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This Page - Scroll Down for My Primitive Living Experience by Nikki.
Other Articles Now Available:
• Index of Journey Intros on Study Sites, Hazards, Awareness, Journaling & Sketching, Tracking, Birding & Plants by Chris Chisholm.
• Class Notes from blog on Bugs, Amphibians & Seaweeds edited from Wolf Camp students.
• Woods Lake Species List by Wolf Camp staff.
• Survival Trek Log by Glen MacKay
• Daily Routines of the Earth Skills Practitioner (using permaculture principles) and Ethics of Earth Skills Education by Wolf Camp staff.
• Camper Preparedness & Emotions by Chris Chisholm.
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• Law of Fours: The Order of Survival by Chris Chisholm.

My Primitive Living Experience

Friday, January 27, 2006 • Posted by: Nikki

Hello everyone,

I'm back! For a little while at least. Actually I haven't quite been able to make the step back to "civilization" as we call it, quite yet. I am still living "out in the middle of nowhere" but am enjoying some modern conveniences and luxuries while caretaking a fishing lodge. The shower is really the only thing I really care about! Besides of course the phone and computer so I can keep in contact with my family and friends.

To be honest, I miss my primitive life of survival. There may have been many hardships but never once did they ever overshadow the pure happiness I felt. Every day I woke saying, "I can't believe this is my view."

For those of you who are new to Wolf, welcome. Let me start at the beginning for you... When I was 8 I read My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I dreamed of being Sam Gribley. I wanted to venture off into the vast wilderness and survive off the land.

Never think that dreams are just dreams. For you never know where they will take you in your life and never forget that dreams really do come true. Even the ones you think are next to impossible! It took me 20 years to reach my dream.

Thanks to Wolf Camp and many other amazing teachers, books and courses I too have taken, I realized one day while helping to prepare for the Survivor's Side of the Mountain Camp, that I really could be like Sam Gribley. I decided to try and do it. It was a lot of hard work and dedication but one day I finally found myself on a boat being dropped off on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere. I lived out there for a year and a half, living off the land and sea, starting the fire with a bow drill or hand drill, making primitive tools, smoking and drying food for the winter and learning about all the things I always dreamed of.

I had the time of my life and I hope it's not the best thing I ever do. I have a big "dream list" and it is not near finished. I hope you do to.

I will say that I never felt so exhausted and so elated, so sore and so happy, so full of pain and so full of awe, so thankful, so blessed and so absolutely "stoked" in all my life. I would wake up and poke my head above a lean-to and see an endless wilderness that stretcdhed as far as my eye could see.

I would watch otters and mink fish and dive. I would see a mama bear teach her cub to roll rocks in search of small shore crabs and track them after. I would find myself in the middle of the ocean with orca whales surrounding the boat, calling out to say hello in their high pitched voices. A mother and a baby would swim by close enough to touch. I would feed bald eagles and watch them dive beside me, talons outstretched and in an instant fly ovehead, clutching its meal. I visited ancient native villages and discovered totem poles, pictographs and places of legends and lore. I saw a leaping baby humpback whale, spawning salmon, diving ospreys and, climbing onto a stump in the middle of a river, have a grizzly bear walk right by without it knowing I was there and see it fish in the river. I even heard the roar of a mountain lion and the howl of wolves. On my birthday I swam with a pair of dolphins and watched them as they leaped and splashed around the boat, which by the way was named Gribley, after the boy in the book!

All these things I will never forget but the best times of all were the the times no one is really interested in. It was the times I would just walk to my secret place and sit and watch, sit and listen. Life was so simple, so pure and so peaceful. It was all I dreamed of and more.

Oh it wasn't always this way. I suffered, I froze, I starved. I don't know, somehow in all of it, I loved those times. I loved knowing that no matter what, I could take care of myself, with nothing, if I had to. I felt alive. I felt free. It was just like in the movies only that much better! When you have no warm home to go back to, you know your parents are not going to show up with pizza, you know there's no warm bed, no cookies, no fast food anywhere to be found. You don't crave anything, you don't complain, you know what you do? You laugh! It's all you can do! It was so much fun.

The best part of it was that I could share it all with my two best friends, Micah Fay, who was an apprentice at Wolf for a summer and my feral cat, Scout! Who by the way is the coolest cat in the world. I can't believe all she did and all she put up with.

Oh we had some worst times too. Like rowing 15 miles non stop in a 10 ft rowboat while it was snowing and arriving to the post office to send a letter home and hopefully recieve one for the effort! Not to mention the aching back, the frozen feet and that painful rash on our butts from being wet so long! How about rowing 40 miles to witness the herring run and missing it. Only to get there and realize there was nothing to eat except bladderwrack seaweed and ducks we couldn't get within 200 feet of. After a week waiting and starving there was not much else to do but leave and row home! It was some gorgeous country though and I would do it all over again. We pounded cedar for weeks on end to make clothing and that was the most annoying noise you can ever imagine. Oh how about picking berries for days only to have them mold every time! How about being so exhausted and sore that even though you've never felt so weak and hungry in all you life that you go to bed without dinner only to find yourself lying in a pool of water soaked to the bone because of a hidden leak in your lean-to made from a cat playing on the roof earlier!

But when I didn't think I could chop another log, hike that extra mile, row those extra 10, I took a deep breath and did it anyway. You do it because you have to and soon you realize there is nothing you cannot do. You get strong, you get tough and there is nothing you cannot figure out how to do or a situation you cannot overcome. It was an adventure that I can't wait to do again, even for just a short time. That's what Wolf Camp is like in a way. You learn things few people know of, you test yourself, you witness amazing wildlife and learn to be self sufficient in a way. You no longer fear the forest or the animals in it, you respect it and learn to be one of them in a way.

I found Wolf because I wanted to learn how to make nettle cordage, and look where that piece of rope led me! On the trek, I made and used every primitive tool, weapon and clothing I had ever dreamed of. I got so much better at the skills and crafts I had already learned. We ate in clam shells, smoke fish in our cedar planked smoke house and really used all the baskets and crafts that we made.

I loved relying on my skills, my knowledge and my intuition and most importantly, relying on the fact that the earth and sky will provide every thing I need to survive. And it did. We lived like kings for the last year. We ate the most delicious meals like barbecued salmon, clam burgers, shrimp salads, crab sandwiches, wild mushroom stir-fries and fish and chips, "wilderness style". We substituted the fries with wild onion rings. We caught the biggest red snapper, halibut and lingcod I have ever seen. We ate every kind of seashore life there was, from urchins to chitons, dogwinkles to sea cucumbers. We even ate a mouse! Nothing was ever wasted, ever! And we harvested everything with a caretaker attitude.

You see everything is possible.

I hope to see you at camp.

There is an Audio Recorded Camp Greeting from Nikki if you would like to listen to it, and for which you may need the free RealOne Player if it's not already installed in your system.

Thursday, February 9, 2006 • Posted by: Elise

Nikki, I just read your post on the blog and all I can say is, “Wow!” Chris was right. What you wrote was mind blowing and motivating. I really admire everything you have accomplished. (I know that you’re a great artist too!)

Well ok first of all I should say, “hi!” I’m Elise (or Maplewolf). I’m not too sure if you remember me all that well…but we met for the first time in the summer of 2002 during the art and music camp. That was my first summer at Wolf and it really was an eye-opening experience for me. I learned how oblivious I was to all of nature around me. Since that summer, I’ve had a new view of the environment. You (and Chris) taught me so much in just that one week I was there. And, of course, I’ve wanted more so I’ve gone for 4 years now!

I was sad last year when I didn’t get a chance to see you again, but I did get to watch that video of when everyone visited you and Micah. Your stories were truly amazing. Oh and I really miss Scout as well! I still have a picture from Lumni when she was a kitten! That’s some very cute stuff. I’ll have to send you a copy of it or something. Well anyways, I just wanted to say hi and I’m glad you had a great experience out there. I hope I can talk with you about it some time this year!

Love, Elise S.M., “Maplewolf”

Here's the latest word (letter arrived May 1st - not sure when it was written) from Nikki after 14 months so far on her trek with Micah and Scout in the wilderness: It sure feels good now that it's spring! The hummingbirds just arrived and today we made our first harvest of dandelion flowers at a nearby field we call Produce. I was harvesting alongside a bear who was munching greens in front of the old house frame. It was pretty neat. All is well out here. My health is great besides a killer backache right now from carrying big logs, plus the usual chronic knee and elbow pain. At least it's opposite sides! Micah has the same elbow problem, too, and we're not sure why yet. It's not debilitating, though, so it's work as usual. Actually, life is pretty easy out here, chop a bit of wood, get a bucket of water, and wash dishes. The rest of the day we're pretty much free to work on whatever project we want, explore or study. We still have heaps of food! Haven't fished since the first of October! The halibut are back and so we'll fish again soon with our bent wood hooks and cedar hand lines.

Employment: We only need instructors with experience running camps and teaching in the field of Earth Skills, including Permaculture, Tracking, Primitive Artisanry, Advanced Herbalism, or Wilderness EMT training with real outdoor survival practice. If you would like experience as a teacher and learn skills of the Naturalist, Tracker, Herbalist, Scout, Hunter, Artisan, or Permaculture Pioneer, apply to become an instructor through our Earth Skills Teaching Apprenticeship.

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