Matt's 11 Month Forest Monk Program, Episode One

Description

Matt just started his 11-month adventure at ReWildU. Episode One has Matt explaining his first week and a half in the woods. What has been most challenging, what stands out . . . and his first big storm.

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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

Video Transcription

I would like to introduce Matt and he's here for an 11-month adventure and he's just started about a week and a half ago so every two weeks we're gonna try to make an episode where he can talk about what he's been experiencing what he's been facing and hopefully it'll be fun to watch first one is mainly an introduction just been here a little while you'll see that he's living you know he's got a really nice bug I'll show it like a bug proof shelter and concept here this is this program is less survival skills oriented than some other programs that run in the past it's heavy on meditation martial arts other elements so I wanted him to have a little bit more comfort out there in the woods so that he could focus for instance on long meditations especially as he begins those meditations not having to fight reports of mosquitos which luckily the mosquitoes aren't too bad right now anyway but this is Matt and he'll speak for himself I hope you tune into these I think they'll be fun to watch his personal growth and evolution as he goes along and figures out how to navigate life outside of regular civilization yeah week one is concluded so far we've had two thunderstorms per week exactly and that's the rate that I can accept it we had a big thunderstorm the night that I arrived or the morning after that was crazy

the road up here was super slippery we were just sliding all around like muskrats trying to climb up here where the top of a ridge here it must be 200 yes and it's a bit of a hike to get to anywhere around here right now we're in one of the big hay fields and this is a pretty nice place to hang out the mosquitos don't like it as much as I do which is one of the reasons you get it's the grass here's priest pokey so you have to be careful walking around barefoot but he'd go into the forest over there that's where I'm camped it cools down 10 degrees just walking in there

I remember Wisconsin being really hot in the summer and it does get pretty hot out here in the field but where I'm camped it's usually around 70 degrees maybe 75 only when I'm making dinner I ever really get hot you have a cooking area as you can see the great it's nicely over here and I pulled up one of these bricks from the farm Road I'm planning to collect all of the bricks that are on there eventually and upgrade my stove to brick instead of rock my pots their food supplies stay in these boxes got my kale in this jar of water and the vain attempts to stop it nothing seemed to be well protected I see sure how long it'll last the bin unzipping every day here's my bed area nice and neat as you can see I set up those sticks yesterday for my bed frame yeah can't say I'm a fan okay I take a look at that today because there's something we didn't yeah I think it's I just prefer sleeping on the ground there's no I guess I felt constrained on that interesting you're gonna keep from rolling around but what it's comfortable here hasn't rained since the first day yeah is everybody good with it it's making a pretty big adjustment to be out here like I knew that was going to happen it's just kind of going cold turkey from the total civilized life to being a woodsman you know

just going straight from cooking meals at the microwave every day and being able to search the internet all day if you want to you know it's a really big adjustment there's no nothing you can do really like your emotions get a lot stronger out here if you get if you end up with an emotion that you don't like and you're if you're in a civilized place normally you were just oh let's go watch the Netflix they don't feel better around here you're sad or lonely or something you just got to deal with it and I think that's a pretty big point for growth because that's all part of the natural experience of being a human feeling all those emotions not trying to suppress them

we're just doing nature to our will I've been making my fires with flint and steel since I came here just pretty cool I've never done that before I've been doing the magazine strikers every now and then but this is the real deal we've been getting jerked from the roads around here striking sparks on those steel strikers I have a supply of char cloth which makes it pretty easy you just have to get some char cloth and light up some grass and just blow on it and that'll make it a nice hot fire bundle but now all my char cloth is wet cuz it rained last night it was crazy last night it was thundering for like an hour

got to bed at 9:00 and I was still thundering it at 10:15 and then the rain started rain just came in it was just dead silent besides the Thunder and then just sitting there in my tent I heard the leaves rustling and shaking like like an oncoming tidal wave just coming straight at me and I just felt my tent caving in word from the force of this pressure that was coming in and the rain just hit like a like a tidal wave its Nami and it rained for nine hours straight just really hard pound pound pound pound pound everything got wet I was like huddling in the middle of my shelter next to this tree that I cut down and still a bit of it left in my shelter I stayed pretty dry I had all my stuff just stacked on top of each other in the middle I was like get the books off the ground get it among all the clothes so most of my things stay dry but all my firewood is soaked all my pots got full of water it's nothing I left outside stay dry at all

I made a shelter yesterday see that in some of the pictures I thought that would be pretty neat I put a bunch of goldenrod leaning up against the middle of it oh yes this will shed rain perfectly it's like old-fashioned fetch that might have worked for the first hour but nothing would stop that rain that's crazy

surrendering to my inner badger did a bunch of martial arts recently just came back from that we were way over there about half a mile in the pine forest which is why I'm all covered with dirt and pine needles that was pretty fun it's like a pine plantation we planted a bunch of trees there to grow for lumber and it's really nice and calm there pine needles on the ground hardly any undergrowth these forests around here are really cool this is when you're looking at them it's just a hole just leaves and greenery and just tons and tons of plants but once you get in there that's that canopy layer you can walk around and it's not like you're trying to push through bushes all the time you can actually get it around really nice I'm having some problems with making food so it's a long process to get fire going and hot by the time and then and then you have to boil your water after that they put all your ingredients together it takes a long time really feels at the moment like more work than it's worth like I'd rather just get it MRV pack or something and just eat that straight but it seems to be getting easier I'm getting quicker at making food I have lunch of beans and rice or beans and bread and cheese yesterday really simple meal but really good although I forgot to change the water on the beans

I think I'm adapting to the mosquitoes I'll get like a bite on my arm or something

and I mean I'll scratch it occasionally just because really itches but I'll check the same place like four hours later and it'll be nothing there so that's very different from how I used to react to mosquitoes back home maybe it's just being physically it might just be mentally just reacted not scratching it I'm not sure but that's not as much of a problem

as it was in my first Aki you've got access to coffee right now got yourself grateful Donuts coffee and donuts the perfect meal really bad for you but I've really missed it sure I'll get used to that I got a pie at the farmers market I started it it's really good most challenging thing we faced so far challenging thing is I think the homesickness has been the most challenging thing because pretty much everything I'd faced before like I faced having to make a fire before I'm facing mosquitos before but I've never before faced the idea of being by myself away from my home for a year so that's been the most challenging thing so far I think I think it's getting better but it comes and goes like I said the you get really emotional out here most pleasant thing I think the martial arts practices have been the most fun so far you get really like get down in the dirt rolling around trying to grapple with each other that's a lot of fun it's a great workout yeah learning to kick stuff punch things super fun so far take this yeah down the stream it's a pretty long walk down there it's probably like three-quarters of a mile from here just to get down there but it's a nice walk I saw chopped fishermen down there yesterday all right the day before I think it was fly-fishing it's generally pretty solid this I'm generally the only one down there I think so it's a pretty nice place to go now that the Sun is out I actually won't freeze to death I was like a massage