Land Of The Before Times
As we confront the reality of COVID-19, the idea of living self-sufficiently in the woods, far from crowds and grocery stores, doesn’t sound so bad.
From the pages of Outside magazine, the romance of the primitive:
I’m on my way to meet Lynx Vilden, a 54-year-old British expat who, for most of her adult life, has lived wholly off the grid. The slick roads don’t help my apprehension about what lies ahead: a three-day, one-on-one experience of “living wild.” The details are hazy. I’ve been advised to prepare for bracing climes and arduous excursions. “Wear sturdy shoes,” Lynx told me. “Bring meat.”
You may want to keep those last two words in mind.
I send a text message to Lynx telling her I’ll be late. Only later do I realise how presumptive this is: she doesn’t have cell service or WiFi.
Feel free to scream quietly into your sleeves.
Until about ten years ago, Lynx also possessed no credit card, nor fixed address; her previous abodes—a tepee in Arizona, yurts in Montana and New Mexico, a snow shelter on the Lappish tundra—had neither electricity nor running water.
As an attempt to glamorise primitive living, away from all those grocery stores, we aren’t, it has to be said, off to the most promising start.
This all changed when she received a modest inheritance from her mother’s estate in Britain that allowed her to purchase a remote five-acre plot some 12 miles outside Twisp.
Primitive living, it turns out, is so much easier with an inheritance.
When I finally arrive at the property in the early afternoon, she welcomes me to her wooded outpost wearing hand-stitched leathers. She heats her 900-square-foot log cabin—also the handiwork of the prior owners—by tending a wood-burning stove.
Again, if you’re into Stone Age role-play, then spare cash and pre-built property, complete with solar panels, power outlets and rudimentary plumbing, does seem rather handy, perhaps a prerequisite. Such that our fearless disdainer of modernity can “divide her time” flying between continents as mood suits, from Sweden to France’s Dordogne Valley and back to the mountains of Washington, USA. It’s the prehistoric way.
She favours water collected from the river to that which flows readily from her faucet.
How terribly authentic. Still, the choice is handy to have. Say, when ill, for instance. Or possibly jet-lagged.
“I like to sleep touching the earth,” she says.
I’ll just leave that there, I think.
Her overarching aim is not to simply survive out here in nature but “to live as wild people lived” and to show others how to do so as well.
Specifically, with “immersive programmes” for teenagers. Teenagers with easy access to $2,500.
After signing up, a group of fifteen or so students… learn skills from Lynx such as fire starting, shelter construction, bow making, and footwear fabrication. Once equipped with this knowledge, and having sewn their own buckskins and exchanged their toothbrushes for twigs, students have the option of heading out with Lynx into a nearby forest for as long as 30 unbroken days. They make camp, hunt and forage, and pass long hours in the intimacy of this tight tribal band.
Yes, passing those long hours, day after day, while experiencing what is coyly referred to as “calorific insufficiency,” and poking at your teeth with a twig. A niche pleasure, I think.
What she’s offering is a tool kit for complete self-sufficiency, as both an antidote and a radical alternative to the frenzied pace and digital solipsism that so many of us rail against.
It’s a radical alternative, this complete self-sufficiency. Again, words to bear in mind.
The prospect of Stone Age self-reliance and a well-stocked sanctuary in the woods seems especially appealing as the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the vulnerability of our hyperconnected and deeply inequitable world.
Oh, come on. You knew that was coming. Compared to which, you see,
the Stone Age wasn’t actually so bad.
There follows some rumbling about the “egalitarian lives” of pre-agrarian humans, all of whom, we’re assured, luxuriated and flourished in their proto-socialist equality. “A time before the world was scarred by borders, before politics, before race.” An age of bliss and inter-tribal hugging, no doubt. Friction-free and invariably consensual.
If indeed our lives were better back when we lived in roving bands, would it be wise to consider how we might revive aspects of our deep past?
Readers will note that the word if is bearing quite a load there. Anyway, back to the hunting and gathering, all that self-sufficiency and living off the land:
There are grouse about, Lynx observes on our second day together. She proposes that we go for a hike so she can shoot one for our supper. Barring that, we could aim to dine on wild turkey, which she’s also spotted strutting around the creek banks and the woods.
Sounds promising. So promising, in fact, that our buckskin warrior opts for a bow instead of a rifle. A bold choice, and suitably primitive.
The swift hush of an arrow is less likely to scare off the flocks we’d like to eat.
Time passes.
Dark is falling. Lynx releases a last desultory arrow before leading us home.
Empty-handed, alas.
Her mood brightens when I remind her that we have the meat she’d asked me to bring, at the cabin.
That terrible modernity. Where you can buy steak.
Still, there’s always the Dordogne, where the hunting may be better. Regarding which, we’re told,
She forgoes her buckskins when she flies.
Via Advice Goddess, who adds,
I like to hunt for meat in my refrigerator and flick a switch to create light so I can admire my indoor plumbing.
Well, yes. Quite.
Primitive living, it turns out, is so much easier with an inheritance.
You can’t afford my radical life, as our host would say.
You can’t afford my radical life, as our host would say.
I ought to point out that I don’t object to Ms Vilden, our buckskin warrior. I doubt she’s doing much harm. But her lifestyle choice does seem a little contrived and not entirely self-consistent. A woman who wants to “sleep touching the earth” and “live as wild people lived,” in between trans-Atlantic flights. And the author’s framing – as if Stone Age tribal foraging, even pretend Stone-Age tribal foraging, were some gloriously fair and conflict-free “radical alternative” to modern life and its allegedly oppressive grocery stores – is faintly laughable.
Great googly moogly, one could spend an entire day fisking that dog’s breakfast of an article, and I thought it would be hard to add to yours, but see I was mistaken.
…unless you want to fly into Omak ($132 from Spokane), Okanogan (for a quick visit to the Indian Casino), or Twisp (though that would require hiring a pilot) and a 30 or so mile drive.
He said, completely ignoring the direct observation of current primitive tribes, as well as Eskimos, American Indians, and similar peoples that directly contradicts his notions. Of course that makes the title stupid, as it could be “How I lived like a present day Amazon tribeswoman (except fot the parasites and being constantly pregnant)” or “Three days LARPing as a late 19th century Sioux”, but that just doesn’t have the ring.
Hold on, Yuval just said living like Indians they should all be fat, dumb, and happy. One out of three isn’t so good.
A quick look reveals that bison hunting is only legal in a handful of states, Washington not being one of them, and it costs up to $7,000, assuming you got a tag via the lottery system, so my money is on “store bought bison”, likewise with the hides they allegedly tan.
“She postures…” yep.
Wondering who the hell this author is…
Now I wonder why I wondered.
So, “My Side of The Mountain” for the 21st Century?
So she is following in the footsteps of Thoreau who was smart enough to live where he could mooch when he wanted. Of course, there are the property taxes to take care of. For as long as you live!!!
I am a writer based in Brooklyn
Somehow, mortifyingly, I missed that.
“Bring meat.”
Queue stone-age porn music.
learn skills from Lynx such as fire starting, shelter construction, bow making, and footwear fabrication.
Back in my day we called it scouts and it was considerably less expensive, even accounting for inflation.
She favours water collected from the river to that which flows readily from her faucet.
While anybody is around, I’m sure she is terribly primitive, terribly.
You have to love the “before race” comment. American Indians would massacre other tribes of nominally the same race; I can imagine how they would have reacted had a group of sub-Saharan Africans magically appeared before them say 500 years ago
You have to love the “before race” comment.
Well, quite. The whole article is a bit of a two-legged stool.
How I lived like a present day Amazon tribeswoman (except fot the parasites and being constantly pregnant)
There are some lovely photos in the article of the co-eds LARPing as squaws. In its visual and moral fashions, it’s reminiscent of the 1970 film Soldier Blue, in which Candice Bergen plays a pioneer woman returning to civilisation after several years living as the wife of the indian chief who kidnapped her. Unlike the impression given by films like The Searchers, she was able to use the experience as an opportunity for cultural enrichment and self-improvement, leaving her with the water-divining and grub-eating skills of a young warrior living off the land, the anti-colonialist and culturally relativistic opinions of a 1970 college student, and the smooth skin and golden hair and shapely figure of Candice Bergen.
“A time before the world was scarred by borders, before politics, before race.”
Have these people never seen animals fighting for territory and dominance? Whatever you want to say about these things, they sure as hell aren’t what separates us from the dumb chums.
“I spent five years talking with 120 women about sexuality and desire.”
If I tried that, I’d probably be arrested.
I can imagine how they would have reacted had a group of sub-Saharan Africans magically appeared before them say 500 years ago…
Probably not unlike when ytes showed up 400 years ago…
Back in my day we called it scouts and it was considerably less expensive…
That, or SERE school, except one got paid for that.
She favours water collected from the river…
Which, in that general neck of the woods, is great for getting Giardia infections, but if it was good enough for primitives, it should be good enough for us, dangnabit.
Peter, a participant from a 3-month immersion programme with Lynx in 2012, comments on his experience:
Since I dropped out of high school in 1998 and dedicated my life to returning to a more indigenous lifestyle, to rewilding, I spend my time divided between working odd jobs, reading, writing, learning, teaching, community organizing and wild-crafting.
There’s a lot to unpack there – and that’s only his first sentence.
Although the programme is highly recommended, he nevertheless also notes that:
In reality, we weren’t living wild. We were simply camping, with modern-made primitive tools. There wasn’t much that separated us from other mountain back-packers other than our clothes and tools. Our stone age human ancestors lived sustainably on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, tending the wild through regenerative methods of food production. Their myths, culture and traditions passed on this knowledge and kept the land and people healthy and happy. This is what “living wild” looks like to me: people living in cooperative groups, managing the land in a regenerative manner. We did not learn cooperative group dynamics. We did not learn regenerative land management. Sure, we were hunting and gathering, but not like hunter-gatherers. This was my one caveat with the program: looking wild is not the same thing as living wild.
Our stone age human ancestors lived sustainably on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, tending the wild through regenerative methods of food production.
Regenerative methods like slash and burn agriculture then going all nomad when that land doesn’t grow anything, and driving entire herds of buffalo off cliffs to get a few choice cuts of meat and the hump fat, leaving the rest to rot.
Good times, good times.
Is loud guffawing permitted instead?
There’s a lot to unpack there – and that’s only his first sentence.
Heh.
Not an expert, hate to say it, and maybe an anthropologist can chime in; but, I would think rape would be quite prolific in the Stone Age……..
but, I would think rape would be quite prolific in the Stone Age
The conceit that prehistoric humans were somehow utterly benign and unfailingly consensual in their interactions is one of the stranger fantasies of our betters.
Did you ever get something stuck in your head because it sounded odd, only later to get a BFO why ?
Ignoring that it was store bought, eating “butchered bison” – as opposed to what, gnawing on the carcass like a pack of coyotes ?
That is some first rate Brooklyn journalisming.
I would think rape would be quite prolific in the Stone Age
Say, what do you think about clubs for women?
(I’ll be here all week…)
Lynx (who doesn’t share her legal name) is not your typical back-to-the-lander.
Spoiled brat of a couple of London artistes? Lots of money and no sense of purpose in the world? Oh, yeah — that’s totally atypical. (And I’m guessing she doesn’t share her real name because then we’ll all know which family she comes from and what a farce this whole thing is.)
But for all the scrutiny of the archeological record, the quotidian details of the Stone Age are largely speculative.
Bullshit! The quotidian details are dead simple and so obvious that only somebody with a graduate degree could miss them: find enough food to eat. Find enough fuel to keep warm through the night and to boil water so you don’t shit yourself to death. Build a hatchet for gathering building materials. Build a shelter strong and spacious enough to attract a mate. Keep the hatchet close at hand to deter your cousin who’s been eyeing your hut and your woman a little too closely. Take care of your best man so that he can take care of you. And if you’re damn lucky, you’ll have a half-hour left over to try to teach your dog not to shit in the fresh straw you piled up to sleep on tonight.
On our last afternoon, Lynx and I hike up to a nearby ridge. She plows ahead, cabled limbs swinging, seemingly oblivious to the branches that snap back behind her and hit me in the face.
Third day following this self-absorbed “wild woman” through the woods, and our intrepid authoress still hasn’t figured out how to drop back a couple of paces. This daft bint is flunking out of the School of Hard Knocks, which is really quite an accomplishment in its own way.
All of this romantic sensing of say, Native American aboriginal life of slightly beyond Bronze-Age development really forgets the disadvantage that idyllic civilization has when it encounters a culture, say European, that is 800 years or so more advanced with knowledge of the wheel, horses, working metals harder than bronze and already exposed to diseases from other parts of the world.
I grew up on a cattle ranch without running water, indoor bathroom or a telephone, and I survived.
Kinda like all the idiots making shows about building their “Tiny Homes” and how wonderfully virtuous they are.
Meanwhile I used to deliver these to lakefronts and recreational country. You can’t drive twenty miles in western Canada without seeing a dealer yard with dozens of these self-contained pre-fab-on-wheels tiny homes. Hook up your truck and go.
https://www.forestriverinc.com/parkmodels/ProductPage.aspx
https://youtu.be/z5ixgIjRkGg
Meanwhile I used to deliver these to lakefronts and recreational country.
Hmm. Clicked and noticed that the “Canadian” versions are a bit smaller…
Kinda like all the idiots making shows about building their “Tiny Homes” and how wonderfully virtuous they are.
Price comparison – https://youtu.be/l-DgMYB6L0c
Oh and compost your waste under the food prep counter.
David if you could give Gov. Squid a drink on me.
Also, a quick interewebz search says her real name is “Sheperd”, as she was ordered to pay some $500 for “unlawfully cutting or damaging trees” on Forest Service land…
https://tinyurl.com/sdvwdgp
David if you could give Gov. Squid a drink on me.
You’ll be wanting a snack with that.
[ Flicks sausage roll along bar. ]
Wow. That really shows up the dust.
YMMV, but I think Raquel wore it better than Lynx.
She favours water collected from the river to that which flows readily from her faucet.
I don’t get this. By that I mean I get it, but I don’t get it. This cabin. Remote. 12 miles outside of something called Twisp. Which itself is supposedly not easy to get to, Farnsworth’s perceptions of course put aside. With wood burning stove. Has water “which flows readily from her faucet”? Did I quote that right? This “faucet water” as it’s called. It is from a source other than the river? So there’s like an aqueduct or something? An artesian well, perhaps? A cistern on the roof maybe? Somebody help me out here. I started to read the article myself but my eyes seem to have rolled so far back in my head that I cannot at the moment retrieve them. Which scares me as it’s happening a lot lately and I really do need to learn to be more careful.
Did I just see that sausage roll self-right itself?
Before I read the whole thing, I have to drop this in while I remember this. The wife having told me about this article just yesterday:
Not one more winter in the tipi honey
Not one more winter in the tipi honey
Well, that’s kinda up to Ms Hedren, no?
YMMV, but I think Raquel wore it better than Lynx.
Her students look quite fetching, though, in their low-cut buckskins. Is that how they wore them in primitive days? Oog approves.
The miasma of fraud clings to Lynx Vilden.
Without the verisimilitude.
Her students look quite fetching, though, in their low-cut buckskins.
Agreed. Albeit, it looks like a promotional pic from a campy, low budget, cult film: “Cannibal Cave Girls.” Here’s a song from the sound track.
Which itself is supposedly not easy to get to, Farnsworth’s perceptions of course put aside.
Granted, as she is from Brooklyn anything you can’t walk, take an Uber, or subway is “not easy to get to”, but to those of us in Flyoverlandia where a 30-45 minute drive to a puddle jumper airport with a couple three flights a day to
hellHartsfield is par for the course, it isn’t.This “faucet water” as it’s called. It is from a source other than the river?
The previous tenant, who did all the other upgrades, put in a well.
This Pole of Inaccessibility, Twisp, turns out to be at the intersection of a Washington state highway and a USFS access road, both paved. No easy way to get in, if travelling by palankeen with native bearers, but otherwise drivable (or hitchable; back-state Washington, in contrast to the urban west, is a neighbourly high-trust society, I understand).
…as if Stone Age tribal foraging, even pretend Stone-Age tribal foraging, were some gloriously fair and conflict-free “radical alternative” to modern life and its allegedly oppressive grocery stores – is faintly laughable.
Especially when one encounters another forager that wants the same parsnip. Historically, the outcome tended to be bloody.
Their myths, culture and traditions passed on this knowledge and kept the land and people healthy and happy.
Well, happy, anyway, if they were among the survivors.
The conceit that prehistoric humans were somehow utterly benign and unfailingly consensual in their interactions is one of the stranger fantasies of our betters.
On that conceit, I think Rousseau might have much to answer for, as do the “teachers” (scare quotes intentional) that prescribed him. The time of Man’s innocency and such-like; Eden without the serpent.
She plows ahead, cabled limbs swinging, seemingly oblivious to the branches that snap back behind her and hit me in the face.
Oblivious, yep…seemin’ly. One learns how to handle such behaviour when experiencing it as part of earning a living. Many creative acts of vengeance come to mind when toes-up in the tent. Pro tip: swamps, wire, and small excavations can offer inspiration.
“Canadian” versions are a bit smaller…
My guess is at least some provincial building codes don’t permit the loft you see on US models.
Did I just see that sausage roll self-right itself?
I may never know what I did to deserve friends such as you all…
Historically, the outcome tended to be bloody.
As in “you can have the bloody parsnip”?
Well, happy, anyway, if they were among the survivors.
Said fantasies always include themselves as the survivors/leaders, rather than the crushed skulls littering the campsites…
This “faucet water” as it’s called. It is from a source other than the river?
The people who built her humble abode dug a well and installed plumbing and wiring. She chooses not to use it
when the rubes are visitingbecause she’s just so in touch with Mother Gaia.Outside magazine is unintentionally hilarious anyway. It’s essentially a large, glossy, monthly brochure for the latest ridiculously expensive “outdoor” gear. Oh, the publisher throws in an article or two to lend it some legitimacy. Articles are either profiles of hardcore outdoorsy types (e.g. high altitude mountaineers) and quirky kooks like Lynx, stories of grueling hardship in the wild (“Appendicitis At The Top Of K2”), or recycled perennial topics (“The Six Signs of Hypothermia”). But this is all subterfuge to sell wildly overpriced Patagonia parkas and North Face sleeping bags to urban hipsters who fancy themselves outdoorsy because they play Frisbee in the park on Saturdays.
Her students look quite fetching, though, in their low-cut buckskins.
So they do. Perhaps we could add some authenticity to their experience by ambushing them, bashing a few soyboy heads in with clubs and then abducting a few of the finest fillies for a bit of romping, Stone Age style.
Perhaps we could add some authenticity to their experience by ambushing them, bashing a few soyboy heads in with clubs and then abducting a few of the finest fillies for a bit of romping, Stone Age style.
I’ll bring my metal colander…
Now I have a mental image of all the soyboys being marched in a line to our tribe’s encampment in the next valley, strung together through their nose rings and ear gauges.
I think I might be a bad person. I deserve so much more than just the sausage roll.
Beat to quarters, the post has been linked to on Instapundit.
Only and idiot, or a leftist (but I repeat myself) believes in the nobility of pre-historic peoples and their lifestyle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
I think I might be a bad person. I deserve so much more than just the sausage roll.
Knock yourself out.
I’ll bring my metal colander…
I love comments that leave the implementation to my imagination. The mind reels.
Can it be 15 years ago that David Burge wrote, “College Profs Denounce Western Culture, Move to Caves”?
https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2005/03/college_profs_d.html
Cambridge, MA – Two years ago this month, Alan Lowenstein, associate professor of philosophy at Harvard University, came to a fateful conclusion. “I suddenly realized that the oppression of western technology extended to my own life,” he explained. “That’s when I got rid of my computer, threw away my Brooks Brothers suits, changed my name to Grok and moved into a cave.”
“Well, quite. The whole article is a bit of a two-legged stool.”
Just stool covers it perfectly well I think…
Years ago I considered turning my large back yard into a massive garden, complete with chickens, beehives, and rain barrels. The older and more achy I got, the less appeal that idea had. Reality bites.
the author’s framing – as if Stone Age tribal foraging, even pretend Stone-Age tribal foraging, were some gloriously fair and conflict-free “radical alternative” to modern life and its allegedly oppressive grocery stores – is faintly laughable.
More than faintly. 🙂
Astonishing. This was published Apr 2, 2020. Smack in the middle of the great CCP-19 pandemic.
What do you want to bet, the publishers and readers are all excoriating President Trump for not getting enough ventilators to New York (because he is orange), and for dragging his feet on a vaccine (because he hates Science), and likewise hated him for closing travel from China and Europe as being racist?
I was likewise shocked at how quickly our cultural divide reasserted itself after 9-11. We are experiencing a world-historic event in which mankind is battling, using all his knowledge and skill, against nature red in tooth and crown. And these goofs are hating on the West. They can’t for a moment stop and think about the consequences of their philosophy.
April 2020, with news of ventilators, and symptom-mitigating medicines, and the possibility of labs around the world racing to create a vaccine. But, yes, let’s all move to caves.
IF instead they had made the argument that unplugging from the Internet is probably pretty good for us, and minimizing our contact with angry people on social media is smart, and that it is indeed part of human make-up to be immersed in nature instead of giant blocks of cement, and that simplifying is refreshing for the soul because it allows us to find some much-needed perspective, then I’d be completely on board. Alas, that’s not what they’re going for, is it.
Without the verisimilitude.
Word of the day, that is…
They can’t for a moment stop and think about the consequences of their philosophy.
I doubt it’s so much a philosophy as a psychological problem.
Instalanche!
Instalanche!
We need fresh doilies, stat.
If you aren’t going to eat that sausage roll, Governor…
I’ll eat it just as soon as it sits still long enough to be stabbed with a fork. Turns out there’s a reason this little guy has lasted so long.
IF instead they had made the argument that unplugging from the Internet is probably pretty good for us, and minimizing our contact with angry people on social media is smart, and that it is indeed part of human make-up to be immersed in nature instead of giant blocks of cement, and that simplifying is refreshing for the soul because it allows us to find some much-needed perspective, then I’d be completely on board. Alas, that’s not what they’re going for, is it.
I spend a week in the wilderness each year, to remind myself what the tradeoffs are between civilization and the wild. A nine-to-five job, a mortgage and a daily commute may not be glamorous nor enjoyable, but a solid roof overhead and a warm bed to lie down on at the end of the day make it a fair trade.
My tiny little kitchen seems amazing after a week of cooking on the ground (who would have guessed that something as mundane as a countertop would be a cause for gratitude?). Also, indoor plumbing is a gorram miracle. Hot water coming out of the wall on demand is sorcery, and it’s woefully unappreciated by most.
But I can tell you that my way of things barely gets you a mention in the Boundary Waters Journal. You’re hardly going to get a color glossy feature in a major-market periodical with my perspective, much less get a bunch of trust fund hippies to fork over $2,500 a pop to spend a week in the woods with you.
I am a writer based in Brooklyn [insert shocked face]…I spent five years talking with 120 women about sexuality and desire. The result, The Pleasure Gap, is out now.
That is spookily similar to my life story except that I’m a no-hoper based in Nottingham who served five years for talking with 120 women about sexuality and desire. The result, Serial Perv Jailed – Hoorah, Say Nottingham’s Women, was published by the local rag.
We need fresh doilies, stat.
The henchlesbians are using them for egg flu lung masks.
Every place on earth had the local megafauna wiped out by humans. In NZ the moa never stood a chance. What’s less talked about is that the Maori burned down significant parts of the forest too.
Lovely England was all wooded till humans arrived too. The bears and wolves were pushed to the edges or wiped out. The aurochs were all eaten. Just earlier than records so not noticed.
Ancient humans lived in balance with the earth only after<\b> they’d shaped it to their wishes. Just like we do, except we are better at the shaping.
crap
“I spent five years talking with 120 women about sexuality and desire.”
That’s meant to sound impressive but it works out to talking to one woman about every two or three weeks.
Our stone age human ancestors lived sustainably on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, tending the wild through regenerative methods of food production.
When those humans exhausted the resources of place A they moved on to place B, then C … and nature (who is red in tooth and claw) eventually regenerated on its own.
And it wasn’t some sort of hippie commune, where everyone lived in harmony and plucked all the food they needed from the trees of Eden.
Nova did a documentary on the oldest skeleton recovered in the Americas – a malnourished young teen girl 13,000 years ago. Her skeleton revealed
and
Yessireebob! Let’s go back to primitive hunter-gatherer groups!
Nova did a documentary on the oldest skeleton recovered in the Americas – a malnourished young teen girl 13,000 years ago.
Conditions weren’t much different 300 years ago for Native American Indians. The noble savage myth did much to establish what many currently believe about indigenous peoples. It is so ingrained that even the indigenous peoples have absorbed it into their oral traditions and claim it as the basis for their culture.
While I was saving Darleen’s excerpt from the documentary, I found another file I had saved about the remains of tortured victims from the year 800 A.D. found at the Sacred Ridge massacre site.
“LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—New research indicates that the 33 men and women, whose processed and mutilated bones were discovered in two pit houses near Durango, Colorado, were tortured before their deaths some 1,200 years ago.
“Anna Osterholtz of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found evidence of that the victims’ ankles had been broken by blunt-force trauma, well as signs that the soles of the feet had been beaten. “Tool marks and fractures to the rest of the body’s elements had other explanations, including processing or perimortem trauma, but the tool marks and peeling on the foot elements would serve no such purpose, and would only have been useful in causing pain,” she explained to Western Digs.
“Earlier analysis of elements in the victims’ teeth by James Potter and Jason Chuipka suggests that they had grown up in the area of Sacred Ridge. Osterholtz speculates that the torture may have been used by an invading population to control the residents of Sacred Ridge before and during the massacre.”
I’d love to be able to say “I live in Twisp.” Great name for a town.
I can’t even get a fun street name. My uncle and family live on Peaceful Street. Great name. 30 years ago they were considering that house and one on another street—the fun street name swung them.
The closest I have come to living on a street with a fun name was in Columbus, Ohio, in an apartment complex where the streets were named after spices. We were on Tarragon Way. Other streets were Sweet Basil Drive, Gingerclove Lane, and Thyme Place. Regrettably, no Parsley, Sage, or Rosemary Streets.
Our current abode is on a street with a thoroughly boring name.
There’s several places across the world called “Hope”. Their residents get to live in Hope. Those on the far side are beyond Hope.
It astounds me that people could live with those jokes for years and not just change the stupid name of their town.
Driving West from Sonora Pass in the California Sierra one eventually arrives at Confidence
(just before Twain Harte).
Well, the reason that native Americans were renowned for fighting to the death originated in their inter-tribal battles, where it was far better to die swiftly than to surrender and be killed slowly.
This used to be common knowledge, I thought…
When I finally arrive at the property in the early afternoon, she welcomes me to her wooded outpost wearing hand-stitched leathers.
Clothing news from the current travails . . .
If only there was some way to combine Lynx’ $2500 bill of lack of fare with Saira Rao’s $2500 scolding extravaganza.
As it is, limited budgets leave us with an agonizing choice.
If instead they had made the argument that unplugging from the Internet is probably pretty good for us, and minimizing our contact with angry people on social media is smart, and that it is indeed part of human make-up to be immersed in nature instead of giant blocks of cement…
Well, quite. There’s a lot to be said for putting yourself in unfamiliar surroundings where you may see things afresh, as it were, and go exploring, without the baggage and associations of everyday routine. It can be restorative. I think we call them holidays. And a holiday that doesn’t end is, very quickly, just another routine. As a child, I enjoyed visits to Bridlington and Chapel St. Leonards. The idea of living there, however, year in, year out, is the stuff of nightmares.
Can it be 15 years ago that David Burge wrote, “College Profs Denounce Western Culture, Move to Caves”?
“Our children and grandchildren could become wild if we had a place,” says Xena, our warrior princess. Though, when aged 12, her own daughter chose to abandon her and live in the twenty-first century, rather than being an am-dram version of a Stone Age barbarian. Which suggests the Yoot Of Today may not be entirely receptive to Ms Vilden’s self-deceiving vision.
Year in and year out in Bridlington, the stuff of nightmares ……
I know your nightmare even if it does have the best Thai restaurant in Yorkshire.
I know your nightmare even if it does have the best Thai restaurant in Yorkshire.
Heh. I don’t mean to throw shade at the natives. I visited again a couple of years ago, for the day, and had a good time. But again, the novelty is a big part of that, the change in scenery. I was actually thinking more of Chapel St. Leonards, which was the childhood holiday I most remember enjoying, even though there isn’t, or wasn’t, an awful lot there.
I recall I returned home with zero spending money and a massive stash of comic books.
Shade thrown … I’m now the other side of the world.
Actually I do go back.
Chapel Saint Leonards, It looks better from the outside I always thought, remember my niece singing in some East Riding Youth Choir there and thinking the acoustics a bit like Beverley Minister are not its strong point, the minister of course overall being the far more impressive building. And obviously not in Brid.
🎼It’s just another pantsless Monday…🎼
It looks better from the outside I always thought,
I recall one long road that led to the beach and was peppered with the usual amusement arcades and tat vendors, many of which also had those rotating racks of imported comics. It seemed to stretch for miles. Aged ten or so, and on holiday with a school friend and his family, no parents, it was all very exciting.
David, do you have any more sausages?
https://slate.com/transcripts/VDlXeHVDUHJtMEJBcmVkUnRtV1hPNWNsOTlORzZpajBYWkNMRzNZL0dMQT0=
This poor guy may starve because his husband won’t let him eat wrongfood, e. g. Chick-Fil-A. It’s about halfway down the big block of drivel. I hope you find it fiskworthy.
The Social Justice Warrior husband is more full of shit than a Christmas turkey, incidentally. By American standards, at least, Chick-Fil-A treats their employees very well indeed.
It’s just another pantsless Monday…
*looks at calendar…*
🙂
Well, that’s kinda up to Ms Hedren, no?
Well done, sir
“The older and more achy I got, the less appeal that idea had.”
I’ve wish there had been a show revisiting The Good Life thirty or forty years later. The writers have often noted that Richard Briers was such a nice guy that people didn’t realise Tom Good was supposed to be a complete jerk.
“Nova did a documentary on the oldest skeleton recovered in the Americas – a malnourished young teen girl 13,000 years ago.” … “tortured victims from the year 800 A.D. found at the Sacred Ridge massacre site.”
There’s evidence of cannibalism in the caves at Cheddar Gorge. Mind you, that’s Somerset, so it could have been last week for all we know.
(Sorry, West Country folk. I can’t resist a cheap gag. It’s a sickness.)
I tried reading that Slate thingy, which was a transcription of a podcast. Ann Landers would have disposed of that SJW husband in a paragraph. If he’s willing to go radio silence over the mere mention of Chik-Fil-A, the relationship has more red flags raised over it than a Wuhan wet market. So I stopped reading.
But I did see this marvelous misuse of “segue”: “And I think it’s kind of a nice Segway to our next item.”
I think it works. You take the Segway to segue to a new topic. Ride on!
I wish there had been a show revisiting The Good Life thirty or forty years later.
Somewhat related.
David, do you have any more sausages?
[ Disappears behind bar. Sounds of what may be someone rummaging in a bin. ]
Right, that’s tomorrow’s ephemera sorted. Should materialise just after midnight.
That’s UK time, obviously. Not whatever primitive timekeeping those heathens overseas use.
Well, us heathens can introduce our genial host to other meat/breading delights, such as the “Pepperoni Roll” from the Northern West Virginia/SE Penna lands, or the Texas Kolache (a beef sausage in roll).
Of course, we in Texas realize there are other meats one might prefer over beef, such as ….
Tomorrow is also Bosch Day, so some of us will be unavailable for many hours, perhaps even days if it is necessary to catch up on the past seasons prior to starting the final one.
Tomorrow is also Bosch Day
Hieronymus or Robert?
Tomorrow is also Bosch Day,
The season six trailer looks very exciting. Bingeing will ensue.
prior to starting the final one.
I’m sure I read they’re doing seven, then calling it a day.
Of course, we in Texas realize there are other meats one might prefer over beef, such as…
Pork, natures perfect food; you can’t get real bacon, or pork chops, edible ribs or sausage, pulled pork, ham, chicharrones, etc., etc., from a cow.
edible ribs or sausage
Them’s fight’n words, there. Besides, bacon is an accessory. For pretty much everything.
Besides, bacon is an accessory. For pretty much everything.
Exactly, like wrapping around a filet mignon to make it edible.
Exactly, like wrapping around a filet mignon to make it edible
Indeed. A good cut of beef (redundant, I know) makes all bacon better.
🙂
I’m hungry.
Have a sausage!
Heck, have TWO sausages!
https://www.wdtn.com/community/health/coronavirus/maryland-resident-gets-final-warning-for-not-wearing-pants/