Picture a world where humans exist, like all other living things, in balance. Where there is no separation between "human" and "wild." Unlearn, Rewild boldly envisions such a world, probing deeply into the cultural constraints on our ability to lead truly sustainable lives and offering real, tangible tools to move toward another way of living, seeing, and thinking.
Part philosophical treatise, part hard-core survival guide, this unique and thoroughly unconventional manual blends philosophy with a detailed introduction to a rich assortment of endangered traditional living skills, including:
- Harvesting and preparing unconventional proteins
- Feral food preservation
- Dealing responsibly with waste
- Natural methods of birth control
- Tanning and processing animal skins
Lyrical, humorous, surprising, enlightening, and thought-provoking by turns, Unlearn, Rewild is essential reading for those who wish to heal themselves and the earth, live gracefully into the future primitive and experience their wildest dreams.
Miles Olson has spent the past decade deeply immersed in learning and practicing earth skills. While foraging, hunting, gardening, and gathering for his livelihood, his experiences have given him a unique perspective on rewilding, radical self-reliance, and the impact of civilization on the natural world.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Ideas
1. Sustainability and Wildness
2. What is Rewilding?
3. Subsistence
4. Technology, Ethics and Freedom
5. How to Walk Away from Civilization
6. Reflections at the End of the World
7. On Being White
8. Veganism or Radical Sustainability? Tough Questions About Diet
9. Something in the Rain
10. Succession
11. Killing the Most Beautiful Thing
Part Two: Endangered Skills
12. Learning How to Live
13. Honoring the Bodies of Animals — By Eating Them
14. Feral Food Preservation: Unconventional and Traditional Methods of Putting Things By
15. Meet Your New Friends: Indispensable Plant Allies for Hard Times
16. Feral Food Cultivation: Thoughts and Strategies on "Tending the Wild"
17. Hunter-Gatherer, Gardener-Trapper
18. Dressing and Undressing Our Food: How to Skin and Gut a Creature
19. De-Industrializing Contraception: Birth Control for Sustainability and Survival
20. Working with Skin
21. Getting to Know Nuts
22. Exploring Entomophagy: Bugs as Food
23. Fire and Light
24. The Tao of Poo: Notes on "Giving Back"
Conclusion: The Future Primitive
Index
About the Author
About the Author :
Miles Olson has spent the better part of the past decade living off the grid and intimately on the land, as a squatter on the forested edge of a sprawling town on Vancouver island. Subsisting by foraging, hunting, scavenging, gardening and scrounging as part of a small community of feral homesteaders, he has amassed a toolkit of endangered earth skills that are fast disappearing from this earth, as well as a unique perspective on the relationship between the human creature and wild nature, and the great winding road to a sane, sustainable way life.
Review :
Miles Olson is a true radical; that is, he gets to the root of the problem--which is that we have cut ourselves off from our own innate wildness and are busily trying to domesticate a planet that has a will of its own. The only real solution is to return to a wilder and simpler existence. Olson's pure, clear voice helps us get grounded and get started. ---Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, and author of The End of Growth Unlearn, Rewild is an extraordinary and unconventional survival guide. Olson provides a hands-on manual to break free from enslavement to jobs, bills, and the trap of civilization to rediscover one's true nature. --Thomas J. Elpel, author of Participating in Nature Miles Olson has asked the all-important but often ignored question about sustainability: what kind of world do we wish to sustain? He then tears up some popular delusions about getting there. -- Samuel Thayer, author of The Forager's Harvest Do the terms "human monoculture," "technology trap" or "ecocide" resonate with you? Are you going broke but want to live well? Does living outside the system appeal to you? Take this book, written by a professional dropout/escape artist, as you make your own escape. Along with philosophy (for attitude adjustment) it covers scavenging road kill, which grubs are good to eat and most everything else you need to know to go feral safely and in style. ---Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse and The Five Stages of Collapse
