It was one of those weekends that you could smell Fall coming. It was windy, and the sun kept playing hide and seek. This was the last triathlon of the season for me, so I wanted it to be a perfect ending to a triathlon season. The wind blew the buoy’s so hard they came untied and where traveling faster than a speed boat to the other side of the lake. So with several hundred people chasing runaway buoy’s, they canceled the swim. We did have a good bike ride and run, and then on the way home Whole Foods fueled us back up.

Ready Made magazine’s garden challenge was the perfect encouragement that we needed to put in a rain barrel in our court yard. I picked up an old Jack Daniels barrel on my way back from a triathlon in Tennessee. Now we have healthy happy plants that are fed with whiskey charcoal infused rain water. The warm aroma a sweet whiskey came from the barrel as we drilled the whole for the spicket.

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We have been having a hard time keeping our chickens alive. So out of some left over building materal (and some new) I designed a safe place for them to sleep at night where the coyotes and raccoons won’t eat them. The idea is we let them out in the day and we lock them in there coop at night, it has ten nests for the hens and purching sticks for the hens that are not laying. Now I hope we get some fresh eggs.

The sharing of ideas and learning new things has always been very appealing to me. We have an artist in residence program at GAS and it always surprises me the artists that apply for the program. We had a Marisa Keris from RISD who lived in the top of the studio this summer. We kept her pretty busy but she still found time to do her own thing. Like this portrait of the General, greeted me one day when I arrived at the studio.

We spent the week on our Alabama forest floor learning how to trap food and build shelters. Rick a Tom Brown protege came down from Hawk Circle in New York to teach us how to survive. He has shirts that say no tent, no knife, no matches, no problem, and he means that.

For five days, we made fires, coal burned bowls and spoons, practiced hunting skills, cooked over the fire, sewed leather pouches, made arrowheads and stone tools, carved bone and drilled stone pendants and twisted cordage from milkweed, dogbane and tulip poplar. We took care of each other in many ways, the kids had fire making (with out matches), rope making and hunting challenges. It was a week that we will remember for the rest of our lives. It is amazing how much power you can get from something so simple.