Education.
I have mentioned before, I have always been a fan of Ray Mears. I am a fan of wildlife,ecological, and cultural documentaries in general. They are close to my heart, and I am a fan of Ray Mears because he champions these bushcraft - the art of living off the land.
Last night I went to see a three hour lecture by this man on his travels over the last ten years, what he learned and photographed and what he predicts and plans for the future.
I bought tickets for both myself and Phil, and at the risk of looking like a couch potato fan, I bought his latest book `Wild Foods` before I hopped on the train to Derby.
I neednt have worried about looking daft with a new book in a bag as when I got there half the people had the exact same Waterstones bag with the same book in it.
The lecture was excellent. I was sat near the front. Ray proceeded to show slides of his photographs of indigenous peoples he had met around the world, from Indians deep in the Rainforests ,Hadza bushmen of africa, innuits of the north and australian aborigines.
I have always been deeply interested in native cultures. So much of it has died out, and as Ray showed, most of it is in the process of dying out completely. He predicted within the lifetimes of children around to day, the hunter gatherer lifestyle that has existed for the hundreds of thousands of years will be gone completely from the planet.
Oral History is something we see little of today. We sleepily accept children are `taught` in schools. A state education. And that all learning can be taught from books. But how can Hunter-Gatherer learning continue without oral history? How can you write about the sound a root full of water makes when an Aboriginese grandmother hits the ground to find it with her digging stick? You can write how to make a spear but not how to throw it and where , when nobody has taken you to the place and shown it you, and you have tried it yourself through trial and error. The information these people hold about their landscapes is so precise that a relocation program for Innuits to another part of the Artic resulted in the whole community starving to death.
I am glad to say in my family, some oral tradition has survived. I hadnt realised what a powerful instrument this first-hand information is, until I realised that other families did not have it. Being close knit, I learned as a child, about the birds, the trees, the mushrooms, how to plant and grow, the opinions of the past, how my parents, grandparents and great grandparents lived, what they ate, what they wore, how they cooked, how they kept warm in winter, and perhaps most importanbtly, their songs and stories. They might only be trivial things to other people, but the trouble with oral history, is that once a link in the chain is broken, all of it is lost forever and so even seemingly insignificant information needs to be kept alive through communicating these stories to children if they are to have a direct link to the past. Oral information is living information, it is alive in the heads of those who have learned it and it dies with their memory when they do. whatever you do not pass on to your children dies with you. And that is what Ray Mears has encountered over the years. Whislt in artic circle, he spoke to and filmed the oldest grandfathers and asked them to show him some of their skills. They showed him igloo building, how to light a seal fat fire and how to stitch the right kinds of boots for the different kinds of weather. The Young men asked their grandfathers why they had never taken the time to teach them the skills they knew, and the older generations reply was that they had never asked. The same was found in a rainforest, where people had once lived in a communal hut, hunted in the forest and cooked the meat over traditional fires, Ray returned eight years later only to find that the communal hut had been turned into a disco, the people lived in seperate houses and nobody now remembered how to light a fire.
We might call this progress but it is not. The people who used to light fires with bow drills now rely on matches, and the journey to the shop to get matches took TWO WEEKS by canoe. Two whole weeks! But without the former knowledge of fire, these people became, like the rest of us, dependant on consumerism. Many never returned from shopping trips to buy matches, they simply got lost on the outskirts of the vast cities in South America. Ray retaught them to make fires using this tribes traditional methods and then he showed a photo to us at the lecture of one of the men he taught now teaching his two year old nephew. Im sure you can see now why I admire this man.
Ive no great love of Western society, most people know that. Im not going to say its bad or evil. It isnt, and I enjoy many of my comforts like everybody else. What I dislike about mass consumer driven society is that gives us the illusion of freedom when it has actually hamstrung us. We are so disconnected from nature we are like nothing more than babies. We know little of how to look after ourselves. Im not trying to romantise other ways of life, Im no hippy, life as a hunter gatherer is hard work and frequently harsh, but I do thouroughly believe it is our lack of independence and disconnection from small community, oral tradition lifestyle and nature itself that causes so much of our depression and stress. It does in me at the very least.
After the lecture Ray did a questions and answers session. I had a good question to ask, but I was too shy to ask it. I wanted to ask whether he felt ecotourism was generally a good thing for these peoples or a bad thing. I have had both good and bad experiences with tour companies and having seen excellent respect to nature to downright money grabbing tourist traps,so Im genuinely not sure of the answer.
I was dissapointed most of the questions seemed to be boring and pointless for me. Id have relished the opportunity to pick his brains but the questions were largely along the lines of "whats the worst food youve had?" "wheres your favourite place in the world?" I did like one question which unfortunatley Ray avoided answering. A man asked how visiting all these different countries and peoples had affected his spiritual beliefs. He basically said he felt nobody had the right to impose belief on their fellow men and for that reason he would keep his own private. A good answer but as an ever inquiring agnostic, Id have been interested in hearing his philosophy, as I doubt I'll be meeting advocates for some of the many different beliefs in the world in person myself, though he made it clear throughout the lecture that he had the deepest respect for many of these traditional beliefs systems, many of which are thousands of years old and still exist because it teaches their people to live in harmony with nature. For instance, he was telling us how an Australian boy in one of his photographs was "lizard dreaming" and that meant the boy was spiritually connected to the monitor lizard in Dreamtime. This was an important role, it meant in their law that he was responsible for their welfare and regulation in the wild. Each member was an advocate for a different animal for which they were spiritually connected to in the Dreamtime. This meant that a community kept in balance with the environement by each taking care of a spefic part of it. The Dreamtime basically is a belief in two parallel realities - modern time and dreamtime. The dreamtime is the creationtime, the time outside of time which exists now and can be accessed now. Or at least that is how I got the gyst of it. It doesnt matter to me if aboriginese dreamtime exists or not,though the concept is barely translatable to english and I dont pretend I understand it or that I have even articulated it correctly. What matters is that it keeps not just a sustainable way of life, but a way of life with gratitude and understanding of what it is that keeps people alive.

At the end of the Questions session, Ray was going to do a book signing. I was lucky enough to have gotten in the queue early as when I looked behind me the queue that was forming snaked thickly around the building and it was already ten thirty. I suddenly found myself next in line. I handed Phil my camera and asked if he could take a shot, and then I placed my book on the table and smiled shyly.
"Hi there, who do you want it dedicated to?"
"Lindsey"
" L-I-N-D-S-- is it A?"
"no its `E`. S-E-Y"
"Are you Lindsey?"
"uh huh!"
Phil suddenly shoved my camera in my hand and mumbled he couldnt take a shot because I hadnt shown him how to use the damn thing.
"Oh for godsake Phil. Like this!" *click*



Im sorry to say I hadnt actually asked to take the picture, I was in a floaty kind of mood, because Ive never met any of my heroes before, and the queue behind me was vast. No wonder he looks half bemused. Sorry.
He shook my hand and thanked me for coming.
I shook his hand. Im pleased about that.
Of course, I will not be remembered, I was another face in a vast crowd of people , of whom I hope had been as eager to meet him as I have been for the same reasons and not because it's a celebrity thing. I am glad to see Ray Mears is as famous as he aught to be, it gives me hope that so many people take an interest int he world and that good tv that is educational is still so widely loved and respected. Thank you Mr Mears for your work over the years. You are a credit to the force of oral education , keeping knowledge alive through face to face teaching.
I was phoned this morning and asked by a company if I would spare time to volunteer as an art teacher for them, for the learning disabled. I am glad to be able to call myself a teacher, even if I am not paid to teach, I am proud that my name has reached charities and I am phoned by strangers who ask if I will teach them, face to face, and pass on an area of knowledge that I have garnered myself to enhance the quality of life for others.