The small, spiral coils of bark shear away from the bow as I pull the cabinet scraper across the stave. I watch the gathering pile of thin shavings grow at my feet, falling this place of focus and wordlessness, feeling into the stave in my hands. Over the last few months I have worked this bow stave down. Using my hands and various tools, a hatchet, farrier’s rasp, cabinet scraper, sand paper, I have shaped this rough-cut piece of wood into what is now emerging as an English-style hunting longbow.
The hours put into this have also shaped me.
While I was completing my PhD at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, a good friend suggested that we look into a survival and primitive skills school. I loved the idea of developing more self-reliance and having the incentive to spend more time in nature.
Neither of us had ever gone to a primitive skills course. We had these ideas of what it would mean: the ability to “survive” in adverse conditions in the wild, a deeper connection with the natural world, and an all-around badass experience.
What we found was so much more. The first primitive skills school that we attended is called ROOTS (Reclaiming Our Origins Through Traditional Skills, check them out at rootsvt.com). We both quickly realized that our instructors had an understanding of themselves and the natural world that was anything but “primitive.” There is a deep reverence for the natural world that runs through those that carry these skills. It is a felt thing. This feeling is what first struck me.
To learn these skills went so much deeper than anything my formal, intellectual education could have ever taught me.
As a doctoral student at Brown, I studied how stories and rituals are used in different cultures to help individuals and communities heal from trauma. I am fascinated with how our personal, familial, and community stories shape who we are. The awareness of these stories allows us to be shapers of our own lives and identities.
This was an amazing experience. I developed a wealth of theoretical knowledge on the psychology of who we are and how we become that way. I learned from many different traditions of ritual and storytelling. But I became frustrated with the fact that so much of what I saw was entirely in the realm of theory. The mental acrobatics of the academic world drove me a little crazy. I wanted action. How do these things tangibly impact my life and the lives of those around me? How can I contribute to developing these skills to help others?
Having an embodiment practice has always been important to me. I have been a martial artist most of my life. I looked for the instructors that would most push me, the ones that made me test my skills against uncooperative opponents. I’ve had this lifelong obsession with finding what is real. So, I gravitated towards combative arts. This grounded my intellectual pursuits in tangible, physical reality.
But something was missing. Something that was about connection with the world. Not the social world, there was enough of that in school, friendships, and media. What I wanted was something older, more mythic, that spoke to a pre-verbal part of who I am. Something that has deep roots and through which my deep roots can grow.
When my friend and I found ROOTS, I knew this was it.
One of the things that arises often in the people that I work with is the feeling of being disconnected. Whether they are in their teens or in their sixties, I hear men tell me over and over again that they don’t know where they belong. There is a sense of place that is vaguely connected to their physical home, their schools or jobs, perhaps, and their families. But still, there is an emptiness. Many try to fill it through adopting the traditions and beliefs of other cultures. They seek out Asian, Native American, or African traditions to fill the space where their ancestral identities have been swallowed up by the devouring jaws of colonialism and history. Others attempt to cover up the sense of being placeless by devouring food, alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or whichever inclination the hungry ghost of addiction may take.
I take them out to the woods. I teach them about making fire. I suggest, for starters, that the hunger for belonging start with a physical connection with the Earth beneath their feet.
In a world that is obsessed with hyper-intellectualized beliefs, justifications, and cross-examinations that are heady and disembodied, it is a revolutionary act to invite people to put their hands in the dirt. When my clients and groups I lead get the opportunity to physically connect with the Earth, something unspoken, mysterious, and sometimes miraculous happens. Stress and anxiety fall away. Laughter and wonder arrive. Sometimes, they come after some much-needed grieving.
Through the repetitive motions of drawing a bow back and forth to create a coal, to breathe life into a fire that will physically, tangible warm them and their friends, that will cook food for them and boil water they can drink, a new sense of place emerges. A new sense of connection that was hungry to be felt grows. There are no words to explain this experience. It is an experience of wordlessness.
There are things that the heart feels and stories the mind uses to rationalize them. In an impulse to elevate the mind and reject the body, Western society has cut off our connection to the Earth, to our ancestry, and to ourselves. We’ve lost the ability to feel and be guided by that feeling in a way that serves our world. We have gotten so caught up in our intellects that we have lost our bodies and forgotten what it is to be human. To be human is to take our place in the ecology of the natural world. There is no us and nature. We are nature.
Our deviation from this has led to the devastation of the Earth. It has led us to accept monolithic industries of plastic food, to poison our waters, to trash our environment. It has allowed us to be convinced that we are isolated from one another, from the beings that share this planet with us, from the Earth itself.
Healing this starts simply. By putting our hands in the dirt. By collectively seeking skills that connect us with our birthright as human beings: to touch the Earth, to feel our place in the world, to grow our communities in communion with the planet that is everything to us.
The bow I am making is making me. As I shape it with my intention, my physical action, and my focus, it is teaching me about myself and the world. It teaches me how much work and focus my ancestors put into creating the tools that allowed for me to be alive now.
These so-called primitive skills have helped me guide suicidal teenagers out of the dark, solitary landscapes of craving death. They have transformed entire groups of violent, angry and heartbroken young men into confident, collaborative, and accountable community leaders. There is some intangible but evident alchemy that happens when we connect with the Earth in these ways. It transcends –isms. If you want to make a difference in your life, in your community, and your world, go put your hands in the dirt. Learn these skills. Reclaim your ancestral birthright as a human being.
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Photo: Getty Images
