Hogan Journal: Self-education

By Dennis Lantz

All education is self-education.

I wrote that before in another entry. It’s true. You can learn from anything… good and bad. In the woods, books, discussions and nature were our curriculum and our journals recorded our advancement. I started out this blog with an entry from later in the summer because I wanted to show you how our studies were maintained and even progressed.

The summer of 1995 was one of the hottest on record. Longstanding patches of swamp just down the hill from the hogan dried up during the heat spell. Outside Gentlewood was torturous. I swear it was twenty degrees cooler in the woods. Headlines proclaimed hundreds of deaths in the larger cities, especially in Chicago and New York. Inside the woods we remained comfortable. Only on a few days did we fold paper fans to move some air and to cool our brows. We took dips in the cold stream.

7/15 – Another good day. We lay in our beds because it was too hot to get up. I finished reading The Empty Mirror by Jan Willem Van De Wetering about his experiences in a Zen Buddhist monastery.  It is an awesome book with a few insights on the search for ‘satori’. I got much ‘knowledge’ (which he calls meaningless) from it. It was a weird, but enlightening journey. I think I read to understand people more. It is good. I am happy.

5/19 - Today started with clouds and rain. We stayed in the hogan and talked and read. The book I studied was about Socrates, who espoused some very interesting ideas. I do not agree with many of them. Later, after the rain had stopped, I hung some clothes on the line to dry and went for a walk. I started out ‘fox walking’ along the trail to the south. (Note: foxwalking is a term used by Tom Brown Jr., survival teacher and author whose books we read many times in the years prior to staying at the hogan). The walk was very meditative. I kicked up a deer at the upper end of the trail. When I reached the hayfield I lay down and rested awhile. I nibbled on a few more fiddleheads. They may have been too big to eat raw because I began to feel a bit sick. Not too bad though, it was probably my imagination getting the best of me.

At one point, we thought we heard beeping and went to check. No one was there.

Prior to eating, during the afternoon, we worked on traps. I finally got a figure 4 to hold up a large stone dead weight. I think that it will work all right. The hardest part about trapping, in my opinion, is location, not construction. Someday soon I hope to get a whole day to work on snares and traps. It won’t be tomorrow because much of the day will be spent out of nature. First I have to drive the backhoe from my aunt Sharon’s to the Ghent Gospel Chapel. My dad says that he can drive it home from there, but I am not sure if that is a good idea. I guess it depends on how hot it is. It is supposed to be a nice day, but he had a dizzy spell and severe sweating today. I’m not sure if it was diabetes or his heart. It was just after he had taken his insulin, so it probably was low blood sugar. I hope that he or my mom talk to his doctor about it. I’ll make sure that they do. He seemed all right when I was talking to him this evening. We talked for nearly an hour…

Notes: I saw a pileated woodpecker. The day turned out to be very beautiful. One of the most memorable parts was my trip from the house to the hogan through completely dark woods. I think that the path and the trees moved from their positions to mess me up. During the journey I stumbled down an embankment, walked through a cut-off tree top and crashed through some brush… but I didn’t panic. It started to rain and Mark came out of the hogan with his flashlight to take clothing off the line. That was my beacon.

So ends another day. (I forgot to mention that last night, after all was written, we talked for hours about high school, football and all manner of nostalgic moments.)

5/20 – Early morning beautiful sunshine splashed the world with brightness as I went up to the house to take a shower. I went down to Sharon’s with dad and drove the backhoe to the church. Jason was at his house and he showed me some excellent pottery that he made using the wheel Garth gave to his mom. I came back and split some wood for the house.

We started digging for the garden, but only loosened a small amount of dirt because the weeds and turf were thick. We talked with uncle Elzy for a while and he gave me some Giant Latvian pumpkin seeds. I will have to plant some of them in my garden.

Tucker has spent a few nights with us and he is a good dog. He seems content to lie around here without constant attention, but is just as eager to accept a good petting.

I am not completely acclimated yet. I need to work more on survival skills. We tried the bow drill to drill out notches for the toilet stand and it didn’t work because the wood (hemlock) was too green. We went to the house and used metal drill bits. It was a slow process because the drill press didn’t seem to have enough power. Or perhaps the drill bit wasn’t sharp enough to go through the wet wood.

Ideas I need to think about: spirituality and society’s greatest problems. How can we identify these problems and offer solutions. Mark says that the answer to everything is the education of children.

5/21 – It was another good day. I woke and washed and then went to the flat to start digging a garden plot. We worked the ground with Vivian’s ‘garden weasel’ and then broke up the clumps of sod with a hoe and shovel. It was a lot of work. We made a refreshing spearmint sun tea.

Back at the hogan, Mark sewed a hole in his sleeping bag while I sat on the ground and played my flute. The music was certainly not as beautiful as a bubbling stream or the ever-present winged friends, but it was relaxing and fun. We ate oatmeal with honey and peanut butter.  It was better than one might think.

My dad stopped by on his walk. He saw our fire and ventured over to talk. I was not real communicative on what we are doing, but we chatted on other subjects for a while. We talked about trees, firewood, Carl, etc.

Mark is learning to play the flute and he made great strides today. Confidence is all it takes. A friend of Mark’s from Mansfield, Joe Collins, stopped by for a visit. We had a planned visitor scenario. When a person had arrived, they would enter the woods over by the bridge. The note on the wall of the sap house explained that they should beep their car horn five times, wait a few minutes and repeat if necessary. We didn’t hear Joe beep. Actually, I did hear beeping, but ignored it because I thought it was from my aunt Allegra’s place which isn’t near the bridge.  Joe seems like a good kid. He was impressed with all of the outdoor stuff, but he just graduated and is going into the job world so the outdoors didn’t appeal to him the same way it does to us.  It was good to have a visitor that I didn’t know.

Notes: What a sight I must have looked as I was walking up the road with my shoes in my hand, sweatpants rolled up to my knees, carrying a shovel and a hoe, with a thick, Rambo-like sweatband around my forehead. First the preacher, Brother Gordon Kincaid drove past. He slowed down and said hello when he realized who it was. He asked how I was and then continued on. Then Miriam and Rhoda Antolick drove past while returning from church (I guess). They smiled and waved, but I am not sure what they really thought.

5/24 - As I write this a thunderstorm blasts across the land. Mark and I were at the house when the storm began. We were getting a couple more notebooks and had to run down through the hayfield because the rain started. We were soaked when we got here, but our spirits were not dampened… they were glorious. We discovered that the hogan has a few leaks and we plan to take care of them whenever some rainless days come along. Today was a good day. We started off with a breakfast of oatmeal. I went to the house and put the finishing touches on the family history project, which is finally done. (Now it just needs to be taken down to the museum in the morning. My mom is going to do that.) I drilled out starter holes for the ladder/exercise pieces that we are building. Hopefully that can be finished in the next few days. The leisure time seems past. There are so many projects that need our attention. Of course, most of them will be fun, learning projects. There are certainly a lot of them. Next week I (or we) may not be around so things will have to wait until after then.

I walked with Janel down into pasture woods to see the cows and calf and she kept saying that she saw deer prints. Most were cow prints, but there were likely some deer prints mixed in too. Not a lot however because there is a pretty good fence.

Mark just read to me a part of his writing about Nature gods and learning humility and reverence. Good stuff!

Notes:  There was a grouse that clucked as I went up to the house this morning. I can’t remember the exact sound, but knew it was a grouse immediately. It was verified when it flew out from under the hemlock tree. My bed is becoming too hard. I must sleep outside soon. The ground is much softer than the hard wood boards. Mark wants to sleep inside, so I guess I will. It is my plan to be out most of the time later in the summer. Last night a mouse or some small creature came in and made noise all over the hogan. The bugs were a little more active this afternoon. Just below the hogan, a log crosses a section of ditch. This will suffice for the balance beam section of our obstacle course. That hopefully will be ready later this week. A certain bird likes to chirp at night. Every once in a while it just makes noise. Maybe it is in a nest of young ones, I do not know. Tomorrow I will look.

5/23 - It is evening once again and here I sit upon my bed. My clothing is stashed underneath with my sleeping bag. My head is itching because it needs washing.

While at the house, I rototilled Joyce’s garden and got all the history stuff around. It is all set to go down to the museum on Thursday.

Notes: Mark and I got wood from the chunks that we split. He stayed and watered the garden while I went into society’s clutches. Tucker spent the day with us, but he was so tired that he lay down wherever we went. He must have had a rough night last night.

Mark likes to initiate conversations with odd questions. Tonight it was… ”If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” This was a very strange game, worthwhile on a psychological level, perhaps, but otherwise meaningless.

We went hunting, but it turned out mostly just walking. We saw a grouse, a bunch of bees swarming around what may be a honey tree, though it looks pretty healthy to me.  I will check it again tomorrow. We had macaroni and sauce for supper. It was delicious. At the house we had strawberry shortcake, a quite pleasurable dessert. Walked up thin woods on this side of Shaffer’s pines and cut two atlatl spear blanks. The rain will be good for the garden.

Notes: I did a lot of twig flicking and am getting fairly good at it. Certainly is fun to do when we are just sitting around philosophizing. The method we use is like the football field goal kick. One finger holds the twig to the ground (or leg) and a finger on the other hand flicks it toward some object, a tree, rock or person.   

We watched a group of baby blue jays leave their nest and squawk and cry in the trees surrounding the flat area around our cook fire pit. Up near Shaffer’s pines I saw a common yellowthroat, a rare sight to me though I am not sure how abundant they are in the area. We also saw an owl. I think it was a short eared owl. It had no visible ears and its eyes weren’t black like the barred owl, but I am not sure what kind it was. 

Mark has fleas on his bed; at least they are tiny jumping insects. I’m not sure what we will do if they get bad. We will probably move outside to sleep when it isn’t raining. I don’t think they would have come from Tucker as he wasn’t in here much and I don’t believe he has them anyway. Maybe they came from the woodchuck or squirrels? At present they seem to be located down near the ground and not up here on my bed. 

We kicked up a couple of deer today in various spots. Need to get better at camouflage awareness. Being out in a storm is a great feeling. We also heard a catbird and saw one. Near the pines we saw the skull of some animal, but don’t know what it is. It appears that it was deposited there by a farmer so it might have been a sheep. We have been eating a lot of honey.

Mark thinks he saw a rat so he has the .22 loaded and ready if it comes around again. Something moved by him and he got ready to bolt. It moved again and he jumped across the hogan and up onto my bed.  A little bitty frog hopped up onto his bed. You should have seen how fast he was out of that sleeping bag and away from the bed. Carl Lewis could not have done better! I told him the story about a mouse that had crawled into my sleeping bag a long time ago. He is not sure if he’ll get much sleep. Last night I think I heard a bird fly in and out of the hogan.

5/25 – it was rainy, foggy, wet and beautiful when I awoke. The earth smells so grand when it is wet. Leaves soaked in tears from heaven. The bird that I thought had flown into hogan the other night most likely was just outside. I heard another one this morning and it sounded inside, but was not. I brought bread and a magazine (US News and World Report) from the house. We broke fast on peanut butter and honey sandwiches. In the magazine was an article about mummies discovered in a tomb in Egypt. After reading about the mummies, I read more Dr. Dyer. He writes very good self-help books. 

We carved on the spears for the atlatls and I cut myself a little. Then Mark cut himself rather seriously. The peroxide got a workout today.

We checked the garden and discovered that a deer had walked through it. No plants are up yet, of course. I guess it was just going through to get a drink from the creek.

We made arrow markers and placed them at the sap house to aid any visitors who might stop there.

On way to the garden area I scared a grouse off her nest. She was only about seven feet away and in the open and I didn’t see her until she moved. Sometimes my awareness is worse than abysmal. There were several eggs, bigger than I would have imagined. After we finished the signs at the sap house, we came back and read some more. This time I chose I.F. Stone Trials of Socrates. Socrates was a very mixed up dude. If what Stone writes is true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, the philosophy of the ancient Greeks seems almost futile. It is good to ponder on now and again, but not really the best food for the soul. The book, however, isn’t just on philosophy and is an interesting read. It began to rain so we went inside and read some more. I went to the house and brought down pepperoni, cheese and crackers for our dinner. Getting food from the house is not necessary, but it was easier because making a fire when everything is soaked is not the easiest task.

I meditated a bit when I was over by the sweat lodge. We talked and played the flute. Sometimes meditating is code for taking a nap, but this time it isn’t.

Note: We also stick fought. We began developing a good routine for practice and for show.

5/26 - I have forgotten to write about the green dust (pollen, I am certain) that floated through the air at the beginning of the week. It stayed around for about four days and covered every single plant, clothing item and rock. My shoes were green on top.

When we woke up the world was wet. The sun kept promising to poke through clouds, but never did. Before I rose I heard a turkey hunter (or a real turkey, as sometimes hens sound like humans with very bad calling skills). It was moving away toward the north, over by the swamp, I believe. I heard it for about ten minutes and then no more. If it was a hunter, he was a very redundant caller, using the same pattern on each call. If it was an actual hen turkey she was pretty boring.

I washed my face and hair.

Today we built a prayer circle to the northwest of the hogan in a small open area amongst the hemlock and maple. We placed a heavy rock on the north, south, east and west edges and smaller rocks rounded out between. Later we hung feathers from several tree limbs all around the area and smoked the pipe and offered our first prayers. The spot isn’t sacred now because we made it so, it was sacred before we added our artistry. It is a grand area for meditation, thanksgiving and I can foresee fervent spiritual requests in its use.

We ate scrambled eggs mixed with rice for breakfast. Well, by the time we got around it was nearly lunch. Mark started a deer antler necklace for his mom. We went to the house to drill out the hole in the antler and got some feathers, beads and water. The water wasn’t for the necklace, of course. It was for us.

When we got back we worked more on our stick fighting routine. We did this on and off during the day. On the last episode we were intent on adding some new moves and Mark did a spinning long swing and smashed my stick nearly in two. I broke it the rest of the way and used it as two fighting sticks. I was not successful.

We spent more time reading. I continued the book about Socrates. We were sitting around talking when a horn started beeping. It was nearly dark, but we ran a bit through the woods anyway. We got smacked by quite a few branches. Then we ran across the field… well, Mark ran and I walked. We got to bridge area before we realized that the beeping was coming from the house. So we ran up to the house and found dad and Carl working on the ignition of Carl’s Cadillac. No one was signaling us! We helped to install the ignition which took about twenty minutes, grabbed some sandpaper and brownies and went back to woods.

A year before our stay in Gentlewoods. Photo by Carla Mann