Living off the land is about as close to the earth you can get. Keeping in tune with Earth Week [15], the new Primitive Pursuits club at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry [16] held a Friction Fire Workshop and Braintanning [17] Demonstration on April 23. The club, which formed last semester, teaches students about being all natural and how to survive in nature. Think "Into the Wild".
Between 20 and 25 students attended the event on the ESF quad, where they learned to make fire without matches and how to skin animal hide. Students were shown the process of taking animal skin and transforming it into material suitable for clothing. Some of the members wore shorts and coats they made from animal hide.
A local woman donated more than a dozen rabbit skins to the club, so students could prepare the skin by dressing it in “brains” — a liquid material of water and cooked animal brain.
Estelle Waterman, vice president of the Primitive Pursuits Club, said she wants students to feel the same connection to nature she does.
“We are part of the earth," Waterman said, "and it’s kind of our duty to take care of it."
