Primitive Skills

Today, I went to a Primitive Skills Workshop held at the Bowhunters Unlimited archery range in Cupertino. One of our regular summer volunteers, Falcon, was on hand to teach arrow and bow making, and the workshop also included lessons on flintknapping, fun with atlatls and bows, fire making, and a presentation on general survival skills. A couple of my other coworkers showed up too, but not, surprisingly, the coworker who informed me of the event.

I continue to be amazed at Falcon's general woodworking knowledge. When I got there, he was carving a bowl, and hours later, when I left, he was in the middle of an arrow making demonstration.

In between, I wandered from station to station, taking several turns hucking atlatl darts at targets. Here's my coworker, Kestrel, doing the same:

The guy running the flintknapping station patiently showed his audience how to properly work with obsidian, chert, and glass (and maybe others). At one point, he pulled out a beaver jawbone with a gold tooth, and told a tall tale about how it got that way. I'm thinking of asking him to come up and share his knowledge with the Trailblazers campers this summer. That would be fun. He's associated with this website, which I will explore in greater depth later.

I also met a guy named Douglas, who is an organizer for a group called Middle Earth Rangers of the Bay Area. Given my recent obsessive plow through S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, which featured a similar group of Tolkien-obsessed young people, I'm giving some thought to checking out what they do.