In my area I could probably make it strictly immediate-return and that is an eventual goal but only because of the close access to national forest land which not everyone has that near them. We do still rely on cultivated foods but are working on planting more native wild plants that are a food source. This year was an eye opener on how dependant on the environment your diet can be as an immediate-return gatherer. Last spring we had a lot of major flooding in the area followed by a week long freeze. It killed the acorn crop which is a major food source here for a hg. If we were dependant on them we would be starving this winter because there were very few which also made it difficult to find enough deer and turkey which are also a major food source that depend on acorns too.
just got done doing the back reading on this entire thread. i will be back to share my thoughts tomorrow. unless i have trouble sleeping. then i might return tonight. thanks for the prompt @andrew.
As @alexander and I discussed in a conversation we recorded for my podcast, what I really like about the word āferalā is that it implies a transitional state ā landing somewhere on the spectrum between ātameā and āwildā ā and also suggests a multi-generational effort. To ārewildā oneself is a misnomer, 'cause anything already tamed canāt simply become wild, right? But maybe in a couple generationsā¦
The fact of this project, this movement, being ātransitionalā says to me that pragmatism ought to be the name of the game in just about all circumstances, and to that end, permaculture is one excellent toolkit that we may draw upon when necessary. And just as I leave my electrical tools in the truck when Iām laying tile, I can pick up the āfood forestā and ālong-term resilienceā tools without having to bring along the anthropocentric baggage that is often attached to permaculture.
As for where I currently find myself in time and space (semi-rural Kentucky, outside Louisville, 2017), a sort of transitionary, might we say feral-oriented? permaculture is what the landscape needs most. Agriculturalists and developers have absolutely ransacked the land, to the point that it could not adequately provide for us without many years of careful stewardship first. That stewardship, ultimately, ought to be about minimizing or eliminating the role of the steward over time.
Native species have been devastated, and invasives threaten to choke out what little diversity remains. To restore the landscape in both categories will require possibly decades of intensive intervention, and my training and experience as an ecologist tells me that āleave it aloneā is not a viable strategy, at least not in my region, unless weāre willing to wait patiently for a few centuries or millennia for the forests to bounce bank.
I donāt think āImmediate returnā (as I understand it) is viable here either, but āreturn in a decade or soā could be.
Hereās that podcast for anyone whoās interested:
Well I dunno, in rethinking my comments, I could be persuaded to believe that immediate-return is possible here, immediately, with adequate access to public lands around the state. I donāt love driving a hundred miles to go foraging. And any land I might one day own would be degraded to the point that it might not grow much beyond invasives without my frequent interventions over the course of many years.
oh boy. this is gonna be long-winded.
so, i have been thinking about this all day (not to mention for several years, really) as i dug roots and moved ducks to a new foraging grounds. i am here now to herd together my many thoughts into something that resembles a cohesive response to defining feralculture, as well as addressing aspects of some prior comments.
i will offer a bit of a backstory for my personal context here, and then talk about Ardea a bit.
first, i will say that as someone who has been in the permaculture world and has intentionally created distance with that world, i was immediately drawn to feralculture as a model that could answer many of the issues i had with permaculture - and later, rewilding - at the time (the two main issues being the white savior complex and anthropocentrism (oh yeah, and bulldozers)). i was invited to the feralculture facebook group about a year and a half ago, and immediately began to try to understand what this thing was that was happening here that seemed to be very near to my own vision and thoughts. i was already beginning to use the term feral as a descriptive term for myself and my lifeway, so i was very intrigued. what i was and am seeking is a philosophy (for lack of a better word) that is deeply ecocentric at its core - that is, where ecology is never compromised for the greater good of humans alone, and the understanding that to do so will leave humans as lesser versions of themselves. back then, and still, i see this as a sort of coalescence of the best meaty bits of rewilding and permaculture, which leaves all the capitalism, domestication, anthropocentrism, and other elements that harm ecology behind. so here i am.
last Spring i gave a lecture in Asheville, NC in the permaculture tract of a local conference. it was called Reinhabiting the Land. one of the main motivations for this lecture was to point out the flaws in permaculture and to work to fill in the gaps using other philosophies. of course, other philosophies lack the dirty hands and active engagement with place that permaculture has, but permaculture has done little to address or call-out domestication, and so on.
now, when i say that i am feral i mean four things: 1) i have fully accepted my state of domestication and choose to resist it, 2) i am willing to accept that almost constant change must be worked at regarding my lifeway in order to resist this domestication, 3) i am willing to actively promote in my self and in others a return to wildness as a present state of ferality, and 4) in order to do this work i will seek guidance through exploring ancestral cultures of pre-agricultural humans. so, i guess you would say that feralculture means to me that we get to work toward a culture of folks doing this together.
of course, the above is purposely simplified. i am willing to expand on any and all 4 points if anyone is interested in that.
moving on to Ardea and the work that i do on this land as it regards IR and DR H/G lifeways: i feel comfortable saying that an eventual goal of mine is to have this land suitable for a full-on IR H/G lifeway. however, i can not be certain this will happen in my lifetime. i also cannot be certain that it is feasible based on the fact that we still have an oblivious mob of domesticated folk here, and their practices and lifeways (deathways) are constantly swallowing up quality earth and air and water. i think that most land cannot and will not be able to support IR H/G lifeways until after the shit hits the fan (civilization no longer stands in the way and has subsided) except in remote places with lots of land and the bare minimum of population density and eco-disruptive land use. i look at the work that i do as a sort of database for plants and information to prepare humans for that return to wildness, that IR H/G lifeway. in the interim the best i can do is some sort of conglomerate of IR/DR H/G, gardening, horticulture, and piggy pastoralism. this diversity in seeking subsistence is good, and it nourishes me, and the methods i use to get there i feel really good about.
we do not have the abundant wildlife that once thrived here, with land in this area so fragmented by fences and roads, forests felled in their youth, and other aspects of civilization that lessen the ability for other animals to thrive (particularly larger ones). so i move pigs around for pulse disturbances, i move ducks around to fertilize trees and to break pest cycles, and so on. each year i have been here for the past 5 years we grow less and less annual crops. that feels really good. the needs of our land base determines our actions, and it also determines our diet. we eat a lot of animal foods, we eat a lot of fruit throughout the year, and we eat lots of wild foods, and less and less from annual gardens. but the idea here, for me, is to be pragmatic in my approach while assuring that i am, to the absolute best of my knowledge, doing what is best for the emerging wild land here - letās not forget that this land is also feral and looking toward a return to wildness. this land, like me, has been poisoned and traumatized. we heal together, by working with each other and supporting each other.
i want to say more, but i got to go tend to some things in preparation for a trip to the big city of Asheville tomorrow. i am more than willing to clarify any of the points i made, as i know it is challenging for me at times to stay linear in thought. looking forward to continuing the conversation.
Same! I had a feeling @alexander would say everything I was trying to say, only more clearly and from a place of deeper and more direct experience!
Yes, it sucks being a thinker and yet having the difficulty sometimes of putting those thoughts in print.