You are currently viewing all posts tagged with books.

review, books, survival, bushcraft

Kamana One

Kamana is the Wilderness Awareness School‘s four-level independent study “naturalist training program”.

Kamana One introduces the student to the ideas and style of teachings that will form the base for the rest of the program. It’s divided into two sections. The first, the “Nature Awareness Trail” devotes itself to the psychological aspects of the modern primitive. It deals with awareness; directions, surroundings, details. I was surprised at the remarkable similarities between it and vipassana.

The second part, the “Resource Trail” deals with the other half of naturalist training. Mammal and plant identification, bird language, and field guides are just a few of the topics covered. This part is often referred to as “the field guide for field guides” because of it’s ability to decrypt the otherwise esoteric manuals.

In addition to the text book, Kamana One includes Jon Young’s Seeing Through Native Eyes audio set. This is definitely the best part of the course. It’s best described as all of Jon Young’s vast knowledge squeezed down and compressed into 8 CDs, covering both psychological and physical aspects.

In the end, I don’t feel that the program (with the exception of the audio portion) gave me much new. The ideas presented in the “Nature Awareness Trail” I had already developed through my own readings and practice. The ideas in “Resource Trail”, too, I had already discovered through my own study, including the Learning Herbs kit. The course is better suited for one who is new to all of this. Someone who perhaps has an interest in the outdoors, in survival, but is looking to take that interest a step forward.

(Urban Scout has some criticisms and other thoughts of the Kamana program.)

review, books

The Structure of Delight

Nelson Zink‘s The Structure of Delight is a book of stories within stories. A sort of manual for reprogramming you mind, it’s the book that Daniel Quinn would write if Quinn had been a student of Freud.

Through the interwoven stories, Zink challenges perception and meaning, expounding that all is rooted in the mind, shifting the reader’s experience of reality.

books

The Ecology of Magic

For those who have yet to read David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous, this interview by Scott London does a good job of introducing some of the book’s ideas.

review, books

Poets on the Peaks

John Suiter’s Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades is a biographical account of these Beat Bards, with emphasis placed on their wilderness outings and spiritual explorations, painting them as 20th century Thoreaus.

This book – the images, the text, the characters – are beautiful. It renews the magic of this place.

A portrait of mountains and rivers and Buddha and zen and trees and poetry. America.

review, books

The Essential Koran

Thomas Cleary’s The Essential Koran is a sort of summarized version of the Islamic text. It consists of passages selected for the opening of Islam to the modern Western mind.

I was surprised at the lack of myth in the book. It seemed to be filled with “God is this, God is that, disbelievers are poopy.” Names were dropped (Moses, Jesus, etc) and the Garden of Eden* was given a full page, but there were no real stories – the most important aspect of any religion or believe system. I’m forced to think that this is a result of the summation, that the actual Qur’an contains more myth.

I found many disagreements in the text, though none that I think are specific of Islam. Rather, all large, organized religions seem to fall to this.

Despite the beauty of the words, it describes a life of fear. Fear of some god, some master hanging over you. Even those who claim to love and find joy in their god must consider with every action what their judge will think of them. There is no harmony in this – these tiered systems, that find a distinction between heaven and earth.

They do not comprehend anything...except as God wills.

What’s this? Are humans not sentient? You are your own being. You are god. You know as well as any what lays before you and what lays behind you.

And what is the life of the world but the stuff of deception?

How can one live so removed? How can one deny the joys and beauties and truth of life?

There is much good in Islam – kindness, benevolence, tolerance – but it is still a structure of (dank) submission. A belief that separates its followers from the Earth.

  • A note on the Garden of Eden story: this version has the fruit enlightening Adam and Eve to their bodies. It is said “and when they tasted of the tree, their shame was exposed to them; and they began to sew together leaves from the garden to cover themselves.”. Our bodies are now something to be shameful of? So much for humans shaped in the image of their God, and all that.
review, books

Bury Me Standing

Isabel Fonseca’s Bury Me Standing digs past the lore of gypsy culture to find the Rom people as they really are. In her travels of Eastern Europe soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, she researches the gypsy plight – early slavery, Nazi death camps, and modern persecution. The book is depressing, but recommended for the insight into the normally closed world of Roma.

review, books, survival, bushcraft

Outdoor Survival Skills

Larry Dean Olsen’s Outdoor Survival Skills, first published in 1973, was one of the first books to rekindle interest in primitive living skills. And it is, of course, still a worthy read today. It is the only book I’ve read on the subject that discusses no modern implements. Not once is more than an acknowledgment offered to, for example, a steel knife. All of the skills described in the book are meant to be performed with absolutely nothing but what is found in Wilderness. It covers more than what Elpel discusses in Participating in Nature, but doesn’t go as in depth. Though the author, in the beginning, shows he has skills as a story teller, the book is written more as a manual. It’s use of diagrams and pictures are also lacking. But, Olsen’s creations are often more elegant than those in Elpel’s book. Perhaps it would be better titled Outdoor Living Skills.

I would recommend reading both, though between the two, study and carry Participating in Nature.

survival, books, apocalypse

Life after Gridcrash

Browsing Amazon today, looking for the usual post-apocalyptic survival books, a name jumped out at me: Aric McBay. Could it be? Yes! Aric, of In the Wake has been published! The In the Wake blog appears to be reactivated, too.

The book can be, and should be, ordered through his website.