Spirit of the Elk
An elk hide tanning immersion attempting to build right relationship with these majestic creatures.
Elk Hide Tanning | Elk Bag Crafting | Land-Based Ritual & Connection
Dates: September 29th – October 6th, 2024
Group Size: 6-8
Location: Wonder Nature Connection outside Boulder, CO. Wonder Nature Connection is private land at 8,500 feet in upper Lefthand Canyon, just down the canyon from Ward, CO.
Housing & Food: Participants will tent-camp or car-camp on the land for the week. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided each day with ingredients from Groundwork farm in Paonia, CO and harvested from the wild.
Tuition: Sliding Scale $1,200 – $1,500 *If you need extra financial assistance please reach out to speak with us
Registration Deadline: August 29, 2024
Program Highlights
Brain-tan an elk hide that you will take home with you
Sew your own elk hock bag from the lower leg portions of an elk hide
Track elk on the land and learn to interpret elk movement patterns
Sacred wanders and other land-based connection activities
Sit spot — connect with spirit of elk
Storytelling
Fire circles in the cool fall evenings
Program Overview
Honoring the Elk is taking a step towards rebuilding a respectful and reciprocal relationship with these four legged, mythic, bugling creatures that call the Rocky Mountains home. Those that have had the privilege of spending time with the elk know the wild beauty that these animals hold, the honorable ways they move through the land and, likely, the impact that humans have had on their traditional ways and migration routes.
In this 7-day intensive, we will begin to explore what establishing right relationship with these animals could look, feel, and taste like. Throughout the week, we will be learning the art of brain tanning—tanning elk hides in a traditional way with fat and smoke—creating elk hock bags from the legs of the elk, and connecting more deeply to the more-than-human world through land-based practices and connection.
For almost 10,000 years, elk have been an essential species in the ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains and beyond. At one point, populations were estimated to have exceeded 10 million elk. Upon arrival of European settlers, elk populations plummeted to almost extinction, including a meager population of 500-1,000 elk in Colorado in 1910. Populations have since rebounded but never to historical vigor. More recently, Colorado has become a mecca for hunters from across the United States. Each year, 250,000 hunters harvest 50,000 elk across the state. Unfortunately, we’ve lost the ceremonial and honoring ways that these creatures deserve. Let us gather around the fire and see what’s possible when we come together to unearth these ways of Honoring the Elk.
This intensive immersion will at once be practical: learning the hands on skills to utilize the whole animal and create beauty through death, and also soulful: exploring relationship to the land through solo and group wanderings, tracking and trailing exercises, daily sit spots, storytelling, council and more.
We have purposefully planned this gathering to be in between archery hunting and rifle hunting season in Colorado. While this course is for anyone interested, we’d love to welcome hunters looking to deepen their relationship with the Elk. This also will be a time of soulful prayer- knowing that thousands of animals will be harvested on the land around this time. Let us make beauty through their death.
Schedule
Sept. 29th: Arrival, Orientation, and Setup
Sept. 30th: Morning Practice, Start Hides
Oct 1st: Morning Practice, Land Based Exercise, Start Hock Bags
Oct 2nd: Full Hide Day
Oct 3rd: Hide Softening Day
Oct 4th: Morning Practice, Land Based Exercises, Hock Bags, Finish Hides
Oct 5th: Hide Smoking Day
Oct. 6th: Morning Practice, Packing Up, and Closing Circle
Your Guides
Forrest Gillies
Forrest was fortunate to be raised at one of the oldest intentional communities, nestled into the red sandstone foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Being surrounded by wilderness, sustainable agriculture and abundant community shaped him into a human inspired to share these gifts with a world starving for land based connection. Guided by the question of how to create and sustain real, viable culture, Forrest found answers in the seeds. After studying Ecological Agriculture: Seeds, Bees & Soil at the Evergreen State College, he discovered the ways in which seed, subsistence agricultural systems and traditional life-ways create the foundational framework for real culture to emerge. Forrest has managed multiple regenerative farm and education projects including Siskiyou Seeds and White Oak Farm, offers nature connection programs for youth and is apprenticing in natural building. Rooted in reverence for the human & more-than-human world, Forrest walks in service to a more beautiful world we all know is possible. Forrest is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
Mandy Bishop
Mandy is a ritual artist, nature-based mentor and guide, and also the founder of Old Ways Wisdom—a place where ritual art, ancestral skills, and Sacred Storywork weave together to bring us back into relationship with ourselves, the land, and the wisdom of our ancestors. Born and raised in the Front Range of Colorado, Mandy has a deep relationship with and life-long apprenticeship to the plants and the wisdom of the land. For most of her life, Mandy has been intimately involved with the wild ones in many forms, including foraging wild foods and wildcrafting medicines, weaving baskets, carving gourds, tanning hides and apprenticing to fire. Mandy is in service to the remembrance of our wild selves; to a partnership between nature, creativity and soul; and to the wisdom carried in our bones waking us up to what is most important in our lives. Outside of guiding and teaching, Mandy fills her days with homesteading, crafting, ceremony and adventuring in the wilderness. Mandy is also a certified Wilderness First Responder.