We got an interesting event submitted to us from local Technomad, Colin Leath. He is definitely up to something unique and I can only assume that he sent the email from his campsite in the woods based on the following description from this blog:
“I’m working on getting rid of possessions I cannot carry and heading out to the forest with a PDA for reading books, a solar charger, and a cell phone. My goals are to be able to blog about what I’m doing, to provide an example others can learn from, to stay in contact with urban dwellers so they can come out and visit, and to encourage and help them to be comfortable and to live simply in the outdoors.”
Colin is inviting locals to join him during the weekend of May 9th to learn more about survival in the outdoors and to mobile blog about your experiences. Check out his blog post for more info on the event.
Now, Colin seems like a nice enough guy, but we don’t know him or his background. So please do your own due diligence if you plan to participate.
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Colin Leath
April 29th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Chuck, Thanks for posting this! I’m not in the forest yet, so if you were thinking of coming along and can get out to 63rd & El Cajon Blvd, we could meet up ahead of time.
If this kind of gathering doesn’t quite work for you but you can think of something similar that might–say you’d prefer to meet in an established campsite, let me know–we can plan another.
Most of the people I have learned from who are interested in spending a lot of time in the forest and in practicing origin skills (aka ‘primitive skills’) understandably have a negative view of modern technology and corporations.
I’m hoping that some of the readers of this blog might bring to these gatherings a different perspective–related to mobile technologies and to the newer kinds of companies dedicated to social responsibility and life-affirming work practices.
I’ve been influenced by holacracy, integral philosophy, the open source movement, and permaculture. Here’s an idealistic essay that is related that I wrote back in 1994: http://e-a.freehostia.com/cleath/docs/berkeleystatement.htm
It’s only a matter of time before we can have barcamps in the forest. . . what may be lacking is not the technology but the backcountry skills (and the desire to get there and to be out there) of the humans!
FYI: with respect to the backcountry skills I’m by no means an expert. But I did manage to spend 5 weeks in the forest last year!
Chuck Longanecker
April 29th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Thanks for the additional details Colin. I would be interested in having a guest writing compose a post about their experiences from the weekend.