Survival Craft

Only about half my research time is spent looking at art or art related subjects. The other half is spent looking at everything else. I spend quite a bit of time on what I like to call "survival craft". This ranges from how to make viking turnshoes to the what, how and why of lacto-fermenting vegetables.  I spend quite a bit of time reading food, health and homesteading sites. I have a bug-out bag. I eat a Weston-Price diet when I can. I wear minimalist or "barefoot" shoes and have been doing so since before it was a "thing". It seems pertinent to have at least one post on these subjects, since everything in our psyche seeps into our art.

(14th century boots from http://www.medievaldesign.com/)

There are definitely going to be some eyes rolling by this point. I'm one of those paleo freaks. I'd probably do crossfit if I was more motivated. I wear those stupid looking toe shoes sometimes. 

But I should back up. This all has a history. 

When I was a kid, the best and most memorable time in my life was my 8th summer. Looking back on it, I think it's possible my family was technically homeless; I know things were financially difficult. But from my perspective it was 4 months of camping bliss. We had a homemade pit toilet, one of those solar heated black bag showers, a tiny trailer with a propane stove, tents, and a pickup truck. We spent most of the summer in the Jemez Falls campground in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. I think I might have worn shoes 10 times during the whole summer. I built up callouses that were 1/2 inch thick on the bottoms of my feet. Or that's how I remember it anyway.

So it's no wonder I hate supportive shoes. I feel like my feet are a symbol of who I am in some ways. They are big. They don't fit in to the common things that they are supposed to fit into. They want to be bare, free, themselves, not bound into some sense of false support that really weakens them. When they are wrapped up they overheat. Trying to restrain them causes actual physical pain. 

(Jemez Falls)

It goes back to being that kid alone in the woods, hiking for miles around, peering over the edges of the waterfall, putting yarrow on knee scrapes like my mother taught me, navigating by trail, tree, sun. It's no wonder, then as well that I feel a draw to homesteading and survival craft. It's not because I feel like the world is going to end, it's because I feel like I'm going to end. I feel thankful every day I wake up that I live in a nice house in Portland with a sweet boyfriend and our little dog, but I never feel at home and I don't think I ever will. 

I used to think about that camping trip every time I saw the cover of a Celestial Seasonings Roastaroma box. There's something nostalgic and evocative about this simple image, especially when combined with the smell and taste of the tea itself. 

Sadly, the image has been changed to something a little more dramatic. It's a good image for a tea box, but the nostalgia is gone.