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Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Restoring beneficial human touch to the landscape. Tending wild foods and wild hearts.

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Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp 2015

Restoring beneficial human touch to the landscape. Tending wild foods and wild hearts.

Restoring beneficial human touch to the landscape. Tending wild foods and wild hearts.

Restoring beneficial human touch to the landscape. Tending wild foods and wild hearts.

Restoring beneficial human touch to the landscape. Tending wild foods and wild hearts.

Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp
Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp
Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp
Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp
2 Campaigns |
Ashland, United States
$3,100 USD 52 backers
18% of $17,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Highlights
Mountain Filled 2 Projects Mountain Filled 2 Projects

Even though our campaign has ended, you can still help!!

Send your TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donations through paypal.com to pete(at)earthteach.org. Please add a note saying something like "For Edgewalkers". 

Or, send a check made out to The Way Foundation (Addressed c/o Heron Brae), P.O. Box 1171, Ashland, OR 97520. 

If you don't care if it's tax deductible, you can send via paypal to our own email address, wildtender.fundraising(at)gmail.com.

What is Edgewalkers Winter Social Forestry Camp?

Edgewalkers is an emerging collective of semi-nomadic wildland tenders. Winter Social Forestry Camp is an experiment in regenerative wild-tending, where a small community of people comes together to work at restoring a landscape while living in reciprocal relationship to nature. Camped out in a temporary primitive village in the woods, we work on improving the ecological quality of the landscape through Social Forestry. We focus on tending wild plants and forests that provide sustenance as food, medicine, timber, and craft material. We are doing this work on wildlands held in public trust, in a mutually beneficial gifting relationship with land caretakers. This is the second year of our camp, and there will be 10 of us coming together for 10 weeks nestled in the mountains on the edge of the Cascades and Siskiyous in southern Oregon.


Our work: We tend and plant native plants with a focus on edibles and medicinals. We reduce forest fire fuel load by thinning in a pattern that mimics the forest shaped by historic fire regimes. We create wildlife habitat through leaving snags and brushpiles. We clear around heritage hardwoods, restore disturbed areas, manage invasive species, encourage carbon sequestration, and collect data. We work with fire as a restorative and renewing tool to help the forest, via controlled forest floor burns and fuel reduction burn piles.

                       

Our perspective: Humans are a vital link in healthy ecosystems; our presence living in the wild is not detrimental if done well, but in fact is beneficial to the spirit & diversity of plants and animals that surround us. Contrary to popular belief, many of the most ecologically rich and diverse areas of the planet have become so in part because of longstanding co-evolution with indigenous humans, not despite our presence. We do not pretend that we know how to care for the land as indigenous people to this place have practiced, but we humbly seek to learn from the traditional knowledge of the people living in ancient relationship to this place.

                                   

Our lifestyle: In addition to stewarding the land, we love to explore the cultural aspect of rewilding, and to make beauty with our hands to sustain ourselves from the land – processing wild food and medicine, weaving baskets, transforming roadkill into food and crafts and tools, building round-pole structures from forest products, and much more! We live in canvas structures with wood stoves and fir bough floors. We butcher animals, cook on an outdoor fire, support each others' emotional and spiritual development, and hold self-created rituals on each of the moon phases. We have trainings on learning to read the landscape and how to tend it well. We begin our work days with song. We prioritize hand tools and working with awareness as we cut down overcrowded trees. 

                            

              

Our culture: We are co-creating camp culture, including how we integrate our individual earth-based practices and spiritualities into our daily work, and how to slow down into human-scale time. Through consensus process and collaborative leadership models, we organize our time and learn from each other how to move through conflict in transformative ways, how to support one another in shadow work, and how to have real relationships with one another.


Our roots: We've garnered spirit and momentum through teachings of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom, the ecological restoration movement, earth ancestral skills movements, and from fervent whispers by mentors Finisia Medrano and Hazel (a.k.a. Tom Ward, of Siskiyou Permaculture). We have grown from previous grassroots-organized community projects in rewilding, such as the RogueAbout, Camas Camp, Root Camp, Pine Nut Camp, Queer Forestry Camp, Taproots Skillshare, Free Cascadia Witchcamp, and more. We are nourished by our dear friends and mentors who have come before us and continue to hold us close, providing us with fertile earth from which to sprout.  

Our Long Term Vision: Edgewalkers is a seed that we are nurturing to germinate towards building many semi-nomadic Regenerative Tending Cooperatives that work on long term stewardship contracts on private and public lands and comprise a large mutual aid support network between land projects.  The Cooperatives will help facilitate ecological diversity and fecundity in wildlands while also nourishing and supporting the communities of human beings who tend those lands. 

We are proud of our successes from last year's camp! These are some of our highlights: 

-Clearing out competing young vegetation from several ancient stately oak trees

-Fuel reduction in about 3 acres of rich native oak woodland habitat using hand tools

-A half-acre controlled burn under an oak grove, and reseeding native food plants afterwards

-Effectively modeling collaborative empowered leadership in our human "guild" system

-Actively supporting one another in resolving interpersonal conflicts

-Sharing our experience and final work results with local community in our public open house culminating celebration

-Producing dozens of round poles for building structures on the land

-Producing our own biochar in open burn piles for our bokashi humanure system

-Training many new people in the arts of outdoor living, such as open fire cooking

-Training many new forest tenders in ecological assessment and tree felling

-Empowering new forest workers in how to wield a chainsaw and other skilled forestry tools

-and so much more


WHAT WE NEED:  

While many incredible restoration and rewilding projects currently exist, as far as we know, our project is unique in these ways: it is the seed for the creation of an economically viable culture and lifeway for rewilders; we are documenting and monitoring our work so that we can share our results; and we are deeply committed to sharing our knowledge through public outreach and education, building a bridge from rewilders to the greater community.

We really need your support to make Edgewalkers Winter Camp a success.

Your generous donations will help us cover expenses for our volunteer restoration forest tenders to live in the winter giving our gifts of labor to the land. We need food, shelter, and basic amenities. We will be purchasing infrastructure that we will continue using in future years. We need to purchase equipment to set up scientific monitoring plots, tools for forestry work, medical supplies, fire safety gear, and more!

Toward the vision of a sustainable economic way of life for rewilders, we want to provide basic stipends for our volunteers, in order to allow more of us to participate in the work of giving back to the land for longer periods of time. We are working to develop economic models which bring income from restoration work, value-added crafts, and education. For this beginning stage, we are asking for your help in supporting us as volunteers.

Any contribution helps.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Please help us pass the word to your friends and neighbors who you think might be interested, and share our campaign with your internet networks. 

We thank you from our hearts for helping us build the vision, and for believing in the possibility of a future where humans live in reciprocal, regenerative relationship with the land and each other.

All photo credits to rain crowe. See our full photo gallery from last year here.

Questions? Wanna stay in touch? Email us at wildtender.fundraising@gmail.com

Looking for more information? Check the project FAQ
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Choose your Perk

Calendula Flowers

$10 USD
This is a package of hand harvested and dried calendula flowers from the Versailles garden! Celebrate sunny southern Oregon queer land projects while you drink your tea, make medicinal oil or tincture these gorgeous sun goddesses incarnate!
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
3 out of 5 of claimed

Forest Grab Bag

$10 USD
The forest abounds with mysterious and beautiful treasures, each one unique and sacred in its own right. With this special perk, rewilders will take you on a forest walk through a tiny bag laden with gifts of the forest floor. What will yours magically hold? A forgotten bone? A desiccated fungal body? A water-shaped stone? A lichen-kissed twig? Let this be a gift to your wondering and sensual curiosity of the wild. Gathered on locale at Edgewalkers camp.
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
1 out of 20 of claimed

Wild Food Seed Packets

$15 USD
Choose from either Yampah (Perideridia oregana) or Caush/biscuitroot (Lomatium macrocapum). Native starchy-rooted food plants that we will be planting in the meadows. Here you get double the opportunity to contribute to the spreading of these amazing species! good for a non-tilled garden and wild areas.
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
5 out of 15 of claimed

Herbal Relaxing Smoke

$15 USD
Small packet of Pedicularis species, also known as betony, lousewort, elephant's head, or sometimes Indian warrior. Pedicularis species are both physically and emotionally relaxing, and make a sweet delicious smoke. These herbs are ethically wildcrafted locally by wintercampers.
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
5 out of 10 of claimed

Squirrel Paw

$15 USD
Squirrel paws are a dainty charm, useful in all manner of creative and practical pursuits. Attach to an earring for a stylish adornment, place on a death altar to remember what has passed, hang from your rear view mirror, use for squirrel finger painting, give to your mother in a little woven pouch. Salt dried, wild harvested. No squirrels were intentionally harmed in the making of this perk.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
2 out of 6 of claimed

Ultra Forest Grab Bag

$20 USD
The forest abounds with mysterious and beautiful treasures, each unique and sacred in its own right. With this special perk, rewilders take you on a forest walk through a tiny bag laden with gifts of the forest. What will yours magically hold? A forgotten bone? A desiccated fungal body? A water-shaped stone? A lichen-kissed twig? Let this be a gift to your sensual curiosity of the wild. The ultra edition = animal parts, less rocks. Special thanks to the Versailles Cuntry Palace death altar.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
3 out of 5 of claimed

Nevada sagebrush bundle

$20 USD
Hand wildcrafted in the spaceous Nevada desert by wintercampers, this little sagebrush stick is useful for clearing the air, purifying a sacred space, or grounding yourself.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
1 out of 50 of claimed

Nevada Wild Pine Nuts

$30 USD
Every fall, the beautiful Pinyon trees of the mountains of Nevada rain little jewels of mahogany, gold, and chestnut. Each one is a powerful nutritious packet of joy! We will send you a little bag of these wildcrafted nuts, fresh picked this fall by wintercampers. Delicious roasted or raw, these soft shelled pine nuts can be eaten just like sunflower seeds, or shelled and used however you like. Most people find the native pinyons to be sweeter, and the flesh juicier than commercial pine nuts.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
6 out of 20 of claimed

Smudge Trio

$40 USD
Three wildcrafted smudge sticks of incense-cedar, Western red-cedar, and mugwort, each wrapped in colorful string. Cleanse and enliven your magical space!
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
2 out of 4 of claimed

English Ivy Basket

$70 USD
"Fishing" or "Creole" style basket woven of English Ivy. This is the fanny pack of baskets, designed to fit against the body and great for carrying small items around.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
1 out of 2 of claimed

Magical Workshop with Dmitri!

$75 USD
Attend a workshop led by Blue Iris Mystery School graduate, Dusty Prince Dmitri! Hone your magical skills with techniques from an anarchistic witch faerie lineage. What does that mean?! Come to a workshop to find out! This series, planned for next Aug and Sept, will have 2+ workshops including "Deepening with the Pentacle of Self-Worth" and "Shielding and Protection Techniques". Choose 1 of the above workshops, held in both Portland and in southern Oregon. Each workshop is 3-5 hours long. Wowee!
Estimated Shipping
September 2015
0 out of 10 of claimed

Herbal First Aid Kit!

$100 USD
This is a starter herbal first aid kit, which includes 1 first aid salve + 3 tinctures to calm nerves, support immunity, reduce inflammation or bleeding or fever, soothe aches and pains, etc. (Herbalist's selection!) Comes with a handy compact zipper bag.
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
1 out of 5 of claimed

DIYScreenprinting Intro Lesson

$175 USD
Dusty will walk you through the basics of DIY screenprinting, an incredibly complex and deeply gratifying process. If you have always wanted to print your original art onto clothing, patches, or paper, this is a fantastic skill to have in your toolkit! Wow does it help to have someone guide you through it. This involves hours of hands-on teaching over the course of a few days in project mode. You must be in southern Oregon to receive this excellent perk and provide some of your own materials.
Estimated Shipping
August 2015
0 out of 3 of claimed

Introductory Mbira Lesson

$200 USD
Get an introduction to learning to play the enchanting Mbira! The mbira is a hand-held Shona instrument of Zimbabwe, similar to a "thumb piano", and the music is multi-rhythmic, trance-inducing, and beautifully complex. This perk offers a in-home one hour lesson with either wintercamper Seda or Sounder, offered in southern Oregon between Grants Pass, Ashland, and Klamath Falls areas. Must be claimed before February.
Estimated Shipping
February 2015
0 out of 4 of claimed

Private Plant Walk with Heron!

$300 USD
Heron Brae, longtime plant enthusiast and trained botanist, will come provide you with a personalized plant walk. Want a basic run down on the skills necessary for plant ID? Looking for an introduction to the wild edibles of your neighborhood? Whatever your interests, prepare yourself. You'll want to make the most of this one-on-one time with a skillful and knowledgeable teacher. Available only in western Oregon and California from Portland to the Bay Area, scheduled next spring or summer.
1 out of 2 of claimed

Mbira House Concert

$500 USD
Let us travel to your home and offer a private concert of the traditional Shona music of Zimbabwe! Sounder and Seda are long time musicians in this tradition, and will play all evening to your delight. Organize a party, or just enjoy privately. Available only in Jackson or Josephine counties of southern Oregon.
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
0 out of 1 of claimed
sold out

Hawthorn Tea and Horsetail Tea

$25 USD
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
4 out of 4 of claimed
sold out

Hand Carved Wooden Spoon

$50 USD
Estimated Shipping
December 2014
2 out of 2 of claimed
sold out

Handmade Buckskin Pouch

$65 USD
Estimated Shipping
January 2015
1 out of 1 of claimed

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