Flesh of the forest floor

I took a short break from my writing today and wandered up to visit Zeph at his new cubby in the bush.

On the way there I collected some wood blewits (Clitocybe nuda) as a cubby-warming gift.

We cooked them on a small fire that Zeph had managed to start despite the soaked winter wood.

And made sure we cooked them well through as blewits contain a toxin that can be harmful if not well cooked.

I asked Zeph whether mushrooms shared closer DNA to animals than plants. He answered correctly.

Wood blewits are sweat meats to taste and before they're cooked smell of chocolate earth.

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Black Cockatoo Camp

My friend Peter Yencken and I are just about to take 10 children out into the bush for 4 days and 3 nights to teach them what we know about foraging, intuitive movement, close observing, stalking prey, living with simple tools, making fire and building shelter. This is the first of what we hope will be many called Black Cockatoo Camps. The camps are designed to foreground bodily and ecological knowledges, while backgrounding digital, technical and abstract knowledges.

This video shares a very similar philosophy to ours. It's an inspiring story:



Find out more about this video here.

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