The newness of wilderness living is just beginning to fade away for the Seekers, who are now quite settled in and on to exploring the surrounding wilderness. The suns (days) get longer and longer, which means sunrise comes earlier and earlier. Yet the guardians start their training in the pre-dawn with woods running, shadowing, and other awareness and attunement exercises to help them get in shape and connect deeply to their environment (for more on Guardian training, see this chapter from Tamarack’s Journey to the Ancestral Self). The rest of the Seekers are up with the dawn, rising to the songs of the morning birds. It gets light at about 4:30, and shortly after at sunrise is the morning meeting, where everyone connects about the day’s activities and the needs of the circle.

This leaves many hours of daylight to gather firewood, tend to the hearth and cook, craft, canoe, bathe and do laundry, fish and gather wild edibles, and take care of food processing and storage. The lake and the urge to hunt have been calling adults and children alike as they take the line and hook they’ve been given and make their own rods, bobbers, and sinkers. The children, who got a canoeing and fishing workshop, were ecstatic and immediately set about hunting worms. In short order, Diindiis (10) caught the first fish, which he cleaned, scaled, and baked on the open fire himself, then shared with everyone. It was quite a celebration, and soon others were catching fish as well.

With plenty of greens to harvest, the gift of an entire wawashkeshi (deer) to skin, butcher, and eat, and fish for the catching it seems to the seekers to be a time of abundance in the Northwoods. The bountiful meat created an opportunity to explore ways of preservation and storage—very important with the warm days we’ve been having. Some methods worked, and others didn’t. They soon found that the surrounding bogs, which are cold and high in acidity, keep meat quite well when buried deep in the peat.

However, with all the enthusiasm for fishing, the Seekers ended up with even more of a surplus of meat. The abundance brought lessons in scarcity as some of the food spoiled and Seekers learned to take only what was needed. The Wilderness Guide Program offers the opportunity to transition from “cupboard mentality,” where food is constantly available in abundance and can be taken for granted, to trusting in the Mother (our earth) to provide. With trust, they become actively engaged in providing their own food when they need it, rather than constantly stocking up. The transition is a gradual process, taking considerable awareness and intention as they gradually become more adept at gathering their own food. Issues around scarcity and deprivation are sometimes triggered. Fishing when already having five days’ worth of meat was done from the cupboard mentality, where there is abundant space and energy to store food. In the wilderness, there are few options for dealing with large food surpluses. Often people will overeat and food will spoil—both dangerous habits to get into when surviving in the wilderness.

The Seekers studied Tamarack’s article, Old Way Food Storage in the North Country, which provided them with some of the keys to working with scarcity and abundance. They saw that they had a multitude of options when faced with either abundance or scarcity. For instance, one way to avoid food spoilage is to let the Mother hold it, such as leaving the fish in the lake and catching them when needed. Another easy way to deal with abundance is to give it away, rather than spending the time and energy to process it. This encourages good relations and trust with others, which engenders compassion and giving during times of scarcity.

During this time of tension and reflection on abundance and scarcity, the Seekers called upon each other to communicate from their hearts, speak their fears, and trust in each other, the earth, and their circle. One of the communication tools the school offers is a guide on Truthspeaking and Truthlistening, which are traditional ways of respectful communication practiced by hunter-gatherer and tribal communities. With the help of the talking circle and talking stick, the Seekers sorted out fears they brought into the experience, supported each other in facing them, and made great strides in coming together and trusting in the Mother. In future posts, we’ll be sharing more about the Seekers’ use of the talking circle and other communication tools. If you are interested in learning about Truthspeaking, you can read the opening chapters of the Truthspeaking book Sacred Speech here or purchase the entire self-published book here.

Transitioning from the cupboard mentality to trusting in the Mother to provide for our needs sends ripples through our lives and relationships. Once we learn to trust, our energies are freed up to feed our relationships rather than to protect us from imagined harm. It is in this mindset of abundance, trust, and contentment that we can connect, grow, and become more of who we really are.