“Pests” are really like pre-contact Indigenous, I think

(Note: this is a re-blogged post from the site: https://unsettlingourselves.wordpress.com with a little editing and a few comments of my own)

Think this through! We settled/encroached/encroach. We don’t even engage in any kind of ritual or even a simple “hello” towards local critters when we “make our homes” in whatever fashion (as refugees or as starry-eyed backwoods cabin-makers). And then we just automatically think of local critters whose homes we swept aside as “pests”!

WHOM we then think nothing of “eradicating” in any way we can! And OF COURSE, we forever JUSTIFY why we do as we do!

So how different is this kind of attitude to yesterday’s attitude towards ALL Indigenous folks???

Our entire settler cult-ure has Normalized this sort of thinking!

Personally, i’ve been having an “attitude adjustment” ever since i had a “run-in” with a particularly plucky little Mua-Diib (for those of you familiar with the film DUNE, recall that the MOUSE people were called Mua-Diib); probably a young teenaged mouse, i thought at the time, by its size. i somehow had my attention gotten when it suddenly appeared from my back room (in the vehicle i was living in at the time) and ran straight at me, ears flaring, like a tiny elephant! Almost inviting me to stomp it. But i was so taken-aback by its wild method, and the fact that i had been increasingly turned off by the “normal” way of thinking about “pests” (and had killed way too many, in my mind), that i finally listened!!!

The same thing came up a few years after that when i was living in Tennessee while house-sitting for a winter. i had gotten sick of killing them with so-called “quick-kill” mousetraps (a few times they weren’t killed “quick”, you know), like everyone else in the little community i was near, and decided to begin experimenting with alternatives.

The alternative i came up with? Putting my extra scraps in a distant place, where they could all munch on such to their heart’s content, without me being woken up by their munching, and such! And the great thing about this is, it might well re-build the local ecology, as coyotes and other mouse-eaters would visit when they needed to, and help keep the population down.

(….)

(see the rest of the article at the blog!)

What do you think? I think it’s a great idea! Pros and cons invited.

Note, this all reminds me of my experiences of how settlers’ dogs (trained to protect area gardens and lands) frequently lead in the continued killing or maiming of Indigenous animals, including going quite freely and far into supposed wildlife refuges, which have no real way of protecting the wildlife. I have seen this stuff personally and have tried to act to block it in various ways.

1 Guy’s View of the 2017 Orygn Rainbow Gathering

The following comes from a guest writer, “Character Assassinated”, whose blog, visionary4evolution.worpdress.com, where he would have published this, has apparently been hacked and the author can not access it at this time.

(note: This article was written in two drafts, and then was re-typed with limited time constraints. Whatever you get out of it, great.)

The apparent reality of humanity’s grimish predicament was brought home to me, recently, when I attended this year’s national Rainbow Gathering in a mountain range near John Day, Orygn. To begin with, I heard lots of peace-oriented folks complain about the problem of “the agros” (a.k.a. “dirty kids”), and how they didn’t seem to have a clue about how to “stop” the problem of people unsettling their liberal asses in ways that did seem “a little” overboard, even by this streetwise unhoused person. Secondly, the numbers of attendees seemed way way down for a project as long-running as the Rainbow Gathering, as back only ten years they used to have at least 20,000 attendees for the full week, while today, it seems that most come only for the 3^rd-5^th or thereabouts, and someone at info thought there were only 5,000 attendees this year. So what is going down?

A lot of people pointed to “the dirty kids”, a.k.a. Gutter Punks, and their ilk (heh) as being the reason for the apparent mass exodus away from Rainbow Gatherings. Perhaps those who own the political police know better, and we’ll find out in a future FOIA file. Perhaps these owners of the political police decided that someone had to “up the ante” against a pretty strong community of people that has been able to survive all sorts of bullshit from the feds and local cops for the last 40-some years?

After all, the Rollback dictum (since around 1975) pushes all political police to not to allow meaningful community to even germinate, much less bloom, seeking to block such challenge to the status quo before it can even gather momentum. (source: see the intro to Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky)

Perhaps certain privileges have been allowed since most of the attendees have been kept (?) to remain mostly white folks  (i.e. not to just come in and arrest everyone, as I thought might happen in the context of a trump whitehouse). What with the latest evolvement of successful respectful practices between Rainbows and a Burns, OR area Indigenous (Paiute) nation, this would likely be “too much”, and the political police had to “raise the stakes” even more than usual?

So on the one hand, yes, it does seem like the political police, the new COINTEL, the truly fooled and tooled, have “gained” a foothold and are finally “effectively” fucking with the peace-seeking visionaries of the Rainbow project. On the other hand, I do not know for sure what is REALLY happening! (HEY!) So the following is merely my feelings, my intuition, my praxis, and the reality that I’ve been “around the block” a few times. Including being a “vet” of gatherings and Rainbow community since 1991.  So I compare the patterns of political-police-seeming activities deployed my way before attending the gathering with my experiences and others’ during the gathering.

Meeting the strategically-challenged head-on

I might have been smarter to have met these folks intellectually (“head-on”), but my intuitive spiritual path led me firmly in the direction of observation ..and listening (but not responding). A kind of passivity and yet not; after all, just my mere presence sent shock waves to those who tried so hard to intimidate me from even going at all! So I met their eyes, but I refused to play into their “playful” and not-so-playful provocations.

Were all the detractors and “agros” politicized police/feds/ corporate agents? Or were they a mix of formal and informal agents (say sex offenders sufficiently maligned so that they would take what jobs they could get?)? Or…perhaps even more insightfully, a mix of the usual covert actors working to “drive a wedge” between and exploit all differences, with a mix of folks with very real symptoms emanating from very real insanities due to experiences in the institutions of Alienation, Inc.?

And what about the Rainbows’ own “Warriors of the Light”? A powerful group on the face of it, and yet, if they believed that they alone Have the Light/truth…would they not be just as bad, at least in the basics, as the fooled/tooled warriors of the State?

Granted, I had entered into this year’s Rainbow community with intrigue surrounding me. Right from the start, when I first made contact with Orygn folks, I let it be known that I am a “constroversial” figure, but I didn’t explain further. One Rainbow elder took me in for over a month without knowing much more than I was homeless and seemed amiable enough. We got to know each other pretty good, but my secret got the best of him in the end, I think, and he kicked me out on a misunderstanding, perhaps tired of my “beating around the bush”.

Well, I told him of the (“devoutly normal”) society as a Nazi society, and in that context have to be very careful who I come OUT to…. So I ended up not coming OUT to him really, but touching on the subject with someone else, instead.

And then I took that mystique with me, going so far as to approach Info/Rumor control camp at the gathering with the truth that I am a walking rumor….and to please ask ME before assuming anything. I never fully explained, but I don’t think I had to (anyway, everyone seemed to learn of my notoriety soon enough –and such does follow me everywhere I go, I find). Notably, I remain within the law on the most pointed parts of this truth (that could get me put away for life), while choosing to try to speak “nonsilently” for sides of truth that are being rendered nonexistent in the ongoing pogrom to wipe people’s memory of the value of informal intergenerational solidarity.

So, yeah, I was already a target, and I knew it. And I also know that to have tried to speak about it at the Gathering was not only strategically foolish but would play into the hands of those who seek to finally crush the Rainbow Gathering spirit. So despite a few provocations, I remained mum. In other ways, such as around my visionary ideas, I spoke freely, yes, and that made all the rest of the bullshit quite worthwhile.

Psychological difficulties?

Granted, as I touched on above, way-out-of-balance psychological difficulties also have curiously been allowed to run more and more rampant –most notably around dissident communities or in the downtowns of cities– apparently without meaningful response. For example, if one decides not to trust (or is a survivor of) bio psychiatry, who can they turn to? It seems like groups like Eugene, Orygn’s own www.mindfreedom.org have been successfully maligned, into merely scholarly approaches these days…Oh, there’s the amazing CAHOOTS project (which acts as a 1^st-responder group before the cops are called, for street-type issues, see: http://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/ ); and my understanding is that they do not force people into the biomedical psychiatric model…instead working to truly (?) help in other ways, such as with the White Bird Clinic.

So what happens? You got more and more people dealing with their difficulties in living via self-taught ways of doing things. Surrounded by more and more people who are being taught to ignore them at all costs.

And at the Rainbow, this all coming “to a head”, where liberal-types (superficially-challenged peace-wagers) get a taste of the truth –that “the crazies” WILL NOT “go silently” as is the Middle Class meta rule pushes for. At Rainbow, at least, they have a chance to get up in the restrictive-protection-oriented liberals’ face!

Of course, the political police certainly seek to exploit this difficulty, and you know they must be deploying some of “the crazies” in varying ways (even if that’s just rounding a bunch of angry crazies up from a large city and bringing them to the gathering and then setting them loose; ed’s note: I personally would like to see someone demystify this better, anyone?).

So to me this state of affairs has an invitation in it that we would not normally see when not at a gathering. The invitation is to really get to work on creatively intelligent ways we may respond.

One Rainbow participant thought that having the gathering last a month might be one approach; because it’s hard to create truly viable alternatives in only the span of a week.  Sounds interesting to me!

Also, the late Indigenous champion, John Trudell, really put it in the heart with this: “In the reality of many realities, how we see what we see affects the quality of our reality.”

Think about how most alleged peace-wagers will react to all of this challenge. More and more they will seek “closed doors” and higher and higher expenses in order to keep off-balance intensities OUT. This is “protection via restrictive” means. They will believe they are protecting themselves, but not see that that tactic only seems to work when force is held in reserve.

On the other hand, the Rainbow gift-way teaches me that its heart is more about “protection via mutualist strategies of enrichment” instead of restriction. I think this approach makes much more sense, because of the possibilities that accrue in the context of more human, more authentic, non-adversarial/non-dichtomous responses. Non-adversarial-style responses such as seeing “the crazies” as proverbial “Little Johns” blocking the way of “Robin Hood”. And if we engage in a little physicality (because some people just DO NOT trust anything except such!) with such “Little Johns”, we may well find a whole lot of sanity just underneath all the crazy cammo! What do you think?

So the challenge then becomes with whose ability do we respond? Social science-stuck values that come with our Rollback programming (post-1970s, all got that), or a more anarchistic set of values?

Sample challengers

A) When out of seemingly nowhere (or was his HQ “Tea Time” camp?) a short guy sporting a nationalist leather jacket (reading “ENGLAND” on the back) approaches me a little too close-up while I hang out around Eugene Camp (after everyone else has taken down the camp). He is able to get “too close” via the cammo of appearing to be oriented to “NAMASTE” (which I’m not especially conscious of, but which he seemed to think I might be), only to whisper threats, and then knock me with his fist right on my chest. I took it unwaveringly (tho privately I wondered if it was one of those “Kill Bill” (movie) punches where you get two steps and then you die), and as he walked away, I yelled at him that such would not stop me from getting into the middle of fights in the future (which I have a semi-suicidal tendency to do, I find, over and over). Thus I responded in non-sequitor to his non-sequitor (or at least it seemed to me).

(Notably, he apparently did this type of action towards various people, as one person told me of something like that happening to him, and another said that the Tea Time camp guy was “mean”; the context, the Tea Time camp folks blasting various horns thru-out the night, every night, in an apparent intention to keep all the peace-niks and their families as off-balance as possible, and possibly “see their true colors” more readily…?)

B) Meanwhile, on another side of camp, closer to Tipi Village, some “mean woman” (said one female observer) in the Montana Mud kitchen vicinity apparently worked overtime to yell obscenities and be all kinds of agro thru-out the night, much to the chagrin of peace-niks and their families.And yet, on the morning of July 4, right up to noon, there was amazing quiet just like the Rainbow focalizers sought, and even the OM went off pretty well (tho I would like to see at least one inner circle organized so to enhance the sound of the inner circle together with the outer circle!).So it felt like a mystery and maybe a mystery more magick’L than the middle-class-values-planted in ME wants to egoicly admit!Magick’Ly wradical’s wradical even, in the case of what one elder holding space at Tipi Village told me about “the madhouse” of the nextdoor neighbors heavy drinking and such carrying on. Unsettling the peace-niks, for sure.What can we possibly learn from all of this? Well, for one thing, I think more and more people are lacking solidarity experiences in their lives. And another thing, more and more people are being duped into not seeing “crazy behavior” (a.k.a. unreasonable) in its quite sane/reasonable context. Symptoms are not our enemies, they are our friends. To allow free expression of symptoms is a good thing, even tho it smashes up against the Liberal ideal of “a peaceful camping adventure”.

Perpetuating rigid dichotomies only perpetuates rigid dichotomies!

This brings up something I’ve been wanting to share for awhile: Even when such symptoms are perpetuated by folks we assume are Only Oppressive (i.e. covert actors tooled by the State), how do we KNOW that oppressors are not still oppressed (even as they oppress)—by their mindset! The mindset that gets forcefully passed ‘down’ to even them! And which they still Believe in, amongst all others, even as they foolishly work to undermine THEIR OWN INTERESTS.

We do NOT allow people to crush or trample others (except consensually, heh), and yet ALLOW for symptom-exploring and consciousness-raising efforts and ancient solidarity villager recovery! “Good Peasant, Bad Peasant” style and beyond  (source: https://visionaryhumanity.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/good-peasant-bad-peasant-some-ideas-for-interacting-with-tyranny/ )! Up to our dared imagination, I think!If this isn’t clear enough for you, that’s your problem. If you can get something out of this, that is my intent.

The bottom line for me in writing this up is to promote that antiauthoritarians realize the value of exploring the daunting challenges being visited on such a long-running antiauthoritarian visionary project like the Rainbow Gatherings.

To conclude, given the vibrancy of the Rainbow spirit, I cannot help but to wonder if all of this controversy isn’t in fact a “grand illusion” or “movie” (the latter used by Rainbow folks in a way I have yet to fully grasp, I think!) that is meant not only to reach caring people’s hearts, but also force them/us to think deeper than we’re programmed to think! I can certainly imagine some kind of meta construct like this, especially amongst such long-time stoners. Getting us to think that they are about to be crushed, as a device (?) to inspire Rainbow newbies (and other somewhat clueless folk like me, heh) to put in their better best!!!!Well, it is possible!In this “yank and splash” (yanking our proverbial neckties, and splashing us with the ice cold water of reality not bullshit) routine (?) we are CHALLENGED in serious ways to PROVE our peace mettel, our alleged great visions!!

Imagine this: Folks like “agros” and other survivor champions of hard-core are sick and tired of bullshit peace so they’re veritably “calling out” all the alleged bliss and testing it.

Programmed in soldier-ese, they’re on the one hand being duped to out-fight an entity (i.e. Alienation, Inc.) that has perfected that kind of stupidity and similar Misery Loves Company.

I say, hear out John Trudell where he speaks of out-thinking those, whom “in their legions, do not have permission to think (only to follow orders),” and how this state of affairs “starts to even out the numbers.”

Grand “movie” illusion or not, any would-be visionary or budding (r)evolutionary, if they’re “Worth Their Salt” should very much experience at least one Rainbow Gathering national in their lifetimes. And if you go armed with serious consciousness, you’ll be that much more capable of finding mutually liberating solutions bringing sure gifts not only to an apparently besieged visionary community, but to yourselves as well!

Waziyatawin, re: her initial challenge

Back when a friend of mine read over the manifesto”Unsettling Ourselves: Reflections and Resources for Deconstructing Colonial Mentality” it was Waziyatawin’s and a few other voices which touched his heart the most (and shook it up!). He shared some notes with me, which are excerpted below.

Re: How Minnesotans Wrested the Land From Dakota People, from What Does Justice Look Like? (page 12)  and, especially Understanding Colonizer Status (page 151 )

Here is that settler’s response of late:

“i think i better see, now, what she was saying. They are put into the COLON of ‘colonized’ and ‘colonizing’, while settlers and such, while threatened with such, usually only experience the COLON at the end of their lives, when they are marginalized elders, (i.e. of nuclear-ized family trajectory). Settlers ARE privileged with oppression, but not colonization. We are oppressed in myriad –blocked in diverse ways from voicing our independent feelings and HEART. Even when we want to see a mutually-beneficial outcome ALL AROUND (including the war-mongers), the FEAR-STUCK MUST Follow Orders. Becuz they Know No Better.”

What do YOU think?

powerful quotes from an Onkwehonwe

The following set of quotes comes from the 2005 book Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, by Gerald Taiaiake Alfred. Excerpts from page 130.

“…constructing one’s identity and life strictly in opposition to the colonizer is another form of white man worship. All of these are false representations of the Onkwehonwe heritage and struggle. All of them, from the soft and passive legalist to the hard-core guerrilla fighter, demand on the part of Onkwehonwe an abandonment of our rooted identities and the adoption of one that is consistent with a submissive culture or a foreign culture. To fight against genocide, we are told to arm ourselves and take vengeance…. To fight against economic oppression, we are told to become capitalists and to live for money. To fight against unfair laws, we are told to become lawyers and change the system from within. None of these paths is our own! And none of them are capable of liberating us from colonialism with our Onkwehonwe spirits and identities intact. They demand that we surrender our true selves to become what it is we are fighting against….

“All of these submissive or foreign ways….are predicated on a dualism of one sort or another, locking us into a perpetual relationship with the force we are opposing….Any success at armed resistance, economic development, or in the law, in fact implies a profound defeat in the long run for Onkwehonwe.

Check out more of what Taiaiake has to say on youtube or at his website:

https://taiaiake.net/

Hey settler, you call yourself a ‘NATIVE’ American?

Needed to get rid of some old papers and found a few gems….

….A little thinking-things-thru for those who think of themselves as “natives” to north america. It’s kinda roughly done, so if you want to re-write it, or add this to something you’ve been wanting to put toghether for your own blog, feel free!

A) Knowing nothing of local flora, labels food and medicinal plants as “weeds” and “pests” and uses imported absolutes to suppress them so they can have “peace”. Eventually poisons ground water and all surface water with broad-ranging consequences to not only all wild life, but their own lives (and the lives of their grandkids, and so on).

B) Knowing little to nothing about local wild life, labels such “pests” and does not even try to listen to their gifts; being unable to even imagine such “crazy” and “irrational” things! Will not share their resources (i.e. gardens) and believes such critters should stay “in their own” truly nonexistent lands.

1) Gardening: Imagine one garden “just for” the wild critters, and your own garden(s) fenced off. Such would allow “weeds” to freely grow, and you might plant some other succulents that you know the wild critters like. (What do YOU think?)

 

C) Not recalling the true inclinations of their “own” domesticated ‘pets’, they see nothing wrong in letting them freely chase, hound, and kill (often without eating ’em) wild life thru-0ut said wild-life’s alleged “protected” areas…proving that the wild critters have no true land-base truly to themselves.

i’ve noted that this is changing, as settlers are more and more being excluded completely from refuges (not a good thing, but i can see why), at least near cities. In more rural areas, such “wildlife refuges” are often situated right next to all kinds of macho Bubbas (and their angry, flailing, armed teens) with their dogs hyped up to protect them/their land (often killing wildlife as a consequence to such training, even when not directed to do such). i recall one place, in SE WA state, where a FIRING RANGE was right next to such a “refuge”!

D) The need to “mow” one’s grass. Yes, it “makes sense” to cut grass around your immediately-used areas, but to mow everything? Doing such merely because it is a Capital Rule of Settlerdom? And the whole idea of having the monocrop of “grass”, which feeds right into the interests of all those waiting to exploit, i.e. using monocrops means depletion of the soil, quite quickly, and then the need for all those crazy Monsanto products (a whole other ball of poison wax!) and the like.

i thought i had more on this in my notes, but i guess not. No, wait, i’ll have to look around!

 

a vision for anti-DAPL challenges

i’ve been thinking about this strategy for a long time, and it makes sense to me. Let’s see what you think.

If and when the police are ordered to begin beating water protectors, the line of veterans willing to stand is certainly one powerful way to psychicly bridge with the adversary and their minions. So what might other approaches, in similar veins be?

What if people began “arming their desires” much more creatively? If they’re going to HAVE TO get beaten up by the municipal soldiers, why not go through that from the vantage space of their heart being put into it?

So….what if affinity groups began dressing in ways that are sure to maximise public empathy (as they get knocked around by batons)?

What if some of these ways included wearing faux fur outfits resembling teddy bears and that kind of cuddly-looking type animal? The intent would be to reach people’s heart-strings, after all. To expose the brutality with images even more endearing or hard-hitting than expected.

Imagine lines of different heart-string-pulling groups, wearing diverse outfits, all getting beat up, on live TV. What kind of effect might this have? If we’re going to have to get beaten anyway, why not approach the whole thing a lot more creatively, to bring out our SPIRITS!

Pros/cons anyone? (and feel free NOT to discuss it here, but in your own networks; i’m just an idea guy..:)

Badass Champion Critter Shows Its Pipsqueak Power!

i had a whispery premonition that wouldn’t go away as i returned recently to my camp semi-late lastnight. Something “out of the ordinary” was up when i returned! i thought for sure it was a friend who’d finally taken me up on exploring my invite to get away from the noise of the city and enjoy relative quiet, but no!

As i neared the entrance of my lean-to-like camp, the unconscious feeling grew larger, and i poked and prodded a small stick in, wondering if anyone was inside.

Well, next thing i knew, something challenged my entrance as i pulled back the sash into my spot, lunging once and then a second time with a small weasley/nasally grunt. i backed off in surprise and gave it plenty of room. Slowly approaching again from an off-set angle to the entrance, explaining my need to get back into my home, i whacked the side of my space with my stick, wanting to scare the critter off. And then, wondering at my martialism, changed my counter-aggression, as i realized that the critter could easily be a “sign”, spiritually. And i began calling it Elder, and apologized for executing a wouldbe violent response, all the while calling out to it that i just wanted my home back!

As i crept up at less-direct (and more defensible) route, i said these words, centering myself back into more of a respectful way. By the time i got back up there again, it had taken off, i was glad to find (tho later i carefully prodded my sleep-bag to make sure!).

(This situation, one of falling back first on violent self-defense (with a stick) when faced with Unknown intensity, and then more centered to where i would rather be focused– coming towards situations with a more spiritual approach and wanting to learn– seems to be a continual pattern, moving me to understand that it DOES take a lifetime to re-learn/remember decolonizing interactions!)

i thought sure, at first, that it was a large Raccoon. But upon reflection, it seemed like the size of it was like a small muskrat, but the territory wasn’t right…So, was it a GROUNDHOG??? Or maybe it was “merely” one of those badass squirrels! (whom DO seem to be my spirit animals!)

i never did find out (at least not yet). It could well have been a squirrel, bunching up its tail as fluffy as it could, but then again, this happened after dark, and folks tell me that squirrels don’t run around after nightfall. Hmmm, so what was it? Perhaps i’ll find out in coming days!

Other encounters

Some kind of critter, maybe as big as a coyote, has also been sitting behind my lean-to-like campspot, eating stuff more often of late. It’s pretty nifty, as long as it doesn’t start trying to break in! (i have been sharing food scraps nightly, and as the response grew, i began putting the scraps further away from my spot, to keep them from over-running me (tho i like having them hang out on me from time to time, too). This works a lot better, i find, at least for my spirituality, than doing what most settler people do, when thinking nothing of killing such “pests”.)

The night previous to this latest experience, i had somewhat of a surprise as well. Right as i said some sacred words (which i use to hail stealthy-sounding approachers), i thought for sure something/someone threw something into my space, via my “window”, knocking into me (rather lightly). Immediately after that energy (it was almost pitch dark), something made a noise outside as tho running thru low underbrush, but only twice. Then it stopped. i listened for a good half-hour, not making a sound.

Only after a good long time of listening carefully and thinking about it, did i come to the conclusion that a food bag that i had put up in my “rafters” (not really, but kind of like that), had suddenly fallen. But did some kind of outside critter MAKE it fall???? Perhaps!

Perhaps it had decided to launch itself from a perch above my lean-to, slide down the roof, and then stop when this motion made the bag fall, only to run in a straightline away, over the low bushes, a second or three later.

To note, early when i first began encroaching (yes, i did say that) on the spot (about 2 months back), having set up the camp for a week or three before i actually moved in, to see how things went, some animal made its voice heard, seemingly warning me to not encroach any further into this particular forest (and beyond a cursory exploration, i did not). But that call wasn’t in “anger”, more like “a heads-up”. Nine times it spoke its voice-call, and i didn’t hear it again.

Yeti?

Local hermits think there’s a Yeti (a.k.a. Sasquatch) in the area, but i haven’t experienced anything of that intensity. More likely, just the usual uninformed settler mind trying to scare people… i did smell, quite strongly, a bear once, while walking a trail that had been severed from routine travel due to ice-storm; trees down across the trail everywhere, and slow-going for walkers. And think i saw it in the distance, covered in iceyness. And then heard it later that night, responding to a bunch of dogs yelling at it with a single, plain, bear-like commentary. But it never openly visited me.

Many years of no probs

i’ve  been living free for many years now and have seldom experienced this sort of stuff; then again, i’ve only wintered over in places four times, out of over 30 years of experience. And that might be the clincher: Wild folk acting in the context of their systematically reduced refuges and the colder-than-normal climate (here)…

Oh sure, plenty of mice get in and chew on things they need, but nothing like a critter actually staying around after hearing me approach. And this all just a little ways beyond city limits (where less police harassment and/or media-hysterified-locals  is likely); but i  have also been on the borders of true wilderness as well.

Oh, sure, it’s well known that bears and cougars stop by from time to time around here, but i seldom even hear them. Except for the bear voice i heard…

Another time

One time, back in Odawa Nation country, i fool-heartedly set up a camp for a few nights smack dab on a well-used trail. i knew it would be an inconvenience to the locals, but i could find no other halfway decent spot! Well, later that night, the strangest-sounding voice i EVER heard, spoke out, challenging my presence. i thought it HAD TO BE a Wolverine! But it turned out to be something like a Fischer Cat, i thought, after listening to this video.

What was it up to?

Anyway, soon after experiencing this BADASS champion critter get up In My Face directly (for once!), i got to thinking of the movie Caddyshack, where that one Gopher totally messes with Bill Murray. Tho small, that critter had some balls! (the POWER of the pipsqueaks!)

It turned out it did not piss all over my stuff, nor did it even “get into” my food (some of which is not “protected”), nor did it even chew anything! So what was it doing? Maybe it was doing a version of Goldylocks and the Bears, the squirrelcritter being Goldylocks…heh heh. Sleeping soundly on my sleepbag until i had the audacity to roust it from some Great Dream…NO WONDER its reaction!

“You STUPID human! I can’t BELIEVE you WOKE ME just at THE BEST PART of my dream!!!!”

Or

“You dumb settler fool! Your Yoda i am, to TEACH you here i am and come at me, you, like i’m some sort of PEST! Sheesh! Skywalker NOT taught this time!”

🙂

Tillamook has no Indians?

Awhile back I was hanging around Tillamook and one time I was taken aside by some settler guy who told me that “there are no Indians in Tillamook”. It felt like a veiled threat, as I was living outside of town in the woods at the time. Understanding that the history of the area includes forcefully kicked out Indigenous families, I had to wonder what this guy was getting at.

Would it be a good idea to stop in with a group of Injuns (heh) and see if they might rouse up some bigots? Just wondering….

…..Been thinking about sharing this experience with y’all for a long time now…..

Going nomadic again for awhile

So i left that old camp of almost 2 years (such a LOVELY experience to stay in one place for so loooong!!!!!) and began heading to a large city south of there, and then to points other after that. Took a month to slowly make my way, taking needed time to visit several large Old Growth Forests along the way. A really fine way to travel!

One of these days i’ll have to put all of those notes to text here and share the more inspiring portions!

latest report: one tree falls and other UNSETTLING experiences

i’ve now vacated the camp, after spending two winters there (only missing 2 months once last winter), and one summer. Wrote up a few things about staying there when i was still there, and here’s what i have for now:

Listening out here in the forest. The strong spirit winds, oh my, surging throo the tree tops selectively, as tho in search of relatives, and all other shapes of moM EartH!

Listening for more than a year now. Sometimes listening to my radio. Often listening to both, for security reasons. Listening with one earphone in my ear, the other paying attention to noises outside my little semi-vulnerable spot. (Who might suddenly show up? Cops? Some off-balance citizen? Vigilantes “finally” finding me?)

i greet the noises with a sacred Lakota phrase i learned after many sweatlodges. It keeps me calm, and centered where i wish to be. And shows approachers that i am not afraid.

The slide of a squirrelly one down one of my tarps, or a branch moving against something via the wind ghosts. The creak or clunk of trees knocking into each other.

One tree finally mostly fell. Several pieces blumped down during one of the more windy days, right upon one o’ my protection poles (built up in a teepee design over my main “lean-to”), but no harm to me. Heavy, i learned, they are. Oh my. And that was the smaller one!

The other one that was also notably dead (note: trees that seem perfectly alive DO fall as well) still stands, and was a relief to me when i finally moved on, leaving the area (i confess!). Despite heavily-holed marks by the local “Pileated Woodpecker” (those bigger woodpeckers) seeming to tell me that it no longer even has food in its wood, soooo, it’s SURE to fall in the last days before you finally leave!

Yes, i did leave a note drawing attention to the fact of this one openly dead tree, in case folks stumble across my spot (at least 6 folks now know my spot, with 3 having stumbled across it, and 2 whom i showed; 2 were openly forest service personnel, and two were likely covert agents of the state, i thought due to the way they engaged me, unlike anyone else). Also left provisions safely protected in tins, as well as some sleeping bags and insulation hanging up so that they might last longer than if they were on the ground (and get marrauded by slugs). And some other stuff (and, yes, some of my ART). Was thinking it would be great if others utilized my camp for their needs, emergency or just to escape city mind.

Symbolic Threat

Let me say, i DID TEST that other dead tree (about 10 inches in circumference) which i’ve discussed before on this blog. i tested it, twice, by tying a long rope to it and then proceeding to waggle it around from a good, relatively safe distance. But it was still quite strong inside and beneath all the holes in its bark. Not even a creak!

Anyway, besides my being UNSETTLED by its THREAT, i really loved the OUTRAGEOUSLY CRAZY IDEA of LettiNg that tree fall freely instead of falling back on typical settler mind and cutting it down. It was a symbolic threat readily comparable to other threats hanging over my head for a long time; such as if/when the State would begin to persecute me due to all my daring in years past. And so by having it, it aided me in emotional/psyche prep for “the worst” in other scenarios i find i have to think about. That tree might’ve fallen at “Any Time”: Like The State might’ve pounced and crushed me at any time.

Wradically empathizing with that youngish tree, thinking that it may well be out of its evolutionary native soils –was it a Native tree? i had no idea.  And as well, it had no elders to protect it –long ago logged out of that area, with only a smattering of big trees around.

“Walking thru” and between a lot of the Fear, Incorporated planted in my head. Listening with HEART.

FLYING NURSES HAVE THEIR WAY WITH MILITANT PRONOIA CHAMP

HARK! Ladies streaming in from everywhere! All bent on helping me! Nurses! Mosquito Nurses! Whom i began to poetically call Nurse-squitos!

Young enough, still, to survive “West Nile Virus” via allegedly forever dangerous mosquitos! (IN WHAT CONTEXT?? WITH OVERFLOWING SEWAGE AROUND??)

What if they are merely another mystified extension of “heaven” on moM EartH? What if they have a role in ASSISTING all other shapes of moM EartH? What if they are removing toxins as they nutrify themselves? What if these creatures, like so many other demonized creatures and other suppressed truths, have been completely misinformed on? It would “make sense” when we really begin to look at how settler-centric society does things. From settlers seeking a way to Make a Living (and exploiting our trust in them, or the science they may’ve hid behind), to reps of statecraft consciously seeking to divide us as much as possible from our powers/connections, so to more easily move against us when they alienatedly decide to.

Such makes sense!

Thus, with that poetic in mind i opened myself up to the Nurse-squitos, letting ’em bite as a rite from early July 2015 all the way to mid-April, 2016. …To see what happens when such militant pronoia is brought to the fore; that is, not using ANY toxic chemical or other repellant, nor using ANY netting! (but, alas, using sometimes heavyish doses of ganja to help me deal with pain…that is not actually a whole lot different than getting a tatoo!

Most nights there would only be 1-5 of them or so, i re-discovered. Usually only one during the winter’s coldest months would stop by every few days, get its fill, and fly off. Later, in the two springs i was there, up to 5 or so of ’em would show up –unless i, or someone else had accidentally or ignorantly disturbed one of their nearby sanctuaries (i.e. under a piece of cardboard i had discarded because it had gotten wet and had begun to mildew).

i began exploring “speaking to them” intuitively. Consciously i would tell them something, like, don’t go near my eyes or you die; or, please work on my jaw area, because i had some pain troubles with my gums/teeth. And to my astonishment, they would ACTUALLY GO TO THOSE SPOTS and feed there!!!! And even more astonishing, even a few days later, when i figured they had died and the next generation had been born, those ones would go to my jaw first! And, yes, the dull pain and swelling i was experiencing for several months before all this eventually went away. It was really uncanny, and moves me to challenge critical settlers to explore this kind of thing in their sciences! Eh?!?

That was one example. Another example was when, just before i finally left that camp, the nurse-squitos seemed to want to send me off with a gift. That is, they miraculously CLEARED UP MY EYESIGHT the day before i left. Twice one nurse-squito flew near me (like they did when they wanted me to know they were there openly) and then over to a vein to the side of my eye, first on one side, then, later on the other. ONE nurse-squito! I TRULY COULD NOT BELIEVE IT!!!!!!

Modern VOODOO witches, the c.d.c. and c.i.a. scaring settlerminded-stuck folk from even exploring, much less imagining a whole other world outside of their Great Society Box.

How many ways have we been boondoggled???? Can you even make a list of over 10 things??

Connexions

Over time, i definitely began experiencing different kinds of re-connexions with my fellow shapes of moM EartH! i remember one evening, happening to look up thru one of the spaces in my roof to “just happen to see” an owl’s shape fly towards me, a 3/4 moon in the background.

Uncanny ideas would come to my mind, like WHAT IF mice are actually not at all REALLY afraid to die (and be eaten by Owls), but actually CALL OWLS AND SEEK TO BECOME ONE WITH THEM, SO TO EXPERIENCE FLYING? Or, perhaps there are a few champion mice out there who know how to RIDE OWLS!