{primitive ins tinc ts}
The conference in Conowingo offers the chance to make fires as well as music. Mark seaver plays a native american flute.
woods “change how I live the rest of my life.” And then there are newcomers such as Brian Murphy, an engineer who had a typical late 20th-century childhood. “I was a four-hour-a-day video game kid,” he confides. “I feel like I’ve missed out on the natural world.” Coming here, he says, “is kind of like a reboot.” They’re being mentored in the an-
cient abilities by instructors such as Keith Grenoble. He has dark, untamed hair and wears the same green shirt all four days. During his pottery class, he lets slip his philosophy on molding clay and, perhaps, on life in general. “Ev- erything is always okay,” he says with a smile that reveals a couple of missing teeth. “That’s the whole idea.” Another instructor, Natalie “Bog-
walker” Nicklett, wearing a buckskin dress she tailored herself, explains how to make medicine from flowers. Natalie is as close to a modern American primi- tive as you’re likely to happen upon. She spent five years in a primitive camp in North Carolina where they roast road- kill and sleep in bark huts. Natalie is roughly my age — I’m in my mid-30s — and yet it’s almost as if we’re from different centuries. During our conver- sation, she inquires innocently: “Jon Stewart? Is that a TV show?” At dinner one evening, I sit across
from a 40-ish man wearing camouflage pants, a black bandanna with skulls on
Sorry, brother,” an instructor says to a fly buzzing his
face. “I didn’t mean to kill you.”
“
it and a T-shirt from the 1994 movie “The Crow.” He asks me why I’m here. I tell him I came because, like Brian, I whiled away much of my youth with my thumbs on a Nintendo controller, and now, as I edge ever closer to life’s half- way point, I’m curious to see what else is out there. Also, I have a son who’s near- ly 4, and I like the idea of teaching him how to make rope from leaves. The Crow stares directly into my
eyes. “I don’t meet a lot of like-minded people,” he says. “I feel isolated from the human community.” I nod, and we both continue eating. At the final nightly bonfire, there is
an impromptu concert. A guy on bongos lays down a tribal beat while another guy accompanies him on trombone. Later, a didgeridoo joins the unlikely
22 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | September 26, 2010
ensemble. As they play, about a dozen or so dancers circle the fire. It’s hard to make out faces in the flickering light, but I notice Brian, the engineer, lifting one knee high into the air followed by the other. I see Natalie in her buckskin dress surrounded by several young girls trying to copy her every fluid move. To my surprise, I also see the Crow,
bent over slightly at the waist, jutting out his chin and sort of swimming with his arms. He’s dancing in the opposite direction from everyone else, but none of the other dancers appears to mind. The smoke rises toward the tops of the trees and dissipates in the dark blue sky.
S
o I leave the woods and return to my WiFi and my ergo- nomic pillow. One evening, though, after my wife and son are asleep upstairs, I go in the
back yard with a bow drill I brought home with me. For kindling, I grab a handful of old receipts. I pull the bow back and forth, forcing the spindle into the wood and creating a small ash pile. The pile grows and starts to smoke. It isn’t graceful or quick. My leg cramps up. I burn my thumb. But, in the end, I set those receipts aflame.
Tom Bartlett is a writer who lives in Mount Rainier. He can be reached at
wpmagazine@washpost.com.
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