I completed my third vision quest on October 5, 2005. It was the first time I’d ended with more questions than answers. Four days of fasting and prayer when I was younger left me with a sense of empowerment and direction. I had no idea questing would get harder rather than easier.

Until November 2004 I thought my life choices were made on a strong foundation, with clear direction. Every decision was anchored in the belief that if I owned a piece of planet earth, I would have the ultimate decision on what could or could not happen there.

How I learned otherwise is a long, sordid story for another blog.

So, with the sale of my house and no real desire to purchase property, what on earth do I do now?

The upside of hiking a steep mountain trail on a bitter cold day – no bugs and you don’t overheat.

I put on my extra heavy winter layers and grabbed my mittens with the leather palms. I think of them as surrogate paws. They’re perfect for climbing on all fours when the footing is precarious.

I always save a bit of maple syrup from the previous spring harvest for the next year’s winter snow, especially the first snow of the season. The combination can’t be beat.

Instead of poisoning dandelions, try harvesting the flowers on a sunny summer afternoon.

Gather approximately three cups of dandelion flowers, separating them from the stem, and keeping the green sepal at the base of the flower, if you choose.

I remove the green sepals, but some people cook with them when they fry individual blossoms. Rinse the blossoms and drain on a towel.

A good use for those crumbled corn chips at the bottom of the bag, or the last of the cold cereal, is to mix that with flour until you have a cup of dried ingredients.

Beat an egg together with one cup of milk (or soy milk). Add more liquid if the batter is too stiff. Then blend in the dried ingredients.

If you have the time and patience, dip each blossom into the batter.

I’m way too lazy to fry each blossom individually, so here’s what I do:

I’ve been musing about all the people who, had they lived, might have made a difference in our country’s attitude toward community and sustainable resources. I imagined a government where Dr. King, President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Rachel Carson, John Lennon and others held decision-making roles. If Rachel Carson lived to head the Department of the [...]

The sacred order is: Shelter first – then water, fire, food. In a survival situation, it is critical to conserve energy and resources. Panic and frustration get in the way of success in any situation � they can be deadly in the outdoors. If it’s late in the day or you are in a place with limited resources, what you do first matters.

The point of building a shelter first is that for the outlay of energy it takes to gather branches and leaves, you can build a debris shelter without tools and ensure a way to maximize your body heat. The worst thing that can happen in the woods is not starvation or animal attack � it�s hypothermia.

I got in a quickie to the lake in a break in the rain. The air was warm this afternoon.

In the last eight hours the air temperature has plummeted 25 degrees and the winds are howling at 15-20 miles per hour, with gusts in excess of 45 mph.

I’m sure a layer of ice lies under the snow that has been falling.

It was mid December the last time the weather was so brutally cold.

Different cloud shapes tell us what kind of weather is on the way. Here is a list of the shapes and where they occur in the atmosphere:

This model of the solar system can be made with food items or by making clay models.

A trick to remember the order of the planets:

Men Very Early Made Jars Serve Useful Needs Period.

A habitat is a place shared by certain species of plants and animals. This project is one way to study the balance of plants and animals in a given habitat.