Natural Camouflage

In the modern day camouflage has become a multi-million dollar industry. Hunters, naturalists, and militaries have a vast array of camouflages for every conceivable terrain and variation. Everything from flashlights and lingerie, to your basic hunting needs are available in camouflage colors and patterns.

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Nature Drawing as Awarneness Practice

Regardless of skill level, the very act of drawing something that is within your field of vision is healthy for your brain. Simply trying to represent something realistically on paper forces us to actually look at it (the object or scene being drawn) with a more sensitive and critical eye. The brain is instantly more engaged when looking at something while drawing it, than when just casually observing that same object. New neural networks are created in the grey matter, and our knowledge of, and relationship to that thing is deepened. In this way, drawing builds an intimate knowledge of that which is being drawn.

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The Wilderness Survival Immersion Project (WSIP), an Instuctors Perspective

The range of skills that are taught at ROOTS school is broad and deep.  However, the topic of wilderness survival can be considered to be at the core.  There are many reasons for this, one being that other educational pursuits have no value if you aren’t alive to integrate them.  From the arts of wilderness survival come all other skills. 

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Tanning Rabbit Hides with Kids

The art of transforming skins into leather is a traditional skill held by nearly every human culture that existed up until the industrial revolution.  Protecting our skin from the elements is the first step for meeting our shelter needs and the skins and furs of animals are perfect for providing the raw materials for manufacturing clothing.  Modern Homo sapiens’ lack of skill to meet this basic survival need is an indicator of how far removed contemporary humanity is from our origins.  This is why we decided to teach the children of our Clovis and Jumping Mouse programs how to tan hides
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Flint Knapping- A long rocky road I love to walk.

The first time I saw and heard a big glassy flake of obsidian driven from a core I knew I was doomed. Over the last ten years that ‘doom’ has been the search for making that sound, that clean hard pop, as the millions of tiny bonds holding the rock together let go in a clean shockwave and release the flake I need. Each strike over this time has been and experiment, each experiment has brought me closer to understanding the variables that decide if you get that clean flake, or if you get a chattered and step fractured mess.

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