My Cunning* Moccasins

I finished my new pair of moccasins yesterday. They feel great. They feel like thick socks in a way. I customized them to my feet. There's no need to break them in! Three of my crew mates are still working on theirs. We pooled money to buy the materials so we could get a better deal. The materials cost about $25 but there is lots of extra material left over.

I based my pattern on the second one on this webpage: NativeTech. Each moccasin comprises four pieces of leather plus one leather lace. I used buffalo leather for the sole which is about twice as thick as the golden colored deer leather that makes up the rest (upper, cuff, tongue).



Thick buffalo leather for the sole makes the moccasin more durable and comfortable especially in the desert where there exist more prickily plants. Since it is less flexible and more expensive than deer leather I didn't use if for the whole moccasin.

I purposely made the sole piece wrap up off the ground both to protect my feet, but more importantly to protect the stitching. I hope the stitching will last longer since it shouldn't be touching the ground much. The thread is actually artificial thread used for making bowstring so I'm not too worried about it. Another advantage of this design is that when the sole wears out I can replace it without having to make a whole new pair of mocassins. I already cut up a back up pair of soles for this purpose.

As shown in the pattern on the NativeTech page, the edge of the upper piece is folded over before it is stitched to the sole. The thread goes through the upper piece twice before attaching to the sole. This makes for a sturdier connection. In the picture below you can see this.

This picture makes it look like I have a clown shoe on.


For the lacing, I cut a long thin strip of leather. I chose to have the mocassins lace up like shoes. The lace zig-zags through the tongue piece and pulls the cuff piece tight. I like this style because no lacing has to wrap around the back of my heel or leg. My first pair of mocassins had a lacing that wrapped around my achiles tendon which was awkward for movement.

While I'm not thrilled about the golden yellow color (I was hoping it would be colored more like the sole), I am pleased with the design, fit and comfort. I plan to try them out in the field soon.

*Inside joke: When playing our homemade game of Apples to Apples, my green card was "cunning" to which "moccasins" was my best option.

Hitch #8: North Algodones Dunes

The work we did on this hitch was water monitoring again so I wasn't going to post about it, but it was kinda awesome because we spent one day in sand dunes.

It was one of my favorite days of hiking because the weather was warm enough to go shirtless and shoeless. The sand felt so nice on my feet. Another cool thing about the dunes is how easy it is to track animals there. One rabbit we spooked left a pretty amazing trail with a distance of 10 feet or more between one set of tracks. The most common things we saw were beetles that left a trail that looked like a bicycle track.



Rosy and I spent a lot of time playing around in the dunes. Some were 25 feet or more tall. I liked to jump off them knowing that I'd have a soft landing.



It was cool to finally experience the type of ecosystem so often thought of when the word "desert" comes to mind.

Calling the rain

Today I hope to finish my new moccassins which I will post about next.

Activities Since December

It's been awhile since my last post. I've been on two more hitches since then and tomorrow I will start my next one near Yuma, CA. I also got to spend two full weeks back in Muncie, IN for winter break. While there I got to do some bow shooting with my brother, cousin and her husband. We found an old basketball and used it to do moving target shooting. It was fun.

While there I also continued tanning the deer hide I started back in March of last year. After saturating the skin in egg yolk for a day I began to dry it. First I rang it out to get as much moisture out as possible. In the picture below I'm stretching the skin as it dries out.

Stretching the skin



The skin has to be stretched until it is completely dry so that it does not become stiff. To speed the drying process I used a fan to blow hot air from the space heater onto the skin.

The skin ended up drying too fast and became stiff in parts. I bagged it up and took it back to California. While back here in California I soaked the skin and did the drying and stretching process again. This time the skin was mostly softer but still somewhat stiff in areas.

I haven't decided if I will soak and dry it for a third time or just smoke it.

The skin starting to dry


A bunch of the SCA folks spent a day and night in Joshua Tree National Park last week. We had a good time rock climbing. Below is a montage of one of the cooler boulders I climbed. The following day a few of us drove and hiked to a hot spring in the San Bernadino National Forest. It was beautiful soaking in a natural hot tub in the desert next to a creek.

Climbing montage


I've started working on a few other projects I hope to post about in the future. For one project Rosy and I collected clay and hope to fire some pots in our backyard. Four of us are also going to make moccasins soon. We received a nice piece of buffalo skin in the mail today for the soles.

Hitch #4: Santa Rosa Mountains

For our 4th hitch our goal was to locate and document natural water sources in the Santa Rosa Mountains. We were given aerial maps with approximate spring locations marked on them. In addition our GPS device had those approximate locations loaded in the navigation feature. Basically each day we walked up a different canyon using our GPS device to locate one or more possible water sources.

In each case finding the spot marked in the GPS device meant leaving the relatively easy terrain of the canyon and path finding up the canyon walls. Some situations were more difficult than others. Our first canyon was pretty rough. After hiking up the canyon about 3 miles our teams split into two groups so we could attempt to document groups of water sources in two different areas.

The farther group of water sources was another 3+ miles away and it was already past noon so we knew fading sunlight was going to be a problem. We decided that Kevin and Rosy would jog to the water sources with minimal supplies and I would following up at a slower pace with extra gear.

They jogged off with one liter of water, the GPS unit, a layer of warm clothes and few emergency supplies. I followed with all my stuff and extra water. Our plan was for them to mark where they left the canyon floor. Using that point I would then attempt to intercept them on their return from the water sources.

It was fun for me to track them through hard packed sand of the canyon floor. Unfortunately I was concentrating on it so hard that I missed their sign. To complicate things I found tracks that kept going that must have been someone else's. I followed those tracks until I lost those as well.

After wandering around a little I realized how inadequate the aerial map was in my situation. I pretty much had no idea how I would intercept them. I headed back to where we left their packs to meet them. I waited for about three hours as the sun went down and it got cold. I was pretty worried because I thought they should be back sooner and I knew they didn't have much water.

I finally started walking back up the canyon to see if I could find them. After 30 minutes of walking I saw their headlamps rounding the bend. It was a relief, but it wasn't over because we still had 3 miles to walk in the dark. It was a long day but we made it back safely.

That was our most intense day by far. The rest of the hitch was interesting as well. Kevin and Miz both had to leave the field with injuries after the second night so Rosy, Monika and I hiked the rest of the canyons with help from a BLM employee one of the days.

Left to right: Rosy, me, Monika


Climbing a dry waterfall in search of water.


It rained all day for one of our hikes. Luckily it wasn't too cold because each of us got wet, despite having waterproof gear on. We hiked into a canyon as far as we could go and came across a pretty cool oasis. There was no standing water despite the lushness.


Faulty waterproof jacket


Tomorrow we leave to do more water monitoring near Needles. It actually snowed at my house today. I didn't know that could happen in the desert. Hopefully we don't get rain on this trip... or snow!

Baskets Galore

In my free time during the last month I've been working on three different types of basket. It's been especially enjoyable to work on them because I've been teaching Rosy how to make them and we've been working together.

In gathering the material I've been very opportunistic. Some of the material I brought home from hitches we've worked on. Others I've gathered in town. Since almost all the material is from live plants, I've also had the opportunity to practice caretaking. I try not to take the best piece, but the one that being removed, makes the environment better.

The first basket of the three I contructed from pine needles. It's my first pine needle basket. I gathered the needles from the Northern Red Pine tree in my front yard. The basket consists of a coil of pine needles bundled together with thread. I suppose if I wanted the basket to be composed completely of primitive material I could have used yucca fibers instead of thread. These pine needles were very dry and brittle so I had to use green needles at the start where more bending was required.

The basket before I started taking the coil vertical

I wove together the second basket from yucca leaves that we cut during our second hitch. The leaves pointed out over the trail and needed to be trimmed back. Since we only cut them back as far as needed, the longest pieces were only about 18 inches long. We had a lot of them though so I played around and came up with this small basket in about an hour. It is my first woven basket. This type of yucca is very dry, thin and stiff and not ideal for basketry or cordage even after soaking in water.

My last basket is a melon basket. This is the third I've made of this style. The material for this one came from many species and locations. The wood rings comprising the handle and rim are scrub oak from hitch two. The darker colored yucca near the sides of the basket is the same as in the basket above. One wooden spoke is from an unknown tree in my back yard and the other came from sycamore gathered on a hike in Riverside, CA. The roots making up the God's Eye lashing on the sides were pulled during hitch three. Finally the yucca making up the middle of the basket came from the hills by home. I'm pleased with the basket's balance. It sits without leaning like my previous baskets of this style.

Here you can see the God's Eye lashing.