I made it to Florida but not before spending the weekend at the Tracker School during one of the strongest blizzards to have impacted the east coast in several years. The Tracker class was held at the Joseph A. Citta Boy Scout reservation in New Jersey and started on a Friday. By Saturday morning there was at least a foot of snow on the ground and by Saturday evening two feet of snow and it was still coming down at a steady clip. So much snow covered the ground that by late Saturday evening I could not even find my tent as it had turned in to a barely recognizable mound of snow. When I did find my tent it had collapsed under the weight of the snow.

I left West Lebanon New Hampshire for the New Jersey Pine Barrens at around 6am.  It was -4 degrees that morning, everything was frozen solid and the ice already in the driveway was refrozen.  Even with the car warmed up the heater could hardly knock back the cold until the sun came up.

Starting out with almost no traffic, dawn in the New Hampshire mountains, a pleasant drive through New England country.  I remember watching sun rise above mist filled valleys, absolutely amazing views.  Six hours later I was on the Jersey turn pike.

As I mentioned in a previous post I’m on my way to the Tracker school.  Many people look perplexed when you tell them you are going to (or just came from) a survival school in New Jersey.  As Tom Brown tells it New Jersey is the front lines of an environmental war.  Most polluted, most densely populated, most sick state in the whole country.  You really notice it on the Pennsylvania New Jersey border I shot this video.

I made it to New Hampshire at about 6 am on Friday morning after driving straight through from Louisville.   I’m visiting my Mother until tomorrow morning when I’ll be heading south, first to New Jersey for another Tracker Class then to Florida to visit with my Dad and most likely hang out around Florida until the last throws of winter in Indiana, around February, March, or April.  Looking forward to the warm weather, the 6inches of snow on the ground in New Hampshire is nice, but it’s going to be -1 degrees tonight…

My main focus for this winter season in Florida will be food: gathering plants, hunting animals, and tracking.  I’m excited to get some dirt time dedicated to these survival skills as they are multidisciplinary skills and practicing one furthers ability in other areas.  Gathering plants is all about knowing the landscapes and habitats, hunting is all about understanding ones game including habits, preferences, personality, etc.  Working on these skills improves other skills (shelter building, cordage, bow drill, etc.) as at the end of the day the art of finding food and nourishment in the bush is grounded in observation and awareness.  They’re gateway skills, physically and spiritually.

Around dusk looking up towards overcast skies I felt cretin the end was near. It was defiantly going to rain. Looking up at my cattail roof – weeks in the making – I could see long leaves bundled tightly enough on the top and bottom edges of the roof, but in the middle of the mats I was looking through my roof at thin, almost transparent cattails leaves silhouetted by a darkening overcast sky. As I lay there looking up at the not so distant storm clouds I did wonder some about what I could have done differently so that I could be sitting in my earth shelter in confidence feeling protected from the rain. For whatever reason my first set of cattail mats did not seem to have the shingling effect I had read about and hoped for and judging by their appearance had no hope of protecting me from the rain.

I tried to take advantage by relaxing as much as I could before the storm hit. I wondered how much longer before the rain and how cold it might get, even becoming impatient. Although my cattail mat roof experiment seemed an imminent and cretin disaster I was determined to spend at least one cold rainy night getting soaked in my failed shelter even if only to shiver and wonder what exactly had gone so terribly wrong with my life that it had come down to this, wasting weeks making a cattail mat roof which was about to leave me shivering in darkness, rain water and mucus dripping off my blue lips and mashed between shivering teeth then washing away with it and sending off on some cool breeze in the night all the pride of one who imagines himself capable of such things. Washing away all the denial that such an ill conceived project could possibly come together in some positive way. I figured before the week is over I’d be living in the post office which, incidentally, it turns out a 24-hour access PO box is as legal a place as any to spend the night – it’s like paying for a post office box and getting rent for free.

Looingk up at my cattail mat roof, looks nice in the fire light.

Then it happened. About 45 minutes before dark, a light drizzle then a slow steady rain and within few hours a down poor. Despite all known universal physics, my empirical observations and analysis, something completely unexpected happened. My holey cattail mats somehow were keeping the rain out except for during the heaviest of squalls. Somehow even the most scrappily made cattail mat can keep you dry and warm. A moment of imminent disaster turned into a pleasant, if not cozy, evening in the rain. All I can really say about it is there’s magic in traditional cattail mats and intention is among the most powerful forces in the natural universe.