Author Archives: Teaching Drum Outdoor School

Into the Wild

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10353097_771408022916454_8840502468519910695_nWe recently welcomed another group of Guardian Intensive trainees to Nadmadiwining, our support center here at Teaching Drum Outdoor School, for their 80 day wilderness immersion experience in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. They had just completed the two-and-a-half month At-home Training, which included physical conditioning and sensory-awareness exercises to help prepare them for living together in the wilds. The At-home Training required that they come together each day around the virtual hearth (in this case, an e-group forum) where they summarized their experiences and what they gained from the exercises. Each morning when they awoke, a Zen story awaited to walk their day with them. They reflected on it during the day and shared what they gained that evening on the forum. In these ways, they came to know each other and to grow in relationship.

As soon as the six trainees arrived at Nadmadiwining, the guides gave an orientation and introduction for the wilderness segment of their training. Each trainee had his/her weight, blood pressure, pulse, and body fat content taken. These vital signs will be monitored throughout the Training.

Their first exercise in circle consciousness was to choose a pack frame that not only fit them best, but did not deprive someone else of the best-fitting pack frame. The approach to the experience is minimalist: they will carry all their gear on their backs. Essentials include a knife, a tarp, mosquito netting, a couple changes of clothes, sleeping bag, bowl, toothbrush, floss, and comb or brush. The group shares the use of a tomahawk, a small sewing kit, a first-aid kit, and one box of matches. The matches are temporary. Once they leave for the wilderness, they will need to have already learned how to make a friction fire using a bow drill.

The Guardian Intensive Training is built upon the tenets of the Guardian archetype, as found in hunter-gatherer cultures. The Guardian serves his/her people as scout, lookout, message carrier, guide through new territory, hunter, craftsperson, and mentor for youth. Characteristics of the Guardian are high sensitivity, alertness, centeredness, empathy, and moving as quiet as a shadow.

The trainees are asked to come to this next leg of their journey into the wild as an empty bowl: to let go of their preconceived ideas of who they are and who the culture taught them to be. Only then can they reawaken to who they truly are. These 80 days are designed to be physically and mentally challenging—to take them out beyond their edge, where they will face their fears head-on. This is a time for them to learn how to live together in community, to fully understand what it means to be one integral part of the whole. As one graduate of the program said “We did everything as one. We learned how to flow together in sinuous, intuitive movement, like a pack of Wolves. Camaraderie bound everybody together into a finely-honed organism. Everybody was valued as a vital organ—nobody was expendable.“

Over these next few months, we will continue to introduce you to the different aspects of the Guardian Intensive Training, so you will have a better understanding of what the trainees are experiencing. We will give you updates on their progP1150807ress, which will include their triumphs as well as their struggles and pitfalls. We welcome you to join them on their life-changing journey, as they make their way into the Northwoods wilderness.

Solo Canoeing in the Headwaters Wilderness

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DSCF0247             It’s been two days since my last meal. Yet I am feeling sharper than ever. I learned from the Native elders that if you want to find something, go without it. Anyone who has been around hunting dogs knows that a hungry dog hunts best. The same is true with humans: hunger sharpens the senses and keeps us alert and attuned. It is primarily for those reasons that I am going hungry, as I have plenty of food back home.
            While I am paddling along and reflecting on such matters, I glance down into the water, and there swimming by is a meal-sized Turtle. She seems oblivious to me hovering over her. My hunch is that to her, I am just another log in the stream, as I am stalk-paddling to create as little disturbance as possible. I move in rhythm with the current and the breeze, and I avoid looking directly at her. My hand dangles in the water like a side branch of the log, with the tips of my fingers sliding over her smooth shell. She swims on, oblivious to my existence.
            The shadow of my canoe passes over a large Suckerfish resting on the sandy stream bottom. I pass my hand over him as though it were a wayward branch drifting in the current, while at the same time imagining how I would lock my thumb and forefinger into his gills if I needed him for food. I drift on by and he doesn’t move.
             Glancing up from the water, I quickly realize that even though I am sculling slowly with only one hand gripping the paddle, I am traveling faster than the situation warrants—that situation being my imminent meeting with the broadside of a Deer. To escape the biting flies, she is standing right in the middle of the stream, where the water is deepest. I consider drawing my knife with my free hand and touching it to her belly, both to count coup and to prove to myself that she would have given her life if I needed her. Instead, I whistle the tew-tew predator alert of the Redwinged Blackbird. The Deer perks up and looks around, with her gaze shooting right over me. She then flits up the bank and stands there with ears perked and tail nervously twitching—typical behavior for Deer who are alerted to danger but don’t know what it is or from where it is coming. They are reluctant to flee, for fear of running directly into whatever is causing the threat.
              As I paddle by, she turns her head and looks down at me over her shoulder. Our eyes meet fleetingly, which is enough for me, as I don’t want to startle her any further. I am content to keep my smile and nod of recognition to myself.

   –  Written by Tamarack Song, founder of Teaching Drum Outdoor School, excerpt from his forthcoming book, Becoming Nature.

              Imagine maneuvering a solo canoe through the Headwaters Wetlands up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where Wolves and Bears scout the shorelines, and Beaver, Muskrat, and Otter fill the waters. Solo canoes are preferred over larger craft because they are short enough for easy maneuvering, light for easy portaging, and small and responsive enough to move easily through rivers, bogs, and other wetland areas. They allow us to go deeper into the wilds, and give us the opportunity to become nature right alongside wild animals. 
              If you are interested in learning more about solo canoeing, check out the free instructional video below which was shot during last summer’s Guarding Intensive Training. If you are interested in learning more about Teaching Drum and the programs that we offer, we invite you to visit our website at Teachingdrum.org.

Introducing the Guardian Intensive Training Program

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guardian intensiveImagine trekking through the thick of the Northwoods during the height of Zagime (mosquito) season. For 80 days, you and 10 other Trainees have decided to live in the Wisconsin wilderness together, carrying nothing more than the bare essentials that can fit onto your pack frame. These 10 people, most of whom you’ve never met, are your community, your tribe, your circle. If one of you chooses not to do your part, or to not do it well, the circle struggles. If one person decides to indulge their negative emotions, the circle suffers.

Earlier this sun (day), the Guides visited camp and drew a map using only rocks, sticks, and brush, to show you and the other Trainees how to find your way through the Headwaters Wilderness to get to the next destination. You committed your assigned part of the map to memory, as did the other 10. Everyone will need to remember their part in order to get to the next camp without getting lost.

There are no watches, so you look at the position of the sun to determine the time of day. It appears to be midafternoon. You and the other Trainees have been walking since mid-morning. The air is now hot and heavy with humidity. Weighing your options, you decide it is better to endure the heat, along with wearing long sleeves and a head scarf, to help mitigate the bites from Zagime.

The Guides have instructed everyone to practice moving silently through the wilderness, to discover what it means to become invisible, to walk where there is no path without leaving a trace. You want to rest. However, resting would interrupt the flow of movement, and may prevent you and the others from arriving at the next camp before sunset. You know you can keep going, and so you do, because it’s not just about you anymore.

Somewhere in the midst of Zagime’s buzzing, the hot sun, the fatigue, and the hunger pangs, you begin to feel the flow of the other trainees—the circle—moving together as one organism. You catch a glimpse, a deeper understanding, of what it means to truly belong to a community, to do your part for the greater good, knowing that they also do their part for you. You relax into the feeling of the circle moving silently as one, like the wind flowing through the trees, leaving no trail.

 

The Guardian Intensive Trai65ning is the newest program at Teaching Drum Outdoor School. Inspiration for this program grew out of the Guardian Yearlong program, which you can read about in earlier posts and on the Guardian Yearlong webpage. The Guardian Intensive consists of 80 days of at home study and exercises, followed by 80 days of immersion training with other program participants in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

For the next year, we will be posting stories and highlights of the different groups as they go through their immersion experience. We will also be sharing the stories of Guardian Intensive graduates as they reflect on lessons learned with the benefit of hindsight. We welcome you to follow along and share this journey with us.

Concluding the Guardian 11 Moon Training – Part 2

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Guardian Yearlong blog post originally posted on 5/16/14

LISTENING:

The Guardians began their exploration with the Listening skill. They said that by depending on each other and living together 24/7, they had learned how to truth-listen, how to be open and accepting and how to encourage and acknowledge one another.

Lety asked how these listening skills had helped them at camp this past year, how their skills had developed, and how they would use what they’ve learned once they are back in their communities. A few of the Trainees asked for clarification and expressed their understanding of the question.  Then Blondie laughed and said “Here’s a question on ‘listening’, which is rephrased several times, and there are three…four different understandings of the question. This is funny.”

Tamarack spoke, “listening goes beyond what we hear, I’m reminded of a story: A Seeker went from person to person asking ‘How do I listen?’ but was not satisfied with the responses. Somebody suggested posing this question to someone who’d been listening for a long time.  The Seeker found a revered Elder and asked ‘How do I listen?’ The Elder responded by pointing to the full moon.  The Seeker said: ‘Oh, I see you pointing. What does that mean?  How does that help me listen?’ And the Elder said: ‘You missed my point here. What I am doing is not the answer to your question. You’re focused on my connection with the moon. The listening is about the moon. It’s not what I’m saying or what I’m doing. That’s not listening. Your question is not listening.  Embrace the moon.’”

Tamarack continued: “communication involves heart to heart connection, words are symbols that we use in an effort to express this. But, if we focus on the symbols, we can get tripped up on the projections and patterns we associate with them. This distracts us from listening, just as it did the Seeker when he focused on the Elder’s finger instead of the Elder’s message.”

The Guardians then explored how they might interact with their families in a different way once they’re back home.  They realized that if they see their parents only as parents, they might only hear their parents’ words filtered through the projections they associate withparents.  Perhaps they will return to their families and hear their parents say something like “Oh, Johnny or Janie, I want you to go to college now. You’ve done your playing around.” If the Seeker focuses just on their parents’ words, they might think “My parents want me to do something. Do I want to do that or not?” This sets them up for a dichotomous “them against me” interpretation. However, if the Seeker is truthlistening, she/he is in a state of being, rather than a state of doing something with, for, or against someone else. Instead of hearing “I have a specific plan I want you to do,” they will hear “I love you honey.”

From their year-long experience, the Guardians learned that when we relate to one another on a heart level rather than from our egos and projections, we can listen more clearly. They  appreciated that by integrating this way of listening, this skill will allow them to truly serve their communities.

It was very important that listening came up as the first item on the list, because listening is at the core of most, if not all, soft and hard skills, as we’ll see in the following topics.

Concluding the 11 Moon Guardian Training

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Guardian Yearlong blog post originally posted on 5/10/14

Guardian Training 2013/14 recap

At the end of each year-long we give daily emphasis to the topic of re-integration. This year we approached it by asking the Guardian trainees to compile a list of skills they had learned/honed during their year-long training. Between soft and hard skills*, they came up with a four page list!

*Hard skills, also known as quantitative skills, such as hide tanning, fire-by-friction, primitive cooking. Soft skills or qualitative skills, i.e. conflict resolution, self-knowing, relationships.

Skills are grouped for easier reading, yet you may notice that some fit in several categories.

March 17 to 24, 2014.  Reintegration

“We, the Guardian trainees, have learned much this turn of the seasons. Looking back at our experience we compiled this list of hard skills and soft skills, and some of them are both.”

 

HARD SKILLS 

Tracking:

Scouting

Orienteering

Approaching and reading kill sites

Tracking: tracks and sign

Scatology

Feather reading

Hunting/Gathering:

Animal processing

Edible plant and insect foraging

Finding springs

Frog hunting

Gathering respectfully (offerings, etc…)

One-hand nut cracking

Plant identification

Primitive fishing

Recognizing edible, medicinal plants, and toxic look-alikes

Ricing

Sharpening tools

Tool use and treatment

Trapping with deadfalls

Wild ricing

Health:

Caretaking of food

Breathing

Chewing for optimal health

Detoxification

Fasting and internal spring cleansing

Jumping, crawling, flexibility, coordination

Keeping warm in subzero temperatures

Living with mosquito

Physical strength building

Posture

Primitive tooth care

Processing wild plants for food and medicine

Warm water drinking during freezing weather

Wilderness first aid and ongoing treatment of wounds

Wilderness hygiene in green and white seasons

 

Traveling:

Building Pack Frames

Canoeing

Crossing a river/building an impromptu bridge

Exploring river systems

Hiking

Ideal camp locations

Invisibility

Night sky orienteering

Reading the landscape

Safe travel on ice

Tree climbing safety

Setting up camp

Shelter building

Snowshoe walking

Stealth training

Tarp location and set-up without using ropes or ties

Traveling as a group

Under-conifer lean-to

Wilderness awareness

Wilderness bed making

Native Lifeway:

Weather forecasting

Native walking and running

Primitive everyday living skills

Native dancing

Ojibwe language

Keeping track of time with sun and moon

Minimalism

Friction fire without metal tools

Making friction fire blindfolded or without tinder in wet, windy conditions

Tending fire (smokeless fire)

Primitive cooking

Wilderness comfort skills

Respectfully peeing and pooping in the woods

Feast and famine

How to burn hair

English (for non-English speakers)

Crafts:

All crafts executed with just three tools

Birch bark containers

Bowl making

Carving

Drum making

Fixing clothes/modifications and repairs

Hide-tanning

Mending/darning

Making and using pitch glue

Splitting wood with wood wedges and rocks

Using bones and sinew

Wood qualities

Working with rawhide – getting to know the materials

 

SOFT SKILLS

Communication skills:

Accepting input

Becoming

Coming out of head and into heart

Listening to heartvoice

Listening

Listening to longing needs

Naturespeak

Non-verbal communication

Responsiveness

Truthspeaking/truthlistening

Awareness skills:

Awareness – bringing oneself to awareness

Awareness of victim patterns and victimization

Being proactive

Celebrating making mistakes and learning from them

Dreams

Fulfilling needs

Gaining perspective

Learning how to learn

Observation skills

Pattern breaking

Recognizing when we are sinking to least common denominator, taking the easy road

Understanding what it means to be alive, and to be human

Zen stories

 

Adaptability skills:

Aspiring to be our best

Being innovating

Being ok with being a fool

Creativity

Envisioning

Faking it until we make it

Feeding our inner passion by challenging our comfort zones

Improvising

Living on our frontier/staying sharp

 

Circle consciousness skills:

Archetype skills – aggressor, nurturer, and guardian

Being part of a group

Caretaking skills (of oneself and others)

Coming to one voice

Guardian role

Guiding skills

Organization skills

Relationship skills

Relationship with the land

Storytelling

Strategies for not falling into dysfunctional behavior

Sensory skills:

Intuition

Invisibility

Responsibility

Self-esteem

Shadowing

Stealth training

After receiving this list from the Guardian trainees, we reflected on the soft skills, one-by-one, looking for connection to their lives at camp…and with that connection, to their lives away from these wilds. Together, we explored the ways in which these skills would help the Guardians in serving their people and their communities—doing what they will be called to do.

Tracking Wolf – by Early Bird

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Guardian Yearlong blog post originally posted on 3/22/14

After our last visit to the support center, we decided to follow Kimball Creek from Pine River Rd to the actual pine river. Since the snow is very deep in the river valleys and there are a lot of Alders we stuck to the forested areas. Kimball creek is heading N before it turns to the E. So we walked NE, thinking that we’ll hit the creek soon. So we did on the third day, exactly at our old camp, where Pine River and Kimball Creek met. Funny…

From there we followed the Pine River downstream until we hit Jones Dam RD. At a meeting with Tamarack, Lety and Makwa we got news  that there is a lot of wolf activity in the SE. A long hike lay ahead of us. Equipped with snow shoes and toboggan we walked for more than a quarter moon and crossed several creeks and roads. The toboggan was very helpful after we managed the initial difficulties, because the food is very heavy.

We reached the Popple River near MacArthur Pine Rd and started scouting for wolf activity. Due to the deep snows deer yard up in the cedar and hemlock swamps, the wolf follow them. Then finally: The first clear tracks! Some paw prints are bigger than my hand palm. Since the canines don’t have lantern poles here in the wilderness they use the piled up snow along the roads as a preferred marking site. ;-)

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We soon discovered the first kill site and with it a bunch of pee spots and scat piles, which show traces of high protein consumption and also bone fragments. We circled around the site to pick up on incoming and outgoing trails and other tracks. In the center was the carcass: Spinal column attached to the head, leg bones, skin pieces, hair balls and the stomach contents of a deer. The surrounding snow was bloody. We also found plenty of raven sign. Close by we found a second kill site where a smaller female deer was eaten. The bones were spread out further and we saw a long drag mark.

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In general the deer are very vulnerable right now. Their fat reserves are used up and due to the deep it’s hard for them to move around and find sufficient food. The thaw has just started though and we enjoy the first warm spell, which shows us that Spring will come eventually. I wonder how long it will be until the snow is all gone…

A Minimalist Life – by Little Big

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Guardian Yearlong Blog post originally posted on March 3, 2014

For the sake of easier travelling with our Packframes, we decided to send all our gear that we don’t need right now back to the school’s support center. This means we only have our Sleeping bags, a little bit of Clothing and some miscellaneous things like Tomahawk, First aid kit and sewing stuff out here anymore. Besides extra Clothing, Wool blankets and our Bowls, we turned in our Tarps. We don’t need them. Since it is constantly below freezing, all the precipitation is dry anyway. We learned how to build a quick Lean-to shelter and all we need for building such can be easily found in the Woods around us. We slide a long Pole under the lowest branches of a dense Conifer tree (preferably with southern exposure and protected from north west winds), lift up the branches with the pole and hold the pole up with a couple of forked sticks – that’s our roof and snow protection. Then we put a good layer of conifer branches on the ground – that keeps us warm from underneath. And that’s it. Our quick cozy home for the night!

Sometimes we still get a little bit oversnowed. In that case we just shake our sleeping bags in the morning and are ready to go again. Aho!

Little Big introducing the quickie Lean-To to a school group

Little Big introducing the quickie Lean-To to a school group

Tromble Stomble

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Guardian Yearlong blog post originally posted 2/21/14

Snowflake by snowflake, the white blanket covering our world is getting thicker and thicker. Not much else is to be seen but whiteness and trees covered in snow. And as we listen, there is a grand silence buried under all the snow.

We’ve left our river camp to hit the deep snow, being more nomadic looking for wolf tracks. We minimized our gear even further, as every gadget is extra weight on our backs. We each had our own tomahawks, bowls, crooked knives, notebooks and some unnecessary clothing that we have now sent back to the school. We took a day of preparation to sew up holes on our clothes. Roasted fat makes for easy traveling food so we cooked down the small pieces of bear fat in our carved bowls before sending them to be stored till the end of this experience. We butchered a deer that we had gotten a few suns earlier…and we were ready for take-off!

“But how do we carry all this?” asks Little Big, and by everyone’s body language I can tell they share the same question and the concern of how our backs will respond to the challenge…

Do we leave some here and pick it up sometime later, or do we carry it all in one go, just maxing it to the max? Or do we come and go several times…As we’re talking, Early is experimenting with making a sled out of his huge sleeping hide and tying a bundle of gear onto it…“Let’s not leave anything here” says Blondie “ we need to figure out a way to carry all this either now or later”. So that’s what we do, Early takes a back leg of the deer and some starch, Little Big packs up the leeks, Blondie takes the bear fat and I get out easy not carrying any of the communal stuff or food because of my back troubles.

Off we go! Tromble tromble, stomple stomple, gust and pust, pust and gust as we move through the snow. Wah! This is heavy! It is hard going even if you are walking in the back. What we do when we travel through these deep snows is that one person goes ahead and breaks trail, then we each step in the same footsteps as the person in front, which makes it a lot less exhausting to be in the back. Just like wolf do in the snow, and geese in the sky.

“We’ve been walking for the time it takes to eat a big meal, and we’re just on the other side of the bog! In the green season we would have been here in the time it takes to crack a few nuts!”

Our plan was to go to the next creek, where we could sleep for the night and hydrate; but as the sun is going lower and lower we realize we won’t even get close. So we decide to set up camp and chuck down some snowballs. It goes smoothly; we don’t need to talk much – Early scouts out a sleeping spot. Blondie gathers boughs, Little Big scuffs away snow from one sleeping spot and I start making a fire…A little longer and the sun is down. Little Big is laying down the last boughs for the bedding, and the rest of us are breaking up a little more wood for our dinner fire.

Again we are gathered around the fire. We are all settled in, and it feels like home.

We have now been walking for a few suns, setting up new camps each night, and we feel the journey in our bodies. We must build a toboggan or sled or something! Not long after having that wish, we we’re gifted one! Now we’re all excited to see how our traveling will go with our new sled!

Off we go to Pine River north or to follow the wolf trail! No matter what, one thing is for sure, the tromble and stomple over the white blanket covering the earth will continue! Like a pen writes her story over a sheet of paper, we will write ours with feet gliding over the snow cover.