Primitive

Yesterday afternoon I got back from doing a three day primitive with Lehi, David and the new trailwalker trainees. Lehi wanted me to come so I could get to know the trainees since I am becoming Ridge.

We left thursday afternoon and headed out to LX spring in the Bloody Basin. We spent what daylight we had left gathering massive amounts of dried leaves for a leaf bed while a few others learned how to make fire using the bow drill method. We had a wonderful fire circle about why everyone had come to work for Anasazi.

I began the night sleeping in between David and Christian on the leaf bed. (we did not have sleeping bags or blankets) Our mutual body heat kept us very warm. (side note: if you are in a survival situation you want to be as close to someone else as possible to share body heat and try to get someone to breathe on your back between your shoulder blades as this will help your lungs and the air inside them to stay warm) I slept there for a while until one of my arms fell asleep and david began snoring in my ear. I got up at that point and talked with others who were sitting by the fire. I taught them how to make hot rocks to stay warm and how to cook prickly pear pads since we didn't have any food and were hungry. We didn't have a knife so we used a stick to break the pads off. You have to make sure you get the ones with white spines because the red spined ones will make you sick (we used the moon and fire light to make sure we got the right kind). We roasted them on the fire to burn off the spines and to cook them (you should not eat raw pads as they pull heat from your body to be digested and if you eat to many raw you can actually become hypothermic). Most of them didn't like the taste and I can't blame them. Its very bland and slimy but at least it was a little food.

I spent the rest of the night sleeping either by the fire or on the leaf bed with my hot rocks. I did get a decent nights sleep despite the limited resources. I did have a thin wool coat and a beanie which helped. When I woke up in the morning, I had leaves and grass stuck all over me and looked ridiculous.

The next day we hiked a couple miles over to a cow tank. We did the whole hike in silence and were challenged to just be in the moment and observing all around us with all of our senses. I enjoyed that because it got me out of my train of thought of worrying about my house. I did snack of some wild edibles as we walked, mainly ocatillo leaves and desert plantain. It was fun teaching the trainees in silence that they were edible.

We did blanket steppings and knife steppings with all the trainees so that they could begin working on their rabbitstick books which is what we did for the rest of the day. Even though I did sleep a bit the night before, I took a nap in the shade with the warm breeze blowing over me and it felt wonderful. I meant to only sleep for 15 minutes but apparently I was out for close to an hour.

We spent the night by the cow tank. Instead of going totally primitive, we got blankets to sleep with which felt like a luxury. We also split a badgerstone food pack and taught the trainees some basic recipes and how to cook on the fire. It was so funny watching everyone react to the simple food because we hadn't really had any since lunch the day before. I couldn't even wait for something to cook so I ate raw macaroni with powdered cheese first then I made some cold cereal with Hilary. That night we swapped embarrassing stories and there were some pretty good ones. Everyone was in much higher spirits now that we had food in our bellies.

The next morning I awoke to a beautiful red sunrise. I wish I had a picture to show you. I helped Lehi shuttle the vehicles to our new spot which took us a couple hours and then we no-traced our camp and headed home. Once back in town, we headed to a buffet for lunch. I enjoyed watching everyone load up their plates with food and stuff their faces while still filthy from the Trail. Its always hilarious to watch Trailwalkers eat "dirty dinner": completely oblivious to the looks we get from other people and laughing from our experiences and the risidual "Trail high".