Folkways and Roadways

I’m writing from the Norwegian mountains, passively minding my own business from what is happening between Europe and the middle East right now. This life is a project cultivate deeper roots with a traditionalist lifestyle, one I would rather lead with the same concerns our ancestors would have had, nothing more, thus I have been staying away from all forms of media, as a mountain man does, the only other news I am hearing is coming from another old bearded fellow.

My roadways have finally taken me to Hordaland after 8 years of romantic adoration for this county of Norway, and Norway in general, I have been making my home at the Solas Gard farm, on the hills near the Hardangerfjord and not so far from the Hardanger National Park. This is becoming a sort of primer for the future work that I will be getting into in Mexico, for by the end of the month I will be leaving Europe again. Here at Solas, we are building an eco-studio, or rather, I came at the tail ends to help with the sheep wool insulation, the pine tar painting and building a turf roof, as well as the deconstruction of a traditional Sammi shelter called a Gamme, unfortunately the turf was starting to rot, the pelts inside were moth eaten, soggy, and falling into pieces, and the birch bark was becoming exposed from high winds, not to mention the annoying tick population. It once looked like this, now nothing more than a conical pyramid of shaved trees, naked in the wind. Though I wish I could have had a hand in building it, the Gamme is on my list of primitive structures I would like to live in some day. The way of the heathen has always been about working and living for the community, the Folkways of the people. For this reason, I really do not participate in any conversation about so called crisis that may be happening. These crisis only happens if we make them our crisis. Our reality is as we project it, and too our responsibilities are our own, my only opinion is perhaps the European hive mind has warranted their own “problems” for their apathy and hostility to other cultures in the past. Sometimes I even find myself more European than the Europeans, but this is not really the point of this post. It is about the tradition of the heathenist.

I want to lead by example that the most powerful form of heathenism today, is not in the literature or pseudo-pagan festivals, it is about living the way we used to. Reliant and in balance with the nature surrounding us. I was recently told by a local farmer, that his sister bought an apartment in Bergen for the same price of his entire farm which covers part of the spruce and pine forest, the cliffside, a fertile soil land, fishing and hunting rites, and a barnhouse. It is fortunate that I am also now living with other heathens, who take almost 90 percent, sometimes 100 percent of our dinner from the ground, or the ingredients are traded with other farmers, caught in the lake, lamb sacrificed on the land. To be part of this is more than just some false concept of ‘idyllic’, it is the on

ly way I know how.

Soon these merging paths will take me to Mexico, at the Lemurian Embassy, and it is with immense anticipation, and perhaps some anxiety that I stare out these windows into the distant forever, nothing is carved in Mayan stone, but I just might end up staying there for some time. I’m studying curanderismo and shamanism, and will be spending time learning the local languages as best I can, and am looking into an ayahuasca retreat sometime for the autumn. I am willing that I can meet the right shaman to teach me the medecina songs, for the few I remember were from a past rainbow gathering and only a few Spanish verses at that. I want to sit with peyote and the sacred salvia and learn their lessons, and really put some roots into this growing eco-village in the consciousness of Lemuria.