My Time as a Human

I paused mid step, my right foot frozen just above the ground, my breath, slow and even. Then I heard it again, the distant bung of the drum, echoing through the trees on the hill high above me. The blindfold was tight and cool across my face. The lively nerves across the bottom of my bare foot sang of a dry twig and I adjusted slightly, shifting my hips smoothly, and placed the foot carefully into the leaves before rolling my weight forward. The sounds of crickets and the feel of soft breezes across my bare skin shaped the space through which I passed. I wove my way slowly through thick tangles of vines and piles of logs, navigating through and over complex terrain that unraveled and simplified as I focused on the immediate and moving through flow instead of resistance. At times I gently thumped into larger objects, and was careful to move my head back slightly and feel out with my senses what I had somehow missed. Always around me the crickets lay a thick background that made subtle shifts when trees or thickets came near. Always came the interruption of the drum, every half minute, providing a brief glimpse of my destination.

The blind drum stalk was a crucial turning point in the nine day survival course I took this last week. As at last I sat blindfolded among the growing group of silent men emerging from the forest, the drum pounding mere feet from us, I absorbed and reveled in the sense of fearlessness that came with having moved through what would have, during the daylight, appeared nearly impassible. I no longer needed trails. I no longer needed light. I no longer hesitated to join the earth, mud, leaves and vines. I had begun my transformation into becoming them.

We were a group of fifteen men: twelve students and two instructors. Karen, who owned the land where we trained, joined us for most of our adventures in the first half of the week as an enthusiastic observer. Many of the students’ wives had attended previous classes, but something about this particular course, that required us to dig and live in mud pits, convinced them to sit this one out.

From the very beginning the driveway spoke of the group’s diversity, with tiny fuel efficient cars parked next to massive trucks covered with gun stickers. Dave was a cop that taught firearms. Matt ran a green building consulting company. Chuck, ever good humored under his bright red mop of hair, was on his way to Kuwait as a soldier. Craig, with his quiet presence and strong center, was a redneck turned Aikido master. Phil did autopsies at the morgue before becoming a copy repair man. David was a preschool teacher and amazing at Tai Chi. Wallace was a former wrestler we referred to as the, “Primate” who painted abstract art.

While we may not have shared the same political views, we relished the opportunity to spend time with other men who shared our passion for both ancient and modern skills and the natural world. We were forever taking moments to discuss or try out new equipment or ideas. If you make an alcohol stove out of a cat food can, don’t forget to add a drop of food coloring to the alcohol… so you can see it. Leaving your tent behind and using a poncho or tarp to build a shelter is great, but adding a hammock to raise you off the ground and allow you to sleep on steep hillsides is even better. Hatchet handles inevitably break. Why not forge your own hatched head with a tapered hole so that you can replace it with a sapling?

The instructors, Richard Cleveland and Tom Laskowski, also set the tone by setting their egos aside from the very beginning and pointing out that despite their years of experience, they still had plenty to learn. They even expected us, as our skills improved, to sometimes catch them during stalking exercises. It was a dark night several days later when it became a good thing that Richard, in particular, had said something up front.

Tune in for more thrilling tales as my adventure continues!

There’s nothing like the stinging massage of hailstones snapping like little whips against every part of your body as the lake before you boils and the rocks around you pop with exploding ice. By chopping trees into tidy little two inch by four inch boards and using them to build walls around ourselves, we’ve created the illusion that nature is some tiny, distant, insignificant story we hear about by watching it through our digital flat screen windows. It seems very much under control. That illusion was literally shattered a while back when hail broke through all of our west facing windows and sent us scrambling for shelter. Standing up at 12,000 feet among the trees, as untamed as when they were born, complex and beautiful, leaning and sprawling and twisting and reaching and in no way trying to protect me, I was unshielded from reality. I was a tiny human tossed and spit on, warmed and slapped by massive forces continually in motion and of which I was but an insignificant part. There are no waivers in nature. There are no courts. If I chose to be in the wrong place at the wrong moment, lighting would strike me because that’s what lightning does. Life: You voluntarily assume all risk of property loss, serious injury or death by attending.

Having to make my own decisions about living and survival is both daunting and liberating. Standing out in a hailstorm to feel the strength of the forces of which I am a part is always an exhilarating, tangible way to experience that. Ori Sofer and I trekked up into the mountains for a few days to find that experience or, to be fair, that’s what I planned to do, and I brought Ori along for the ride. I think I just told him it was beautiful up there.

There’s no question that we have an inherent human survival-based drive to be close to flowing water and greenery. Ever since I was a kid being dragged into the Colorado Rockies for the first time I felt that connection deep in my chest every time I took a breath. Later I learned about my affection for the stripped-down ecosystem at higher altitudes. There’s something about the relative simplicity of the perfectly clear lake water, snow, and tiny dwindling trees. There are only a handful of mammals including, my favorite, the Marmot. The flowers are tiny and bright and the huge stretches of exposed rock are often covered with colorful lichen. The granite up there feels just right under bare feet in a way that asphalt and pavement never have despite my love of cities. Maybe it’s the wind-smoothed surface as I playfully work over it with my toes or meet its curves with the arch of my foot. Sometimes cool from a chilly night, other times hot from the sun’s touch, always feeling right.

Ori was having some trouble with the altitude and so instead of making the steep climb to the nearby pass, we had time to play around the lakefront. I had brought along my new favorite survival knife, the Falkniven F1, and was excited about trying out my fire making skills. These is a spectrum from, “pour gas on it and use a lighter” to, “you are naked in the woods and have only a rock and a tree”. I’ve been working my way from one end to the other, and currently use a fire steel (like a modern piece of flint) and wood. I still haven’t mastered the art of tinder making and the trick was made even more challenging in that it had been raining and all of the available wood was wet.

The little knife did a great job of batoning and tearing through a few logs and once split the wet logs revealed their drier insides. I carved wood strips out of the center and made a fine powder out of the rest and mixed it with some rotting wood I’d collected the day before while hiking. It took considerable work, but as you can see by the smoke over my head, fire happened! The rain that immediately rode in on my triumph wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits, just all of the wood I’d been using.

Despite my success in getting the tinder lit, I was disappointed in how long it took me. I’ve since learned some new tricks, such as using tree sap, that should significantly improve the process and I can’t wait to try it. So much so, in fact, that I’m already considering a second run to the mountains before the summer ends.

More to come…

I’ve safely arrived in New York with my large suction cups and extra videotape. While I can’t yet reveal the full nature of my mission here, I can say that I’m excited about seeking out the appropriate required black socks.

Already I’ve availed myself of the local robot construction facilities, and I’ve used a laser to fabricate custom gears for Bar Bot IV. Raph has officially taken the offloaded project from Adam Mayer, and the tuxedo sleeved robotic cherry placement arm is promising to bring a whole new level of class to the Bar Bot line.

Things are actually looking quite good for NYC Resister aka “The Lab”. The only thing lacking appears to be a reliable source of Club Matte, a mysterious beverage tasting of plumb juice and dry leaves, which fuels the hacker crew. Occasionally Austrians or Germans fly in to refresh the supply, and I got a chance to meet one of them yesterday, a tall guy with an appropriately thick accent and mohawk like hair. Apparently flying to the US to work in the lab is his idea of a vacation.

There are a number of artistic projects underway, including a dive bombing napkin that attempts to embrace you at the door and a squeezable calculator bear. There is also an attempt to build the first profitable contraption, the Makerbot Industries Cupcake CNC.

Makerbot is a CNC fabricator that can construct anything you describe for it in three dimensions out of plastic, and will ultimately be able to do the same with cupcake frosting. For the moment it can be set to adjust motor speeds so that it plays the Star Wars Imperial March theme while constructing a pile of little stormtrooper heads, which is what one machine was doing full time. The other Makerbots in the room were busily making parts for themselves, their little plates buzzing back and forth under the extruder and a dark blue or red glow in an ominous act of procreation. Of course the possibilities are already becoming clear to some. Makerbot is currently available both as a kit and fully assembled, and early adopting nerds across the country are buying them up like mad and, as the design is continually optimized, having their machines print out upgrades for themselves.

There is a saying that I’ve repeated countless times since I’ve been here: “the laser changes everything”. Suddenly everything you dream up can be made and cut to precision. Every part, tool, or laptop is emblazoned with a slick logo or design. Every sign looks professional and legit. When I needed to affix a gear to a stepper motor, I just took the motor to a grinder, flattened half of the shaft, and then told the laser to cut me a new, identical gear with a half hole in the center. It took about twenty minutes total.

This is a world I couldn’t even have imagined as a kid when I was building my robots out of inverted trash cans cut with kitchen knives and mounted on scrap wood platforms. I used rubber bands between my DC motors and the crude pulleys I’d hacked out of wood. I cut everything out of wood because it was all I could manipulate, and gears were something I had to order from surplus catalogs, wait for for weeks, and hope I could assemble into something useable once the hodgepodge arrived. Now if I screw up a part, or something is a bit too large, or small, or needs a couple of extra notches, I can grab a piece of scrap and in seconds I have a handful of perfect new parts.

That part of my long dormant geek brain is blinking in the light of a new world. The revolution is already here, and as we suspected, it’s all about robots again.

When I was but a wee lad, I once awoke unusually early one morning. Rubbing sleep from my eyes I stumbled into the dining room with my sisters and there before us was an incredible sight. The table was covered with orange juice, toast, cereal, and all manner of wonderful smelling and tasting breakfast delights. But it was so early, we thought! How could it be that such a spread, with the spoons and bowls so carefully placed, with the soft boiled egg cups laid out with such care, be available already? Surely this was not the work of human hands. Perplexed, we asked my father what ever could have happened. He assured us that it was the result of a visit by the breakfast elves.

Throughout my childhood I would wake up with excitement when the morning felt just right, wondering if the breakfast elves had come. Their visits were rare, and so that much more delightful. Sadly, today my dad swears he doesn’t remember any of this. I have to assume that it was one of those offhand comments parents make that, however small, eagerly fill the large space in a child’s head so ready for explanations. The most exciting stories grow the largest, filling that space like the smell of cooking pancakes fills a house of sleepers.

A few weeks ago we had one of our large theme parties, this one calling for Fractured Fairy Tales. I broke out a few of my favorite bits from my costume collection and created a Breakfast Elf.

Sarah McDonald, Ori Sofer, Kai Mantsch

While I did spend a fair amount of time explaining the story, it was all part of the fun. At some point I was speaking exclusively in a bad Russian accent after trying to show a Baba Yoga how it was done, based entirely on my memories of my Russian friend Kostya Akimov saying things like, “Vodka with really crispy pickles”.

The whole thing reminds me of one of the objectives that’s emerged for my children’s song projects. Feeding small humans incomplete ideas and images allows them to fabricate something wonderful to fill in all of the gaps in understanding. “Pass the Sleepy Stick” is a great example. I never really explain what a sleepy stick might be, but I sing about it in context and give the general impression that it’s some kind of baton passed from sleepers on one part of the world to those next in line as the earth rotates away from the sun. I love the idea that kids who hear this song will create their own ideas of how this thing looks and acts and carry that with them for the rest of their lives, puzzling years later as to how they created and believed such a fantastical image.

For some reason I’ve never quite stopped putting together these crazy explanations for my world. My eagerness to jump to the most illogical, fantastic, explanation for things has earned me all kinds of hassle through the years. I was getting a ride with an older friend in jr. high school and he was trying to explain album rock radio to me. “When most radio stations are playing the single from an album”, he said, “album rock stations play something else off the same album.”

My mind boggled at how this could be true. How could all of those other stations know exactly when the singles were going to start? And what about songs that were different lengths? Did they just cut them off so they could start the next one at exactly the right time? I started imagining all kinds of elaborate schemes for keeping everything in perfect sync, and started asking bizarre questions until my friend, after a lot of confusion, realized how far out I had gone and looked at me in total disbelief.

I’m lucky these days to have found a great group of people who still revel in exploring the absurdities of how things might work or what life could be. I think that having these sorts of wild, impossible ideas about what could be is at the root of beginning to ask why other ideas aren’t already, or why there’s no reason they couldn’t be. Maybe the next step in my songwriting, as I begin my next round in a few weeks, is to create the space for adults to start thinking this way again too.