WILDROOTS COMMUNITY

Wildroots is a 30-acre homestead in rural Western NC. Our focus is on experiential learning and living, while practicing, developing and sharing primitive skills for rewilding and reconnection.

At Wildroots, we live without electricity (solar or otherwise) or running water, carry our water, use a crosscut saw to get our wood, and practice "earthskills", or earth-based lifeways as much as possible. Our interests include permaculture, natural and primitive shelter building, hide tanning, flintknapping, forest gardening, primitive pottery, herbal medicine, nature crafts, and wild food foraging. We also incorporate skills more typically found in colonial times, such as timber framing, using a crosscut saw, canning, etc. These skills are rapidly falling into disuse in our throwaway culture, but we see them as crucial to our future survival, and we intend to help keep them alive. Some of these skills are as old as the human species itself. The surest way to protect earth based lifeways, or "earthskills", is to practice them, and pass them along as we move through this alienated modern life. Just as we can propagate endangered native plants in the ecosystems from which they have been displaced, or re-introduce wolves into areas from which they have been extirpated, we can reclaim our ancestor's lost knowledge of living with the earth. We are not trying to "be indian" or usurp native americans skills or rituals. However, these earth skills are skills that have been practiced by every culture on earth at one time.

On a practical level, rewilding involves both assessing our present situation, and looking back to what has been done to us as a culture, and looking forward to where our society is likely headed. By developing blends of old traditions and new adaptations that are suited to our habitats and all the complexities of modern life, we can reclaim some of these skills and ways of living little by little. Some of us may decide to go as far as we can in eliminating the conveniences and comforts of modern life, and simplifying our existence. Some may strive for self sufficiency and appropriate technology, preferring more complex food, fiber and medicine systems than our forager ancestors. Others of us incorporate some of that simplicity, while still maintaining a foot in modern culture, including resistance movements within it. Others may wish to learn methods to help us survive the oncoming collapses of ecological and economic systems, and to lessen our dependency on profit motivated institutions and all the mental control that comes with them.

Keep an eye on our website, or get on our mailing list to keep updated. We're looking for long-term residents, as well as shorter-term visitors interested in experiential learning.