Meet Michael!
“What would it take for humans to become a beneficial keystone species? What would happen if we place wild Humans back into the landscape? Interacting with land as the process of increasing the capacity of every system you touch.”
Learning the skills to rediscover our place in Nature
Michael Wachter is one of our instructors at the first Lithica Gathering this summer (2023). He is also the founder of ‘Human Keystone’ a project that evolves around the questions mentioned above. And as you have probably recognized, this is pretty close to the questions we ask here at Lithica as well.
Micheal is an experienced outdoorsman from Hastings. Fishing, foraging, and primitive skills are a natural part of his life. Month-long solo and group immersions into some of the last truly wild parts of Europe gave him the deep kinship with the natural world he has today.
His way of teaching is practical. He teaches you the way he learned himself, using skills as pathways to connecting with the animals and plants around us. Even though Michael has been trained by some of the best naturalists and ancestral skills practitioners in Europe, his teachings are strongly influenced directly by his own experience in nature. He describes his teaching style as unorthodox, ancestral as well as process rather than goal-orientated.
On top of all the practical experience and teachings in nature, he has lectured to an international audience on subjects of Rewilding, habitat restoration as well as Foraging. As a way of giving back to nature, he helps on several biodiversity projects including restoration of wildflower meadows within several communities around East Sussex in the UK.
What he’ll teach you
Friction and percussion fire making
The one skill that truly sets us human beings apart from other animals: the making of fire. How is it that these days we hardly know anymore how to do this essential wild human skill? And no, we are not talking about lighting the BBQ with matches but making a fire using only the tools we can find in the nature around us. Michael will teach you how to use a fire drill (fire by friction) and flint and iron (percussion) to make a fire.
Cordage making
It doesn’t exactly sound like the sexiest of skills to learn. But in all honesty, it’s actually pretty useful, crucial even. In ‘Hatchet’, a book about a teenager needing to survive in the Canadian bush, it’s one of the things he quickly realizes: the sparsity of ropes or cordage in nature. His shoelaces are quickly used for other things than tying his shoes. Because grass or twigs used directly simply don’t tie so well.
Making a primitive fishing kit and fishing skills to use it
One of the things some cordage is useful for is of course catching fish. Either with a net or a fishing rod, you will need some kind of rope. Michael will teach you exactly how to make a primitive fishing kit and how to use it during the Gathering.
Hide tanning
And last but not least, he will be teaching hide tanning. Again a crucial skill for us humans to be able to live somewhere outside of hot Africa where we originate from. Can you imagine living in (Northern) Europe without the skill to make any kind of clothes?
