The second in two days

Adapted from my journal.

I've been saying for months that the only way to really learn these primitive skills is through doing them. But I've also had a sub-liminal sense of vague despair, because I have so much to learn and so little opportunity. My plans have been along the lines of, "buy primitive-skills books, and learn the skills by practicing them... somewhere." But there's not much forest to speak of around Cincinnati, so practicing a lot of things would be pretty problematic. And books, while helpful, can't impart but a minúte fraction of the knowledge that a real person, who can answer question, and a real forest, rather than pictures of nature in halftone dots, can. My best ideas for solutions to these were: get in contact with the Meskwaki Indians on the rez in Iowa (the college has community service stuff going on there), and learn their history and such. That would cover the people part. For the forest part, I had a vague plan to spend a summer in Minnesota or something, sometime in the fuzzy future. I couldn't think how to make that jive with my plans, which needed to include working for money for most of the summer; also, I would mostly lack direction, not knowing much, including where to start.
-In general, these plans sucked, because they meant only by-the-seat-of-my-pants learning (and probably nothing very deep), and would also leave me at the end of the summer with no community to pursue my goals with. Also, I would be working with kids in Meskwaki schools, and thanks to the checkered scratch that tar-black history of America Inc., they probably wouldn't know how to live off the land in the prairies much better than I would. My best bet for that would be the elders, but not only would it be kinda weird for me to go asking them to teach me the Ancient Ways, but also I would only be on the rez for a few hours a week, hardly enough to learn anything meaningful at all even over the course of a year.
-Today I was reading the REWILD.INFO forums, feeling like I was nowhere even close to knowing what I would eventually need to know, and I opened up a part of the forum that I hadn't thought to click on before. Wilderness School Reviews. I think the reason I'd ignored it before is the word "school", which made me think of classes reminiscent of either elementary school or Manito-wish's "Leadership Seminars", which made use of some pretty cheesy quotes printed onto the walls of the MLC basement. But straight off, I found a school called Teaching Drum (coincidentally about an hour's drive from Manito-wish), which all the REWILDers seem to think is top-of-the-line, or at least the ones who've been there. And it does look incredible. You can go there for a month, or 3, or 11. As I read more and saw pictures, it became very clear that I'd have to go there or to some wilderness school like it. A month is a fairly reasonable $800 (compare: about $4800 at the college, before financial aid and such), which I have saved up already, but that's not to say that I'm going to go and blow my whole year's salary on this. Actually, by the end of the year I'll have a lot more money, because I plan to do a lot of work-study this year. Whatever makes student loans less painful later on. I'm getting paid a nice piece for running Press. And I plan to work this summer, unless I do some sort of unpaid internship instead. A paid internship would be real nice. And I want to learn these skills soon, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to go this summer.
-But meanwhile my goal still stands - I'll catch and eat my own small game by the beginning of summer. I can't slow down my self-driven learning just because I'll be learning in a group later on.