CURRENT MISSION

Wilding

ABOUT ME

I live in the hills above Kachemak Bay, with a view of the Kenai Mountains, about a half hour outside of Homer, Alaska.

I love music; listening, playing, immersing within sound.

I enjoy yoga, mostly ashtanga, sometimes hatha or yin.

I can really get into a good argument, a friendly conversation and all the fun places in between. Particularly discussing the world condition, wilderness theory, anthropology, ecology, magic, myth, folklore, music and trying to re-sacralize the world we inhabit.

I spend most of my time in wild places, working or adventuring. I climb rock and mountains, hike everywhere, love hot springs and constantly try to figure out how to be human in places where humans have stopped being. I think "wilderness" is a dangerous idea, one that separates us from what we are inherently a part of. I also recognize that the word points at something incredibly important, and relevant in a world where wild spaces are rapidly being destroyed. I try to bridge this gap, honoring wild places and taking care within them while also seeking to access wild places in myself and others and accept that we are not aliens on this planet but a part of all that is here.

I am deeply in love with the forests and mountains of Cascadia and the Olympic Peninsula. I have been trying to settle there for many years, but for various reasons have decided that my true home is much further North.

If I am the things that I do, then I am a rampant explorer, hiker and camper, primitivist wanderer, avid reader and writer. If I am what I love, then I am human and non-human alike, celebrating the lack of distinction. I am forest and mountain, river and ocean, stone and leaf.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I bring with me a sense of adventure and stories from the wild places I inhabit and travel through, a love of good food and cooking, a desire to share music and enjoy geeking out about books, music, etc.

I host travelers looking for a deeper sense of wildness, access to places hard to find or reach, and I try to facilitate their experiences engaging with those places.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

All of my couchsurfing and hosting experiences have been incredibly positive. Amazing people are floating around in this community to such an extent that I was able to be pulled from my Luddite, anti-tech revelry and actually consider this site as relevant to connecting with other humans.

Couchsurfing (the website) has changed a lot since I first joined it. My profile appears as 65% complete - this is partly because I am not on Facebook and I am disappointed that CS has bound itself so closely to Facebook. The rest is because I don't pay for couchsurfing, in keeping with the original intentions and goals of the CS project and its members.

Interests

Being in wilderness. Whatever that means, impossible as it is and general as it sounds to the critical. Alpine mountaineering, rock climbing, remote backpacking, exploring the landscape, the mind, and relationships.

Music, I love music and kind of still play the piano. Picked up the bass guitar last winter and I'm working at it. Sometimes a harmonica or tin whistle, sometimes a drum.

Yoga, climbing hard, hiking hard, soccer, running around the woods.

Learning, Teaching and Healing encompass the range of most of my interests in the world. I love to learn and teach, sharing experience and knowledge without the boundaries of authority. Some specific topics include anthropology and human culture, specifically "primitive" cultures and the patterns that underly our social systems and human experience. I am strongly interested in the critique of civilization and the consideration of what our alternatives might look like considering we are embedded within a culture that is actively trying to destroy all life.

Herbal medicine is one of my deeper studies; I wildcraft many of my own herbs and mushrooms and make a variety of medicinal preparations. I also like to eat weeds, wild food goes hand in hand with medicine as a nourishing and interactive communication process between beings, be they human or dandelion.

Fermenting vegetables, making mead, brewing concoctions of various sorts.

Rewilding internally is another aspect of healing that I take very seriously. The habits and addictions, trauma and imprinting that we have accumulated growing up domesticated has created a lot of needs that are not met within us. I expect this healing journey to continue throughout my life, but embrace the challenge that has thus far been created within my existence.

Climbing Trees.
Jumping into Rivers.
Coming to know strange people.

• animals
• culture
• writing
• books
• folklore
• dining
• cooking
• yoga
• running
• technology
• traveling
• homesteading
• magic
• music
• piano
• hiking
• backpacking
• camping
• mountaineering
• rock climbing
• anthropology
• ecology
• medicine
• rivers
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Books, I read a lot. History, anthropology, social theory, etc. I like where Derrick Jensen was, before he got awful. The clearest vision that I can relate to comes from Fredy Pearlman. I'm continually inspired by Calvin Martin and Paul Shepard. I like good literature, from fantasy to sci-fi to just a good old novel. Ursula LeGuin, Edward Abbey, Octavia Butler, Tom Robbins, George Martin. John Vaillant...

Food, Plant Medicine and Mushroom books: Sandor Katz, Michael Moore, Sally Fallon, James Green, Richo Cech, Paul Stamets, David Aurora and Peter McCoy.

Musically, I am pretty diverse. A lot of people say that, but... I love folk, especially dark, scorpionic folk music like Neil Young, elliot smith, Des Ark, Hurray for the Riff Raff's old sound. My ground state is metal, not barbeque rock, but pure, atmospheric, atavistic metal such as what has come from Cascadia in recent years, and of course the classics of black metal. My interest in Electronic music is expanding, deepening.

Movies: Dead Man, Wristcutters, The Crow, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Miyazaki's anime, Metalocalypse, anything deep and interesting, or comdedic without being culturally redundant.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

The lightning flashed again, even brighter this time, the thunder chasing my heels and shaking my bones. I hurried, moving swiftly but not daring to run on the slick sandstone that made up the narrow ledge of the immense canyon I was moving along. The ledge was at least a couple hundred feet from the canyon floor and about a hundred feet from the rim, with an easy way up and down about half a mile back, right where the storm had by now darkened the canyon and covered it in a downpour of torrential rain. This was Utah, the high desert, but also February and quite cold. I was hoping, and betting a lot, that there would be a way down at the fork of the canyon ahead of me, otherwise I would be trapped and forced to endure the storm, a slick and treacherous path down back the way I came and the possibility of not crossing the normally small stream before it flooded. I had seen this stream flood before after a smaller storm and knew better than to take my chances. I had to get across before the storm hit me or I might be down in the canyon all night waiting for the waters to recede. Hurrying against the gusts of storm wind I jogged along the ridge hoping for an easy path. I stopped at the ledge and looked out, straight down to the canyon floor, a giant cottonwood far below me. To my right the smaller canyon forked off and the ledge smoothed out into the wall of the canyon itself, leaving me no further route. To my left a fin, a sharp ridge of sandstone protruded into the canyon and bent the stream far below. The obelisk-like spire at the point of the fin had an overhang on the leeward side, perhaps enough to shelter me. I ran out onto the fin as the first drops of fat, cold rain pelted down on me, then I stopped, falling to my hands and gazing back at the circular patterns in the sand to the inside of the ledge I had just left. My mind saw that they were adobe, ancient structures built by the people who lived here centuries before. A flash and pound of lightning and thunder rose me from my reverie and I bolted out of the rain to the overhanging spire in the middle of the canyon. Looking beyond I saw an even better shelter, a small hole all the way through the rock, just big enough for me to crouch in total dryness. One last glance up revealed the nature of my shelter. Spirals and Circles, human and animal figures interwoven, unnameable shapes were carved, pecked into the rock by ancient hands. Petroglpyhs. The storm broke all around me and I crouched hidden in an ancient cave, staring wordlessly at the meaning that another people found in this place. In this hole I could look up canyon and down canyon with rock on all other sides. Were it not for the dark obscurity of the storm I knew I could see for quite a distance either way, but now the darkness absorbed the canyon, blinding flashes of lightning brightening the air itself but not penetrating the wall of rain and wind. I hunched into myself, staying warm and dry and gazing ponderingly at the petroglyphs of the ancient ones. Hisatsenom, the revered ancestors of the modern Puebloans, walkers of the canyons and builders of the cliff dwellings. I don't know how long I stayed in that hole, but when I emerged the sun was bright and already steaming the rocks dry. Time was meaningless. Worlds merged. I was alone in a complex system of canyons yet I felt that I had just begun to understand the vastness of.

Teach, Learn, Share

Ideas. Philosophy, from the philosophy of time to the philosophy of love.

Wild plant identification for food and medicine.

Urban and wildland foraging, scavenging and mischief-making.

Primitive skills that work in urban and rural environments.

Herbal medicine making.

Cultural perspective, anthropological and political critique

What I Can Share with Hosts

Local knowledge of plants, animals, ecosystems, trails, mountain routes, adventure of all kinds.

Homemade food and farm goods, ferments, herbal creations and potions.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, Finland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States

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