Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Program, Episode Two

Description

Matt shares wisdom gained from three weeks in the forest, offers up a friendly challenge, and asks your expertise on making pizza in the woods and getting Sauron out of your head while meditating.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Matt's 11-month Forest Monk program

Video Transcription

I was just telling kenton his task two weeks have been really hard at times because of the homesickness and but I think that everyone should have to go through something like this some two weeks by themselves most of the time loneliness having to deal with being away from your family it seemed that this was an invaluable experience so far it just makes you appreciate everything you have thinking of my life back home I've been constantly using words like luxuriate and comfort and everything I have back at home seems so so rich and luxurious we seem like wealthy people when you really think about it and that's definitely something I came here to get appreciation so I'm from Oak Harbor Washington pretty much as far northwest as you can go in the United States out on a little island Big Island I'm 18 years old I just graduated high school this June ever since last summer I had been looking for something to do between high school and college I'm going to college next year in Minnesota but everybody always it's a new thing that has come up in recent years the gap year or the bridge year and a lot of big schools are advocating that at Harvard is advocating a gap year it seems like to be a really effective way to improve your college experience to take a year off from school so you're not so burned out so I was looking for something to do there

and i was just browsing the internet one day looking at videos i found a video on how to take a cold shower by rewilding and kenton was like just sitting there in the snow shirtless like just out in zero degree weather totally enjoying himself I was like whoa that's pretty cool I want to learn how to do that so watch the video started taking cold showers that helped me and I followed follow the channel for a while I really like the videos kenton was putting out and eventually decided to look at the website so I saw all these cool programs on there and up to an 11 month program I was like oh I was home-schooled actually which is a pretty cool thing me and my sister home school together she's 21 right now

I really came out here I have been really considering the reasons that I came out here because that's definitely something comes up when it's cold and raining the middle of the night you definitely ask yourself what are we doing out here but I think I came out here most of all to get rid of dependencies there are a lot of things that we depend on in our modern culture and rather than depending on a warm bed to sleep in a night or coffee every morning or no a computer to write email on I'd rather be able to enjoy those things without knowing that I need them well knowing that I could go away from them for a year anytime I want to oh and don't be criticizing my cooking I saw that comment I'll have you know my crescent rolls on a stick over the fire last night we're amazing perfectly baked and sliding off the sticks none of that assess its not very good hey really good first butter I've had it like two weeks have you tried Bojo gay yeah I made my fire yesterday with Vadra what seriously yeah you got your first goal in friction five ever made right on yeah oh my gosh what did that feel like I was awesome I was like the best moment since coming here oh my gosh it took a really long time to get the tinder bundle to light up okay just because I didn't want to blow it out like I did last night oh but it was just sitting there letting the smoke increase scorpion I'm making like feeling hotter and hotter every minute that was pretty cool and then I just burst into flame that's awesome Matt oh my gosh and I ran yesterday too I wasn't even sure be able to make a fire yeah I mean it was rainy conditions and yeah and you got your mojo right on which oh yeah so I set the dude he's the Ironwood spindle and instago willow board I think the Ironwood spindle with the willow board is a really good combination because the spindle doesn't really shape down you don't have to keep whittling off the word of the spindle all the time yeah doesn't get too much friction yeah so we so people know we started with same wood on same way we start with willow and Willow and tried box elder and box elder and both of those have that problem the spindle really burning away and shaping itself strangely but this is nice because most of the burning is happening on the board there then yeah and this top piece is this will that's a willow yeah how did that work here I worked pretty well actually I think just because it the willow is a soft wood in it kind of fit the fit the shape of the spindle eventually without creating too much friction it was a pretty good combination sweet congratulations we did a blind fire challenge the other day yeah did you gain anything from that any what was your take on that experience you know one thing I did notice was going around trying to collect firewood blind there's a lot more of it out there than I originally suspected all you have to do is just walk like five feet in that direction and you get a whole handful of little dry sticks good for burning even though it was a little bit damp out that day it was some dry stuff is hanging in the trees you can tell by feel yeah the way it breaks but that's one of the things I've been worried about a little bit is running out of firewood but there's one thing I'm not going to run out of here it's probably sticks you've done some dawn and dusk sets counted some animals what was your yesterday I got up at dawn six o'clock i put on my camo gear and walked over to a deer trail i found i just noticed if I saw a deer in the field how would run after them and chase them away and watch where they entered the woods so a lot of them seem to enter the woods in this one spot and then I found a little path there so I went and SAT it gets to treat at six in the morning and there's only so long you can sit at six in the morning with this kind of mosquito weather yeah they've come out and major or haven't though it was the way she's been since I got here these past couple of days so I had like five or six on me at once but dear came out they walked out of the field because that's where they sleep and there were five or six deer two or three big doze and a couple of like fawns not quite adult those but they didn't have spots and I just walked along line maybe 15 feet away from me they saw me after a little bit might just have been my unusual shape there against the tree they might have smelled me but I didn't scare them away the some of the big dose were like acting pretty wary they were stamping their feet to warn all the other deer

you know they just watched carefully asked me in a line but phones were interesting they seem to be watching mom what are you doing what should I do I'm just going to stand here watch what my mom does and then just do whatever she does so Fonz don't seem to know very much it this morn and eventually I did scare them off because I was swatting mosquitoes getting pretty annoyed and so that one of them coughed and then they just charged off into the woods that was pretty neat though then yesterday evening i sat in the same spot and all I saw was a mouse that was disappointment it did run up really close to me I had my notebook right there next to me and I'm else to scampered up walk crawl across my notebook and ran behind me there was gonna neat nice two weeks ago you were saying really your biggest challenge was homesickness and loneliness those challenges shifted or is it the same that's really still the biggest challenge although I might expand that to just being mental the mental toughness of being here it's not only homesickness it's just having to wake up every day and you know get out of your warm sleeping bag go make a fire go brush your teeth with the mosquitoes swimming around you realizing every morning that I'm not going to be able to take a hot shower in my house for another year you know realizing every day that it's gonna be here a year before i drive a car or go watch a movie and that's still pretty tough but usually i get over that midway through the day once i have something to occupy my mind with a big question for a lot of people is going to the bathroom out in the woods how has that been going if that's not too personal oh I I enjoy it it's great oh really yeah I'm gonna miss squatting when i get home cuz it's so much easier so you know so much faster you're not like you didn't rig up a toilet you're actually doing squatting she's a hole in the ground i found a flat spot where they used to be a decayed log i think and no rock they're so just dig a deep hole get some leaves for toilet paper right on it's nice getting you from there better than in your bathroom and by now you've been four weeks in the woods which is more than you know ninety-nine percent of us will ever experience in a row yeah this is day 22 so three weeks three weeks okay some support oh yeah okay so anything you'd think you've brought out of that experience that you might share with people who never will be that long in the woods yeah that that's significant maybe to their lives there to life in general yeah well I definitely learned the art of appreciation at least I so that's a word I've been using with myself a lot appreciate I've learned to appreciate everything that we have in our easy modern life although the thing I was thinking is I learned to appreciate what I don't have anymore so now I just need to appreciate all the cool stuff that I do have and then that's a skill that I can take back into regular life so I have a pre I appreciate most of us can appreciate what we lost or we should all try to work on appreciating what we have right now awesome ah and just being by yourself in your own mind is surprisingly difficult actually have a challenge for people if anyone's interested in taking this up my challenge that I thought of is just take a day off so an entire day let's try not to do anything don't read books don't watch TV try to avoid talking to people as much as you can don't stimulate your mind without anything at all you can walk you can eat and you can just do chores you can wash dishes or whatever you want but don't do anything that'll get your mind out of itself stay along with your thoughts today and I'm pretty sure it'll kill you hahaha that's an awesome show and I think that's something everybody should try at least once is awesome yeah and if please if anybody tries that challenge then share with with Matt and I in the comments and those comments okay hygiene out here hygiene is really overrated in my opinion it's we do so much in civilized world that we don't need to be doing like I took I've taken one shower in three weeks and I don't feel dirty I mean we just went out in the woods and out into the field and did martial arts and sweated for an hour but you know just change it change my clothes I might wash my clothes in the stream today and I'll be fine like I haven't used shampoo in three weeks my hair isn't greasy it's not oily I don't have to comb anymore it just stays in one place but I don't feel dirty out here I sit next to a fire every day and I don't get smoky you know my skin feels better than it has in months I think a lot of it is we do too much like i was using some pretty powerful skin treatments back at home try to help with my acne but it's I think that was hurting me the less stuff you can do and and still get by the better in my opinion I mean you look just like you've showered appear a little dirty now from her yeah sparring but and was that something that you came into this am i right that when you came you work may be concerned about yeah i was expecting that i might have to you know come down to Kenton's house to take a shower every week or something or you know get some shampoo to wash my hair in the creek or something like that one thing that's different out here i think is the wood isn't super pitchy so that's one reason i don't smell like smoke probably it might not work so well in Washington where we have all the conifers yeah that's not really an issue for me like I thought it would be yeah and I think probably there's a stress element to it like it's mentally taxing to be out here but I'm not stressed and I think stress probably affects your health and hygiene pretty negatively also I'm remembering some things that I used to do that are used to be stressful but right now I'm thinking of them as fun so I'm like oh yeah I like traveling on planes I like go walking through airports I'm having fond memories of going through the TSA checkpoints what oh like oh yeah that's kind of a fun game taking your shoes off it in time as quick as you can to get through the detector you know because I think from this standpoint those things have lost the stress factor to them and once you take the stress away you can start to enjoy things that most people would normally hate so that's one thing everybody I think she try to work on is moving the stress from everyday activities and then you might be able to appreciate the better I've been looking at the frozen pizzas in the grocery store every time we go there oh man i miss pizza so your guys's job to find a find a way i can take your frozen pizza and cook it on my fire because i want to know how to do this I'm gonna do it eventually but I'll probably screw it up if I if I just go on my own methods so give me seven times we need a capping bushcraft expert to this you buy some frozen yes uh don't get me a glass stuff about picking the feet to myself I'm not that advanced yet I just need to heat it up without the cheese sticking through everything you know what I'm meditating the weirdest things show up like I can walk through the forest you know and the same things will go through my mind almost all the time like I listen to a bunch of rap videos on YouTube before coming here and they're still going through a hind three weeks later every time I sit down like rap music going through there but when I'm meditating it's totally different like I'll just sit there staring into the empty reaches of my mind waiting for a thought to come up and suddenly out of the blue swims a picture of Sauron and in his helmet and like what I haven't watched the Lord of the Rings months what are you doing their son right and I just think of you so if you guys know why that happens I'm you interested to hear why just the randomest memories of your life just pop up when you're meditating it's quite interesting you might try that sometime