{primitive ins tinc ts}
question is which predator will be dis- appointed by my bland, meager flesh. Lately, I’ve been wondering about
the gap between who we are and who we used to be. What have we forgotten that we once knew? Is modernity as good as advertised? What, if anything, can we learn from our slightly hairier forebears? This curiosity is the reason I found my- self in the woods of northern Maryland, along with a couple hundred strangers, trying to make fire with sticks.
name of your group. For instance, you might be a White Tail Deer, Coyote or Brown Thrasher. I reach into the buck- et to retrieve the emblem I will wear around my neck for all to see through- out the four-day event. I am a Tufted Titmouse. I check in and look over the lengthy
W
lists of classes, some of which sound reasonable enough — spoon carving, basket weaving, pottery — while others are less familiar. Antler working? Flint knapping? Brain tanning? More or less at random, I choose
cordage. I have zero need for rope in my daily
life. I don’t lasso, winch or lash. Our ponytailed, 30-ish instructor, Jan Mac- ario, is outfitted in name-brand outdoor gear, including Vibram shoes (the kind with individual toe slots) and a Camel- bak hydration pack. He appears to be a refugee from REI. Jan shows us how to strip the outer layer of yucca leaves by rubbing them with a small stone or coin to reveal the thin, flexible fibers underneath. These fibers can be twisted into sur-
prisingly sturdy cord. An even stronger rope can be fashioned from a dried plant called dogbane, once the stick- like stalks have been crushed and the flaky covering removed. This is more fun than it sounds, per-
haps because it doesn’t take long to go from plant to fiber to cord, and the end result is genuinely handsome. When Jan pulls out an entire roll of dogbane cord he made himself, the class “oohs”
hen you arrive at the annual Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Gath- ering, you are issued a wooden badge with the
its approval. Twine rarely inspires such reaction. Afterward, Jan tells me that making
rope and identifying plants, his other specialty, are weekend pursuits. His day job is designing Web sites for George Mason University. Like a lot of others in the movement, Jan got interested in primitivism in late 2001, back when the collapse of civilization didn’t seem all that far-fetched. He explains that some people are concerned solely with surviv- al: When Armageddon comes and we’re forced to flee our homes with only a hand towel and half a box of Wheat Thins, they want to be able to subsist off the
There’s your pharmacy! There’s your Wal-Mart!” one instructor
says, pointing to the woods.
“
grid. Then there are people who want to make nice with nature, to experience oneness with their prehistoric kin. The rest of us just wonder whether there was life before Costco.
C 18 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | september 26, 2010
artoons have led us astray. When you run off a cliff, you will not hang there until you look down. Also, rubbing two sticks together is not
how you make fire. For that, you need a bow drill. A bow drill is an ingenious wooden
contraption that can, if you know what you’re doing, produce a blaze in a min- ute or two. To make a bow drill, you tie a cord to both ends of a stick so that it looks like you’re planning to shoot very small arrows. Then you twist the cord around a shorter, thicker branch, called a spindle, that has been carved straight and whittled smooth. You use the bow
to spin the spindle, which is held in place by a rock, against a flat piece of wood. The goal is to generate enough friction so that little bits of wood are transformed into hot, hot ash. My professor of combustion is Tim
MacWelch. Tim, who hosts a wilder- ness survival podcast called “The Drive to Survive,” has a neatly trimmed beard and chiseled physique, and makes proc- lamations such as, “If you can’t snap it, you don’t want it.” He can seemingly set anything on fire in a matter of seconds. I agitate my bow, spin my spindle and press down with my rock. Noth-
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