Addition to Chapter 50

(Added October 12, 2024)

Learn to Receive the Gifts of the Earth

I strongly suggest learning how to receive the gifts of the Earth. Learn to make friction fire with wood that you gather, or how to find and clean water, or what plants and animals to eat, and how to responsibly harvest them. These are often called “earth skills,” “survival skills,” or “primitive skills.”

Sometimes when I study plants and animals, I focus too much on learning their names and studying them in books. It’s important to learn how to receive their gifts too. When I go walking through a suburban neighborhood, and I see yucca plants and basswood and cedar trees, I feel an excitement and gratitude because I have made fire from these plants before, and I know I could do it again if I ever needed to. Oaks, chestnuts, beeches, blueberries, persimmons, and many other plants offer me food. I have even used so-called invasive plants like miscanthus grass to make a watertight thatched roof.

One reason people of healthy cultures can feel gratitude for the gifts of life is that they learn how to receive those gifts. They learn how to live with the Earth – to make fire and shelter, gather food, learn life lessons, make ceremonial items, and more, all from the plants and animals around them. They also learn how to responsibly harvest so that the plant and animal communities are not harmed by the taking, as discussed in Chapters 9 and 34.

When I first seriously studied foraging, I saw the forest around me as a “green wall.” I couldn’t tell any of the trees or other plants apart. I enjoyed being in the forest, but I didn’t feel particularly grateful for anything in it.

Now, as I walk through the forest, I see gifts everywhere. I see animals that provide sustenance and show me where I can find water, and plants that offer fire, food, medicines, and materials for shelter, among many other things. I don’t just see plants and nonhuman animals as resources for the taking, but I do recognize the ways they can benefit me. I recognize their gifts, and I know in a really practical way what I feel grateful for. I probably only know one ten-thousandth as much about the Earth as someone who grew up in a healthy culture, but I can imagine what it would be like to see all of life as a gift, in part because I’d learned about many gifts each creature offers.

Learning to recognize and receive life’s gifts has lots of benefits.

Comfort in the wilderness: I feel more comfortable in the wilderness than I used to. It also makes me less dependent on my unhealthy culture. Unhealthy cultures train people to depend on abusive authorities and make people financially desperate (see Chapters 10 and 14), so learning to receive the Earth’s gifts directly and harvesting responsibly is an important part of finding some degree of freedom from those abusive authorities.

Cultivating a practical, aware gratitude: Learning survival skills helps me feel not just gratitude, but a practical and aware gratitude. Sometimes when I try to practice feeling grateful for the life around me, the gratitude feels hollow. The gratitude becomes practical when I remember all the practical gifts I receive that give me warmth, sustenance, joy, protection, or other benefits.

Desire to serve the Earth: Another great benefit is that I feel a real desire to serve the Earth. When I stayed with the Ashaninka and I received gifts all the time, I started continuously looking for ways to give back because I felt so grateful. Receiving gifts from the Earth can have a similar effect — but only if a person learns how to receive them, and receives them with gratitude. Economic “development” that cuts down forests and paves over fields only started to really seem detrimental to me when I realized how many gifts wild creatures have to offer. The more I learned to connect with the Earth and receive life’s gifts, the more I wanted to protect it.

Resilience: The idea of “economic collapse” isn’t as scary as it used to be, and it even sounds like an adventure. Indeed, learning these survival skills is a core part of generating healthy cultures. What would happen if our unhealthy culture disappeared or collapsed? Or on the bright side, what would happen if people intentionally created their own healthy culture so that they did not depend on the old unhealthy culture’s laws and money? Either way, the grocery stores and building supply stores would empty out, and then we would need to survive by receiving the gifts of the Earth.

Many TV shows make this seem like a frightening prospect, but receiving the Earth’s gifts directly is actually the normal way for humans to live. If it seems scary, that is because many of us in unhealthy cultures have removed ourselves so thoroughly from the Earth that we think of the real world as “outside,” someplace different from where we live our lives. Many people even call the wilderness “the middle of nowhere.” But immersing ourselves in the natural world and learning to receive the Earth’s gifts doesn’t have to be stressful or scary. It just does take training.

Fun: Another major benefit is that learning to receive the gifts of the Earth is fun. It’s super fun. When a group of friends gather for dinner and a kid is misbehaving, and I invite the kid to rub sticks together to make fire to prepare for dinner, everything changes. The kid goes from being unhelpful and annoying to making an important contribution to the group’s dinner. All of a sudden, the kid had a meaningful role to play, and they developed a skill that really matters. Doing important work together helps people of all ages get along, whether they are making fire, gathering firewood, repairing someone’s home, foraging, or anything else.

Whether you learn to receive the Earth’s gifts for resilience, for fun, to connect with other people or nonhumans, to maintain ancient wisdom, or all of these reasons, I highly recommend it.

(All citations are available in the ebook.)