into a week-long event. Twice yearly, “notorious characters and charismatic teachers” come together with people from all across the United States and form a modern village where, according to their website, “old friendships are refined, new friendships are forged, and experiencing ancestral skills, dancing around a fire, the heartbeat of drums or the earnest conversation of companionship leaves us in a better place.”

Participating in the tried and true technique of hands-on learning, campers at the Rendezvous can learn how to make fire by friction and to use this essential tool to cook and harden clay pots, straighten blowguns and to create bowls and spoons. There is a range of primitiveness. Some skills taught are “stone-age,” utilizing only bone, antler and stone for all cutting and drilling. Others make use of knives, sewing needles and glue. Classes include buckskin hide tanning, flint knapping, wooden bowl carving, bow and arrow making, basket weaving, primitive shelters and structures (such as tepees), natural cordage and twining, finger weaving, stalking and tracking, blacksmithing, natural dyes, bone and antler tools, moccasin making and indigenous instruments. In the two years I’ve been attending, there have also been offerings in more modern skills, such as mead making and fermentation, Dutch oven cooking, making your own herbal first-aid kit, and discussions about biodiesel and living in a post-oil economy.

Indigenous tribal life is also a focus. Each day opens with a morning council circle and ends with story telling, dancing and music around the fire. Cherokee elders continue to enrich the camp. Walker Calhoun was one of the original instructors. His son, Danny, continues to teach blowgun making. Emma Garrett has been teaching basketmaking there to a few generations of attendees. Watching the hands of someone who has been using these skills for a lifetime is inspiring.

The people at Rendezvous are engaged, awake and aware. Participants come from all walks of life. Some are outdoor enthusiasts who work regular day jobs. Others are educators. There are herbalists and musicians and doctors and lawyers. Some are dressed in camping gear, others in buckskins or kilts. There are city-dwellers and families that have raised generations upon the farm.

While most come to the Rendezvous initially for the classes and to gain skills, they return because being a part of this temporary intentional community allows a participant to “see up close how a strong spirit of cooperation within a community creates a successful society and long-lasting friendships, without the ready availability of modern conveniences.”

Participants come together with the desire to learn and to share. And in the process, they grow. Through participation in this momentary village, it becomes clear that what makes for a strong community is diversity, an understanding that the whole is made stronger by enriching each of the parts. Rendezvous is a gathering where it is recognized that we each have something to offer, whether it be expertise in a certain area or simply the ability to take instruction and do what needs to be done.

While primitive skills may be, to use Fuz’s words, the “ultimate insurance policy,” there is a difference between surviving and thriving. Ultimately, the greatest survival tool is to be a part of a community that is rooted in its environment.

Earth Skills Opportunities
Earthskills Rendezvous
Lafayette, GA
http://www.primitiveskills.org
866-RVRCANE or 866-787-2263

Earth School: Nature Awareness, Wilderness Survival, and Self-Reliance
Richard Cleveland, Director
Tryon, NC
http://www.Lovetheearth.com
828-395-1758

Schiele Museum
Gastonia, NC
http://www.schielemuseum.org
704-866-6900

Aboriginal Studies Workshops at the Schiele Museum
Steve Watts, Director
704-866-6912

Wildroots Homestead
Madison County, NC
http://www.wildroots.org

Geri Littlejohn is a full-time flute maker and has attended Earthskills Rendezvous for the past two years. Once she’s mastered a few more of the “core skills,” she’ll be offering classes in primitive flute making at a future Rendezvous. She sells her flutes under the name Green Grass Flutes; for more information, visit www.greengrassflutes.com.

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