February in North Florida is this magical place where the temperature can swing 30 degrees in either direction in just a few hours and crisp blue skies are punctuated by the silhouette of palmettos and live oaks. The singing of migratory songbirds softens the careening calls of a red shouldered hawk, and the cackle and hoot of barred owls in late afternoon intertwines with the shadow of turkey vultures rippling across the land and water. It will rain for days and days until it seems like nothing will ever dry out. As the dogwoods are budding the plums and Japanese magnolia have already begun to bloom. Yellow Jessamine vines along the transitional spaces at roadsides and fence lines. A few non native azaleas are already popping open.
I anticipate kayaking the upper/middle section of the Sopchoppy River to see the native azaleas dressed up in color along its high banks. The exposed cypress roots climbing out of the dark water are a tangle of intangible history and I imagine what raucous theater I’d witness were I to stand still for so long in the forest.
In February is also when the Florida Earth Skills Gathering takes place in Hawthorne. At the Little Orange Creek Nature Preserve tents and tarps are erected to serve as temporary class room settings where a variety of skills are taught. Expansive live oaks provide shade and perspective throughout the weekend. I arrived Wednesday afternoon for work trade orientation to find many of the tarps already set up and the kitchen pushing out a steady stream of woodsmoke from the cook fires.
We formed a circle to facilitate inclusiveness and equality for the work trade orientation. Just the first of many circles over the weekend in which there would be time and space for everyone’s voice. A light drizzle dripped off the edges of the tent as we all snuggled in. What I love about circles as a meeting shape is the view they afford. From one place I can see everyone and they can see me. I saw people dressed in buckskin everything, baseball hats and patchwork skirts, no shoes, homemade shoes, rubber mud boots, and real furry hats. It was all sorts and all kinds.
The final morning circle on Sunday.
Our conductor, Chuck, was also the site coordinator. As he relayed the do this don’t do that as communicated by the city of Hawthorne, owner of the preserve, he also said,
“Hey this is your gathering. You have an idea on how to make it better and it won’t negatively effect anyone? Do it. You have an idea on how to make it better and you’re not sure if it will negatively effect people or not? Come talk to us and we’ll figure it out. You need tools, resources, help making it happen? Awesome, how can we help?”
I heard this philosophy of inclusiveness and attentiveness to the land, the people, and the skills all weekend long. This is an event based in self and community empowerment where we teach each other how to be challenged— creatively, intellectually, socially and practically, how to be self-reliant as well as resilient, respectful members of our tribe, neighborhood, family– however you’d like to frame it. It’s beautiful. Hang it on the wall.
At the opening circle Friday morning a few hundred people gathered to witness the friction fire being made in the main fire pit. With a bow drill and a handful of dry pine straw, as we sang a kind of corny, yet somehow also powerful song, a bearded man coaxed a spark from what seemed like nothing. He lifted the pine straw in his hands as it began to smoke moving it through the directions and blowing on it just so lightly. Until… puff! There was flame! And so he transferred it to the tipi of wood inside the stone ring and our fire was started.
This palmetto thatched structure protected the board posted with class descriptions and times as well as announcements.
This is the time when general announcements are made and classes are announced by the instructors. You can only keep a few hundred people tuned in for so long and so instructors are encouraged to keep to only the class title, time and place. As always, some humans fail to follow directions and ramble on. The announcements drag on like an Alaskan summer day. I mostly love these post breakfast get-togethers. I get to see all these different characters step in to the middle and speak their piece. I get to see so much tolerance and acceptance by just about everyone of everyone else’s eccentricities and strangeness. And I get to check my own sometimes judgmental and impatient nature, enjoying the diverse personalities, some of whom I won’t interact with directly and will only experience in those morning moments of quiet abundance and excitement.
I do my best to ignore the lone mosquito buzz of boredom flitting around the outskirts of my attention like the interspecies bird gang getting all worked up about that rat snake on the sassafras limb last spring. One morning I watched a tumbleweed of children roll around near me, erupting with squeals and giggles of glee, and wished for a moment they’d pick me up as they rolled by in a directionless fervor.
Make an arrow with feathered fletchings. Learn about herbalism as applied to street medics in activist situations. Go on a walk and talk about weeds and woods lore. Make leather sandals. Throw tomahawks and knives. Weave in the style of Nalbinden. Do sustainable movement to create a more healthy, agile body. Forge in the blacksmithing tent with a decades practicing and teaching blacksmith. Chisel out timber frame mortise and tenons with teachers from the John C. Campbell Folk School. Make cordage from native plants. Discuss how to dismantle patriarchy within the wider world and our own community. Learn about herbal treatments for STDs. Learn how to make fire from friction then fire the ceramic bowl you just made from native clay.
(And I always wonder where the class is that teaches me how to pick up my pieces after trying to go in every direction at once. So much to do. But that is a lifelong problem…Blessing?)
Remember to never touch your thing to the thing, because that’s when things happen.
Stop by the First Aid Tent if you need supplies for safely (and consensually) touching your thing to someone else’s thing. Also, free treatment at the first aid tent by long practicing clinical herbalists.
This is a safe space. Always ask permission before touching someone else. Silence isn’t consent. Only YES! is consent.
All of these things at the opening circle each morning.
I worked in the kitchen as my ticket in. Breakfast and dinner are served to everyone Thursday-Sunday and all of it is cooked over open wood fires, except for a few dishes that went into the wood fired cob oven built onsite. Saturday and Sunday I dragged myself into the kitchen at 5:30 am. The fires were already lit and the core crew was already there staring longingly at the percolator as it accomplished the magical necessity of making coffee. It was dark and quiet as I got around to chopping what needed chopping: greens, onions, tomatoes…. Filling and refilling my coffee cup as the sun climbed over the small eastern hill. The stunning glow of fire light in the predawn eventually gave way to the sunlight filtering through live oak limbs.
The cook fires before breakfast as the sun is just starting to brighten the day.
As hard as it is to get out of my cozy sleeping bag at 5:15 am and trudge down to the kitchen I also love the potential energy of pre dawn . It starts out slow and intimate. Most of the camp is asleep. Only a few people are shuffling around the cook fires making the obligatory and good natured complaints about how tired they are, how cold it is. And slowly the energy amps up as more people show up to work. The coffee shop sets up across the way. Oatmeal goes in the pot and over the fire. Onions are fried, as is pork, and a host of other ingredients are prepared. And suddenly its, “BREAKFAST IS IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. GO GO GO!”
And so we do.
Down by the creek the tomahawk and knife throwing range played percussion to the steady scrape, scrape, scrape rhythm of the hide tanning space. Most of the hides being worked were deer donated by a local processor, but there were also hog, rabbit, otter and beaver. Road kill scavengers brought the smaller mammals. I spent most of a few days down there working on a large deer hide.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The smell of rotting animal flesh was at first off putting, but I quickly got used to that. It’s called processing for a reason. I get that now. It is time consuming, and a little exhausting. It was sticky yet slippery, awkward and foreign at first, but eventually I found the right scraping stance and rhythm. The movement started to feel like a meditative dance. I got lost in it as small piles of fat and muscle and fur accumulated around my modified draw horse.
From across the creek the view of hide tanning and tomahawk throwing land.
Ross made friends with an elderly timber framer, woodworker, and toolmaker who lives in North Carolina. He spent most of one day re working his timber framing slick and talking tool making. This is basically his dream date, especially so since he got invited to come hang out in this man’s shop in the mountains. We talked to the blacksmith and realized that he is the same smith I have been seeing at the Florida Folk Festival since I was a little girl. Hard to tell through all the soot and wrinkles. Over dinner one evening we got the whole scoop on how and why he became a blacksmith and why he teaches the way he does.
He says, “You know I can’t tell you what to make or how to make it I can only make suggestions. And you don’t have to take them. I’m not gonna get my feelings hurt. It’s your project. Your idea. When I was learning you had to bring all your own tools. Most people can’t do that and really shouldn’t until they know they really want to pursue it.”
One evening I wandered around alone enjoying the cold and the muted sounds from the outskirts of the few designated fire rings. On the hillside across the creek from the teaching space I sat alone with the moon as it lit up the live oaks. A little ways up the hill behind me I could hear two fellows processing an armadillo for the first time. Later, by headlamp, I would see it’s meat in the frying pan. Visceral chunks of flesh, a few with hair still attached. Yes, armadillos have hair. From under the canopy of a live oak came the glow of warm fire light and the sweet, yet rowdy music of two women playing guitar and harmonizing.
Mead went around in a circle under the oak one night as did sincere statements of gratitude from each person there. It felt at times a strange mix of people. You’ve got rednecks and good ol’boys, You’ve got hippies and transients. Middle of the road riders. Soft talkers and loud interrupters. And really, everyone is a little bit of all of those. Pheromones being collected in an old tequila bottle. Brew made from dumpstered food waste following the bottle containing many times racked and re racked muscadine mead. Though at times the fire was too small to keep everyone warm and there was a total disregard for things touching things during tasting and the songs containing rounds got steadily more mangled with each bottle passed around the overall feeling of the evening was one of mutual delight in strangeness and in strangers become family. Each one of us a vessel of our own individual brew, yet dependent on the wild and cultivated yeasts of our community.
Ross and I had plans to leave by two or three on Sunday. We’d been away from home for weeks with a garden that needed attention, a calamity caused by a fire of unknown origins to deal with—molten motorcycles and bicycles and old growth pine lumber burned to charcoal, and jobs waiting. It was after 7pm by the time we turned left onto the highway and headed back toward Tallahassee. We were exhausted and satisfied and invigorated.
Oh the possibilities…
If you are interested in being a part of this gathering or others like it check out the website:
floridaearthskill.org Also: earthskills.org
is a comprehensive site of all the gatherings in the eastern US.
We are a community dedicated to cultivating an environmentally and socially conscientious society through skill sharing. Your involvement is welcome and essential. JOIN US.
Nettle and Thread 
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