Matt's 11-Month Forest Monk Training, Episode 9

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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

yes go go go that's the joined by one man and she for not to be much mightier had doesn't want to be funny hola from Sweden and he both of them are bringing their own new skill sets ideas thoughts creativity sense of adventure it's Matt's experience every two weeks was tried three sort of take on all the challenge so this what I call the plane crash the bottle and we here to the registry and I set up this is Olaf first adventure of this kind and so I gave them the option to bring all a blanket if they wanted to in a sleeping bag if they wanted to and both Matt and Olaf decided that and they're the only ones I really talked about Susana won't be on camera both Matt and Olaf decided to not bring their sleeping bags only bring the wool blanket then they're going to get whatever's out here their challenges we get through the night hopefully having been able to get fire to get food to get water there's also a container of water here here that's non potable so they need to boil it somehow five tonight yeah we use whatever you find and make it through the night ideally you're going to make it through the night with fire water if it rains you're going to be sheltered and where the trails food yeah can't play but I was nice to you guys I kept it all in one general area

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and bread and I get to sit and eat pizza for this one not quite Becca meaneth I like me to bat-bomb so coconut oil peanut butter and not not our meal when on search of hand drill materials it looks like they're coming back on something this all most of the stuff that I put out for that along with the things that were just out in the woods to find some good natural materials so far they have not found magic which are actually very close by

just laying on the ground the matches are just enough I took off all the wood so it's basically just striker however even without that I bet they can get fire like a good spindle hunts for it if they collect it and nice tinder materials goldenrod is wonderful and then this is all thistle now it could be really nice for collecting that in this recall if they can get it urge to help me take these guys oh well I'm trying to make the bed and they're gonna make fire all right

you created a safe fire like it fire in a cane we didn't try to do hand roll huh I'm gonna try so like how this hand over its crook in it yeah that's gonna be tough so it's also not burning very well into the boards this particular piece is like time feels hard as rocks but this here goes

they can blot out and I thought now there's a part of me over there right now all right the same way when you're doing this transferring energy to the cold which means that it could be like a part of part of you that goes into it they've been trying to get fire no veil that went off search a mole and spindles flicky found time I still haven't found those matches or the chaga which is one of the most important skills so they try to work on with people it's also one of the toughest ones for modern humans to master which is opening up our awareness starting to see more broadly we really learned with one spot so encourage every day can be in their peripheral starts evenings more broadly and it's not just seeing it that what you actually see learning to sort of read your environment so it's down birch tree why did it fall down trees fall down all the time right but purchase round here often they've fallen because they've been affected by China and then you can find that big target somewhere along the fallen tree better options maybe holy cow Zaza I'm going to bring my fingers pretty no there's wind right now I'm gonna hold this up to the flame okay or once you later you can just drop it in the box here got it go for it after all is that a little bit a little bit of attention change haze the day do I wind up retire for the night you really go to sleep it to you ready to go you guys well that isn't thinking quickly okay careful get that back so I get a hand roll

well now you can just play with it you're still searching for the magic thing that could help with that alexis has a little glass window so you can see if you guess what and guess how many matches it took one one one days it's over the hole the rocks on each other [Laughter]

you got into the can here we have again the best part is I found we found these nuts I realized they were almonds Oh your favorite guys it would be written uh uh boiling water in a bowl of the next time we do the grateful meditation I'm listening you what about this evening and everything know what happen oh my god onion scallion nettle tea Wow I mean obviously you got the whole night out of you yeah what did you guys experience so far he stalked me can you gain from this this more than one way to open I can kind of knew from the beginning that is going to be super valuable to look around the crash site and see and make sure we had found all the items initially yeah but I suppose I didn't know what stick to that as hard as I should have yeah because basically I got it in my head but starting a hand drill fire was the only way to do it and if I if I didn't succeeded that we wouldn't have a fire and then I sort of became locked into that and started to started to get really annoyed because I didn't think I was going to be able to get a hand roll fire yeah like every bit as time is precious and you don't want to be putting any time to waste yeah like when I when I went out to find some Mullins for the hand drill spindle I was searching around for like 10 minutes and then I and then I thought about going back to that then I realized I can't go back because I essentially decided as essentially gambled those 10 or 20 minutes of time and I spent going out here

and if I don't get a hand drill I just wasted 20 minutes and I can't do that so I have to keep stay out here until I find one and then I suppose the guys decided I had been searching hard enough because I found a stack of like 20 others 200 visiting on the forest or somewhere and then it is the hilarious that I actually find Madison if you're broken off and like tiny but sure bill matches and by then these guys had been collecting like while I was off on my epic and real search they've been building the perfect tinder bundle and setting up the fire so all we needed was one tiny nub of a match and its flared right up you know it was almost just the lighting tip but you guys got that really easily

okay I still did almost like just a little sofa bit it's like just we grabbed on to it the power of a tinder bundle huh yeah feel like we should have organized our rocks a bit better we both look like looking around when we try to open the cans trying to find the one with the sharp point on it and I was collecting rocks that has specific uses behind them specific rocks that would make good heat rocks and ones that would make good water boiling rocks yeah but by this point they're just all scattered around and I don't know where I know like guitar did you guys get into those Tomatoes we got into how did you do yeah glad we did the Danya method of hitting with a rock and then with a rock until I got a hole in it and I force the stick in there used to pride it around the moon gonna mark the hole but now my hands are covered in the spicy sauce and the tomato juice and so is my face bear flavoring

it's like a chili when you mix the tomatoes with the be here jet that's really delicious like she had work really hard and just go like this was so long just yeah so you have to decide to take breaks and just to catch my breath and then when I finally wouldn't as we finally got into it I was in such a reward we're grateful for cat oh I love HUD yeah

come on try oh yes potato soon if I can get them out oh yeah softened oh okay you living got a little bit of blackening on it Oh too bad you know it go again I've never had uncie for three potatoes to build until then excuse my being bring a lunch so they don't do this later naturally cretins

cuz unite yes ah you look nice the colors are coming to the cloud yeah that's way suppose my favorite part of the night part that I didn't think like what that I just wanted to get over with sitting up next to the campfire for a couple of hours yeah yeah as always my favorite part of these survival challenges really you just get to sit I'll sit with you back to a log and a couple of feeder sticks in your hands

staring at the flames for a couple of hours I was I was seeing the colors and them was looking for greens in the flames but occasionally see some green but it was a lot of like electric blues that I was finding me noticing a difference between the bright candle yellow fire deep or me like keep the fire going or I'll be on get movin soon got some folks me so I I think my favorite part of the evening is probably when it's I noticed it getting brighter except me hey look I'm dawn is coming it's dawn it's my favorite part of the day if I'm awake to see the dawn as like actually that that he's going out on you can stay in as long as you want if you want to okay benefit up yeah [Music]

[Music]

yeah yeah if you can find your calm that's awesome we hertz kind of started like you call my lick but it's nice bad what yesterday like I can hold conversation without shivering and I get those I'm not screaming no we're gonna do it Wow oh yeah yeah the coal trucks passing and you just can't let your body ha ha ha ha ha how do you go your alarm is off Wow alright uh going in again that ha ha oh my gosh [Music]

my net mcbounds to fish not the greatest harvest I've ever caught all right just some old beef stew in there the last last MIT dregs that it got a bit in I was hoping to get some crayfish well how could I be making any fish stew out of this but it's fun to catch minnows fun boy a gymnastics training did not pay off the trick with the cold water though I think is just to not pretend that it's cold water just to pretend that it's water you know like you're standing in your bathtub like we're standing in the swimming pool and this water is not that cold I mean it must be 50 degrees right now so I mean I used to jump into this river and I like rock it to the surface and the sputtering and gasping and get to the bridge as quick as I could then I figured out well why do I have to do that I'm not going to go hypothermic it's all in the mind and since I kind of like standing here in the water that's what I decided to do and I just got to get my mind follow along with that but there I'll work on the back foot hey guys welcome to my little campfire sitting here thinking how cool this is but I can just be out at night and hey I don't need to go to bed now I'm going to make a campfire and then do it a lot of freedom in that it was why we're thinking been doing this thing so long that sometimes I just wanna I want to go home not because I want to go home and leave and be done but because I'm impatient to like apply all the things that I've learned into my life like for instance my nature awareness and appreciation has gone through the roof since I started doing this I like I mean are we walking on a an old logging road somewhere and come across a tiny little green plant on the ground is probably like a dance dandelion different thing so hey what's this plant I need to know what that is yeah and since I come here I realized I barely know half the plant in my woods at home that's one thing I want to I want to kind of apply to my life done with it but then I think no I don't want to leave yet

I've got tools stuff to do just tonight I was out there what I was doing tonight once us making up on Woodcock's Woodcock is a bird that sits in the grass and then it could sound great and it makes that sound over and over and over and then takes up into the air and flies around in this huge big circle and you hear it's wings flapping really loud and then it'll come back and land in pretty much the same spot on the ground and then go deep and it'll just keep doing that that's what it does at dusk sounds yes but since it lands in the same spot again sometimes you can sneak up on them and when it flies away you creep in really fast and lie down in the grass and hide right next to it and if you get really close to one you can hear the other sound it makes besides that neat it kind of kind of makes it like to sound like stomping in the back of the throat you guys have to hear it to understand what I mean that was pretty cool first time I've heard that sound was tonight sneaking up on these guys but I think the one that was sneaking up on knew I was there because every time I'd go to where he took off he land on the opposite side of this group of bushes and it couldn't see him and I'd move around to the other side of the bushes and he'd land on the opposite side again so he knew I was there I think didn't care about me that much hey I'm not alone out here anymore got new people time to join the program it's about a month month and a half to go and enjoying and now olaf's has been here about two weeks there are no friends to join the program and that's a big improvement it's good to learn how to do it how to live by yourself but that's just not the way we're supposed to live and I like having company and really like having other people around and just living in this small community all the time it makes the mindfulness of it so much easier because I rarely even think about the outside world these days I just think about what I'm doing right now just whatever drawer I'm doing whatever I'm cooking basically just to think about what I'm doing right now if it's very moment and everything else is kind of forgotten what I'm doing right now quite often cooking man I did not have any idea how much I love cooking before I did this think a couple of months out in the woods on a starvation sandwich diet made me really appreciate having a wood stove to cook on and since I've said having one I just keep getting more and more on I need to cook this recipe I need to do it yes I did make a real pizza - real pizzas under that cheddar cheese garbage we made last time and I have photos to prove it the second time I made the pizza or we made an and I laid them together it was actually round I made I made a square feet to the first time look I kind of messes with my worldview

I don't think pizzas should be square but anyway it was an amazing thing homemade sour dough crust homemade pizza sauce which is actually really easy just combine tomatoes and something spices in a pot and immerse the tomatoes around a bit as they heat up and you have pizza sauce and it was ah like way better than that frozen pizza I bought from the store so that's just the coolest thing in fact that I've learned how to make pizza just through experimentation I mean I made my first grilled hamburger out here as bait I've liked making gourmet baking salmon filets breaded on a bed of asparagus cooking is like my favorite thing to do out here honestly and another thing I've become extremely in tuned with cycles of nature like the changing of seasons specifically I don't think ever in my life have I noticed when the first flower of spring arrived I think it just kind of I don't remember a single year when I got excited about seeing a dandelion in their yard or something but this year I saw that first flower boy I got excited oh come here there's a flower look it's purple it was a hazel flower it just looked like just like a little anemone poking out of the plant and it was a gorgeous flower first flower I've seen so long bringing color back to the woods and now I get excited every time I see one like there was a dandelion this afternoon the first one that we've seen and it was exciting and it was delicious too

I had no idea you could eat dandelion flowers I picked dozens of them and thrown them away in the trash because I didn't want them to turn to teeth but keep them eat dandelion flowers it was tasty

and yeah that's it's definitely going to be hugely different when I get back to the changing of the seasons day and night figuring out when the Sun sets and Rises never really felt like I had to pay attention to these things you know I just had my own good man-made environment my artificial lights and my artificial heater and it didn't matter whether it was dark or light outside because it was light inside didn't matter whether it was cold or warm outside because it was always warm inside and so I just became super out of touch with these cycles of nature but now I think I've reversed that and I'm grateful that's enough yammering for tonight I'm just going to sit and enjoy my fire for a while have a good night y'all