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WOLF JOURNEY Program INDEX:

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Wolf Journey CORRESPONDENCE COURSE

Wolf Journey CLASS SERIES offered in Western WA

PART TWO Intro - Trail of the Tracker
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8

PART THREE Intro - Trail of the Herbalist
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12

PART FOUR Intro - Trail of the Scout
• Chapters TBA

PART FIVE Intro - Trail of the Artisan
• Chapters TBA

PART FIVE Intro - Trail of the Hunter
• Chapters TBA

PART FIVE Intro - Trail of the Pioneer
• Chapters TBA

PART EIGHT Intro - Handbook for Earth Skills Students, Environmental Teachers & Outdoor Leaders
• Journaling Cover Page
• Wildlife Recording Form
• Student Transcripts
• Glossary & Rescources
• Taxonometric Classification
• Outings Guide
• Teaching Guide
• Outdoor Leader Program Policies
• More TBA

Virtual CHALLENGES including Earth Skills Self-Assessment

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• Fun Nourishment

Faculty Essay

Also check out our other articles available in the Ethnobotany series, Survival series, Wildlife series, and Earth Skills Education series.

Ouch! Those Nettles Taste Good

This is one of a series of articles on ethnobotany. Click Here for an introduction to this series on the Most Important Plants To Learn and Click Here for information on our Stinging Nettles Workshop the first Saturday in September.

Workshop participant serving up some Stinging Nettle stew in 2010.

Right next to my house, there is a park which is filled with stinging nettles, while you may have other plants which substitute for the qualities that nettles provide. For instance, nettles provide the strongest plant fiber commonly growing in maritime Washington State. But there are other plants which are even stronger, like dogbane (the poisonous indian hemp) which grow east of the mountains. Or if you live to the north, fireweed makes an adequate fiber substitute.

You may be wondering how stinging nettles can be processed into a strong fiber for rope, clothing, netting, and other uses. Well, the best way to understand something so tangible is to actually do it yourself, because words usually fail to do justice to visual/tangible things. But here's how I like to process nettles into fiber: Although the Native people of this area tell me that they like to harvest nettles for fiber in late spring or early summer, I like to wait until early fall, giving the nettles a chance to complete their life cycle of seeding, etc., yet gathering them before they start to mildew and rot as the rainy season approaches. I use scissors to cut the nettle stem at its base, taking care to leave the root in the ground since its rhizomes (root stem) will produce new nettle shoots in the spring.

This workshop participant wanted to purposefully get himself stung and found out that the sting isn't so bad, especially if you counteract it right away with a variety of anctedotes. Various things work for various people, from mud, to fern spores, to plantain, to the juice inside the nettle stalk itself!

I also try not to let the nettle stalks bend/fold. That way, the fibers stay as pristine as possible until the next processing step. To keep them from folding, and to make transport easier, I strip the stalks of leaves and stems and use string to tie a bundle of stalks together. At home, I hang up (or just set up) the stalks to air-dry where they won't mold, such as in a drafty upstairs bedroom with a window open. Alternatively, you can strip the skin off the stalks (that takes showing) instead of drying the whole stalk, but you should wait until the skin fiber is dry before using, because the fibers will continue to shrink while drying, causing any rope or other product you make to loosen and therefore weaken. The advantage to drying the stalk first is that it is a bit easier to remove the skin fiber once the stalk is dry, but not yet hardened, so at least a week, depending on the heat and airflow in your drying area.

Describing how to make rope, clothing, netting, etc. is nearly impossible without showing a person, but suffice it to say that you can easily spin the skin of the nettle stalk into cordage using various "reverse wrap" methods. The inner stalk is great for fire kindling, by the way, and in fact, even after the nettles have molded in the forest throughout the winter, they often remain standing, so the stalks with remaining skin are just about the best fire kindling you can find in a generally wet forest.

To put the ethnobotanical uses of stinging nettles into context, nettles have been used around the world for many uses, with the most popularly known being a great tonic (tea) for preventing wintertime illnesses, as it contains excellent nutrative properties, high amounts of iron, etc. quite similar to spinach, but also high plant proteins. As a food, people harvest the new growth throughout the spring (until it starts to flower when it develops a compound which is hard on the kidneys) and make it into a tasty soup, pesto, or lasagne, among other culinary delights. You can dry the nettles to preserve throughout the hear and continue using them in similar medicinal and edible ways. Finally, the sting of the nettle is in itself medicinal. People throughout northern eurasia still whip themselves with the stalks to cure arthritis, as the formic acid contained in nettle hairs draws blood to the affected areas and, in my experience, does in fact cure sore joints.

The author carrying a bundle of Stinging Nettle back home in Fall 2010. Click Here for information on our Stinging Nettles Workshop the first Saturday in September.

Some of the other plants that I consider to be part of my Top 10 list for northern latitudes include grasses, pines, cattails, oaks, nettles, the rose family which includes many wild fruits and berries, a local wild edible root, plus a choice of seaweeds, bamboo, cacti, or palm depending on where a person lives, and the most prominent cedar, juniper or cypress tree in the area. Check out my articles on these plants by clicking on:

Learning to ID Plants
Herbal First Aid
If Sedges have Edges, and Rushes are Round, Grasses are Hollow from Nose to the Ground
A Cattail Tale
Spruce, Firs, Larch & Hemlock are all Pines?
Why Has the Oak Fallen?
Rose and Other Tasty Berries
Secrets of Seaweed
American Ginseng
Gifts of the Cedar
Bamboo, Palm & Cactus

Employment: We only need instructors with experience running camps and teaching in the field of Earth Skills Education, including skills of the Naturalist, Tracker, Herbalist, Survival Scout, Primitive Artisan and Sustainable Pioneer. Apply to become an instructor through our Earth Skills Teaching Apprenticeship.

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