Living Primitively

Managed to be off for a few days on a location further to the south where I have secured some rights for hunting beaver. I shot two, one of them showing in the beginning of the skinning stage on the photo further down. Spring is late this year and there was quite heavy snow just a few days ago (before this blog update). Most of the lakes have ice on them still.

As an interesting side note this is the only location that I have seen where the beavers fell and eat the bark of masses of Scotch pine. Usually they stick to decideous woods.

I’ve finally gotten hold of a new camera, so I thought I’d post some of the crafts I’ve done since I posted last time.

The knife blade is made by a fella from the US called James. The handle is reindeer bull antler, sheath of spruce, stretched over with bark tanned reindeer skin and sewn with sinew. I must admit though that I used a modern glue to fix the handle…

In the winter one really needs a drinking cup here to be able to reach down to the streams from the top of the snow. Also, dipping your fingers in the freezing water is not the best. The cup is made out of dead and dry aspen wood. The cup was carved out as much as I could with a regular knife, then burned out for the rest. I was careful not to include the core and got almost no splitting.

I’ve done a long overdue cleanup of the link section, due to a lot of dead and rather uninformative sites amongst them. If you wish me to add your site, please write me a mail and I’ll take a look at it.

As followers of this blog might have noticed, posting is rather infrequent. If you want to be notified when there is a new post, you can subscribe here. If this doesn’t work, please contact me.

I’ve been asked to add this update to the blog.

Dear Friends,

Finally a new update on the situation with Thomas…

Since the beginning of January daylight is rapidly increasing in the Ambler valley. By now they are at 9 hours of daylight. There is still not a lot of snow and what is there is too powdery to drive up the valley with snow mobiles. There have been several flights over the valleys there which lead to nothing. Next week our friend Seth from Kotzebue and Eric, our pilot, are going to land in the valley and walk to all the cabins there to look for any kind of disturbance. All the cabins there have boards on the windows and door as a protection from bears. They will enter the cabins if there’s any sign that Thomas was or is there. Only two of these cabins were really searched at an earlier phase. We hope to find any clues to where Thomas is or what could have happened to him.

Depending on what may be found now there will be a ground search after the break up of the ice, most likely in early June.
Some of you have been asking about the need for donations. There are still a number of expenses and we are still in need to raise more funds. So any contribution is highly appreciated.

If anybody would still like to contribute financially please send a check made out to Recovery Fund for Thomas Seibold to First National Bank, PO Box 627, Three Lakes, WI 54562. For anybody who could more easily transfer money to a European account, send an email to odemakwa@teachingdrum.org asking for bank details or give your phonenumber and someone will call you back. You can also call and ask for bank details in europe (715 546 2944) and we will give you the necessary information.

Thank you for all the kind words and any support.

Nick

I’ve recently finished a new inner coat of fall killed wild reindeer. It is made out of one adult female and two calf skins, hairs turned in. The female forms the back, one calf was split to be made into arms and the other split for the front. Leftovers were added as needed. The pattern is quite simple, based on Selkup/Evenki people’s design with a touch of the far east and a few personal additions. The skins were lightly bark tanned and smoked. I used a metal needle for most of the project, with moose sinew as thread.

It is meant to be worn underneath a waterproof layer or a coat worn with the fur turned out. I might add edges of pine marten to reduce a bit of draft at the front, but it is still very warm, without anything underneath.