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\title{Yuppies With Spears (Beating around the Blackbush)}
\date{April 2007}
\author{Gerald Edmonson}
\subtitle{a magazine article so horrendous we had to republish it}
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{\usekomafont{subtitle}{a magazine article so horrendous we had to republish it\par}}%
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{\usekomafont{author}{Gerald Edmonson\par}}%
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\emph{We found this magazine article in some weird tech-rag
we found in Seattle. It was under creative commons licensing, so we think it’s okay to republish. From what we
can gather, the magazine isn’t around anymore anyhow.
Obviously, we do not support the views of this article. We
don’t know that} anyone \emph{does. We found it as attractive
as a car-wreck, however. Maybe it’s satire. That would be
nice. Yeah, it’s probably satire.
\forcelinebreak — strangers }
\end{flushright}
\section{Beating around the Blackbush}
“Humanity took a wrong turn with agriculture.
Everything was pretty good up until then.” My host—a
thirty-something white man with a close-cropped
reddish-brown beard and rather un-striking features—informed me as we rode along a thin asphalt path,
perched on our Segway motor-scooters. His brown tie
flapped over his shoulder in the slight summer breeze,
his button-down shirt was rolled up to his biceps. “Yup,
we really dropped the ball on that one.”
Mike Redding, the speaker, is part of Blackbush
Tribe, LLC. He and forty-eight others live nomadically
on a privately owned, 50,000-acre nature reserve in New
England, living the life of modern hunter\Slash{}gatherers. The
median income of his “tribe” is \$250,000.
Curiously blending the latest in technology, digital-age spirituality, and a back-to-the-land ethic, the men and
women (mostly men) of Blackbush Tribe are the ultimate
telecommuters. “We’re as much a product of Web 2.0 as
we are of our primitive roots,” Mike explained, “we’re
really finding a new symbiosis, a new way of being.” A
wide grin of perfect teeth crept across his face, “We’re
the best of both worlds.”
Mike, about to follow up on this thought, was
interrupted by a beeping from the SmartPhone on
his belt. He un-holstered and studied the device for a
moment before looking up at me, the grin still plastered
to his face. “Looks like a bird fell into one of our traps.
C’mon, let’s go find it and eat it!”
\hairline
I first heard of the Tribe’s ongoing two-year
experiment last winter, by word of mouth. Their existence
was a rumor in the web-development circles that my
brother partook in, and it was a rumor he passed on with
glee. After slogging through archive.org, I eventually
uncovered blog posts from the start of the project, before
all the details were taken offline.
From there, a few emails led me to Mike Redding,
Project Manager of Interspecies Carnivorous Relations
for Blackbush. Soon I was on a plane to Providence,
Rhode Island, flying coach from my own pocket since my
usual paper declined to finance the trip.
I had no idea what to expect, and I admit I was a bit
disappointed when I saw my name written on a greeting sign at
the airport—the man who held it was clean, sharply dressed, and
unequivocally plain. We took a shuttle to his car, an electric van,
and drove out toward their land. But as soon as we pulled onto
the freeway, Mike offered me strips of elk jerky from a Ziploc
bag, and I knew my curiosity would not be disappointed.
\hairline
From the GPS set into the handlebars of his
electric scooter, Mike led us down winding dirt paths
through the second-growth forest and onto a pristine
field. The grass might never have seen a mower and
the summer sky was clear and blue. Somewhere in
the distance was a trace of bird-song, and the day felt
peaceful. “We’ll have to walk,” Mike apologized as he
dismounted and switched on the anti-theft device on his
Segway, “but it’s only about fifty meters.”
We traipsed through the field in our work-boots and
blue jeans and soon I saw a few dozen wooden birdhouses
set onto aluminum poles ahead of us. “Not all of them are
trapped, of course,” Mike explained as he un-velcroed a
synthetic one-shoulder backpack and unzipped the main
compartment, “or the birds would never nest here. And
we don’t leave these bird-gathering solutions armed
when we leave for the year. That would be cruel.” There
was no trace of irony in his voice.
Approaching the base of one of the supports,
which extended some three feet above our heads, Mike
depressed a button and the pole slid in on itself until the
birdhouse was at chest level. With a practiced hand, he
opened a door set into the base of the birdhouse and
pulled out a sparrow. “\emph{Passeridae Domesticus},” Mike
announced happily, “or some such. Lunch, anyways,
right?” Mike looked at me, gave me the knowing laugh I
recognized painfully from my miserable days working in
my paper’s office, and broke the bird’s neck. It went into
his pack and we returned to our Segways.
I stood on mine too quickly, it seemed, because a
shrill car alarm burst out and shattered the calm of the
field. Mike grinned and pressed a button on his keychain,
and the alarm gave a noise of acknowledgement before
going silent. Mike laughed his grating laugh and mounted
his scooter himself. Soon we were whizzing back through
the forest to the encampment.
\hairline
“Thousands of years ago, all humans used to
live like this,” Mike told me that night as we sat in his
spacious one-room log-cabin summer house, “and
we better understood our connection to nature. We,
humanity, we’re \emph{hunters}, I tell you. We’re not tillers of
the land. What’s more, we’re best of breed in the animal
kingdom, thanks to this,” Mike held up one hand and
pointed to its thumb with a forefinger. “The opposable
thumb. It all starts there.”
“And what about all of this?” I asked, “The Blackbush
Tribe. How did \emph{it} start?”
Mike stood and opened one of the storm-resistant
windows set into the wall, letting the fresh night air in.
When he retook his seat, he told a story for me and my
eager tape recorder.
“I’ve always thought different. I’m an independent
thinker, a natural entrepreneur. A go-getter type.
Everyone here is like that. We all give 110\%. But when
you work hard, you play hard, you’ve got to understand.
“Me and some of the guys, we used to all live in Seattle
together and work for some of the better dot-coms. This
was back when we weren’t doing as well financially, after
the bottom fell out of the industry and we were lucky
to scrape together 80, 90 grand a year. We took a sort
of rebellious, youthful pride in our high-risk, high-gain
lifestyle, you know, and we formed a Segway gang.
“Every Friday night we’d get together, about twenty of
us, and Segway from bar to bar, getting pretty hammered.
After a few months we got our ducks in a row; we had
jackets made—sportscoats with “Seattle Segway Gang,
LLC.” across the back—and we had a short run of luck
doing consulting work for hip companies who wanted
to give their team-members a chance to blow off some
steam. But once we had picked all the low-hanging fruit,
our business model just didn’t carry-through, and it was
back to drinking at the bars.
“Anyway, the industry picked up and we rode that
wave, surfing our way to the big bucks. Suddenly we were
no longer struggling to pay off our second cars, and even
the rising gas prices didn’t scare us. It was around this
time that [Blackbush Tribe Executive Manager] Scott
picked up a book called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. And if
that book didn’t change our lives—”
I poured myself another glass of homemade wine as
Mike continued his story.
“We knew that despite our money, we weren’t happy.
When I was younger, of course, I thought that it was
simply because I wasn’t making \emph{enough} money. But then
I realized that this whole culture, this sedentary life, is
actually ill-suited to the human temperament. I mean,
500,000 years of evolution can’t be wrong, right?
“So the lot of us, it was still about 20 at that point,
looked into our options. Most of us were telecommuters
by that point anyhow, which made it easier for us to work
multiple jobs. A couple of the Seattle gang were real-estate brokers, and we figured that if we bought a large
enough swath of land\dots{} well, the rest is history, isn’t it?
“Oh sure, it took us a hot minute to figure out exactly
how to incorporate, and it caused a bit of problems in
the home-life for some of the family types\dots{} You a family
type? You got a wife, kids?”
I was caught off-guard by the question, so I merely
shook my head.
“Yeah, me neither. I say, ‘playing the game gets boring
when you’ve got the same opponent every inning,’ right?
I mean, I’m not sexist or anything, right? So anyhow, a
few guys got cut from the team, but we got a few wives on
board. We bought the land, we got contractors to build
our different homes, set up cell towers, and now we work
from wherever we lay our heads at night!”
Since it was summer, where Mike lay his head at
night was a queen-sized luxury mattress in a mahogany
poster bed. Come fall, the tribe would roll southwards
to their brick autumn homes. During the winter they
rested in hobbit-hole mansions set into the south face of
a hill on their property. In spring it was back north to tree
houses, and the circle would continue another year.
“I’ve got a few things left on my action list for the
night, but I’m glad we got to dialogue,” Mike dismissed
me politely, “and remember, tomorrow we go hunting.”
I left my host and walked through the warm night to
the guest-lodge, a spacious one-room house that dwarfs
my small-town Oregon apartment.
\hairline
Blackbush Tribe, LLC is genius in its way. They’ve
figured out most everything for themselves. Since they
space out their foraging, their game never goes scarce.
Elk, wolves, turkeys, bears, badgers and even gazelles
have been introduced to their land and are all doing quite
well in the wild. A few team-members (a euphemism for
the tribespeople here) had argued in favor of more exotic
animals: Mike had vetoed all zebras, elephants and wild
cats after he had requested compatibility reports from
private biologists.
They travel light from town to town, but they do
not live ‘simply’ by any stretch of the phrase. For the
most part, they own four of everything: four TVs, four
refrigerators, four microwaves, four copies of every
book, movie, and CD. Four electric cars, for when they
need to drive to the airport to have ‘facetime’ with their
employers. Four electric razors, four sets of golf clubs.
Four forges, four drill-presses, four lathes. Four spears,
four compound bows. Four of near \emph{everything}.
Each team-member owns five Segway scooters,
however. They have an on-road scooter that they used for
migration and four “x2” off-road scooters for foraging.
Each of their four seasonal villages generates
electricity in a number of ingenious methods, from wind
and solar to small water-wheels and even human-manure
methane off-gassing—all installed and maintained by
hired help. By the time the tribe arrives to each village, the
bank of batteries is charged enough to last the season.
By use of cellular modems and their Blackberry
SmartPhones, the tribe continues to work full-time jobs for
companies—including Google, Viacom, Apple, and Microsoft
as well as a myriad of small, behind-the-scenes tech companies.
A few hold properties throughout the country, most trade
stock. They all log between 40 and 60 hours of work a week.
\hairline
The next morning I woke up with the sun, as is
custom among tribepeople here. I stretched out, threw off
my buckskin blanket and got dressed. When I walked outside,
part of the tribe was gathered at the dining pavilion.
A large non-stick pot was suspended over the cook-fire, attended by one of the few women present. She was
in her late twenties, stocky and handsome with a strong
jaw and a stronger gaze. Three toddlers clung to her
jeans. Sue Donaldson was her name, and she came here
unmarried, though she was currently engaged to a fellow
Tribesperson. None of the children were hers, I soon
learned as I struck up a conversation.
“We’ve got five married couples here, and three of
them have children, one kid each. We want a second
generation, sure, but no inflation.”
I asked her why she felt that so few women had
joined the tribe, and Sue sighed. “It’s this glass ceiling
bit. The women out there with drive, with initiative, are
busy trying to tear that down. But what they don’t realize
is that the glass ceiling, now that it’s been raised up
somewhat, can actually be useful. I mean, who wants the
stress of being a CEO? I hit upper-middle-management,
and I’m happy as a PM for the LS department of my firm.
I think that men have an easier time of it, realizing that
they would rather live more naturally.”
Sue took a sip of the wild-oat porridge from her heavy
wooden spoon and smiled a bit. “But I think that more
women are catching on. Women are naturally smarter
than men, and when our culture catches up, it’ll show.”
I asked her if she was going on the hunt. She
laughed.
“Oh heaven’s no. The boys would be all kinds of huffy
about it, and I’ve got too much on my plate as it is. I’m
behind on a human resources funding request that I need
to have in by five pacific time, and I’ve got these kids to
watch over. And when the boys get back from the hunt,
they’ll be hungry.”
Slightly baffled, I walked back to Mike’s hut to see
how the day would go.
I found him standing over a bucket sink that was
mounted to one log wall, shaving in the mirror. He
seemed happy to see me.
“There you are! I was thinking a bit this morning
about our conversation last night.” Our eyes met in the
mirror and he spoke as he ran the cordless electric razor
over the section of his neck that he kept shaved. “I was
thinking about tools.”
My host went on to explain how tools had been
slandered quite unduly by environmentalists. The real
villain, he said, was an inflation of people that expanded
beyond the inflation of the economy.
“But, tools, tools are productivity-enhancers. And
what’s more, they can be more energy-efficient. You may
have noticed, for example, that we migrate by way of
scooter, rather than walking or riding bicycles.”
I nodded at this, for indeed I had been curious.
“It’s a matter of efficiency,” Mike explained to me, “the
efficiency of one set of solutions over another. Let’s say
you’re walking somewhere, or bicycling. That uses calories.
And those calories have to come from somewhere. Now, for
a sedentary people, slave to their agriculture, those calories
can be taken from the earth by force. The more work one
does as a farmer, the greater yield, right? But not so for our
lifestyle. If we hunt more, the elk thin out. We have a limited
ability to generate calories in a sustainable fashion from our
landbase, so we need to control the amount that we hunt.
“Electricity, on the other-hand, we don’t need to work
as hard for. The Segway is quite an efficient machine, the
Human a less efficient one. The Segway is far more adapted
to our lifestyle. What’s more, since we don’t need to spend as
much of our time hunting, we have increased productivity
in the economic sphere. You see that, don’t you?” Mike’s
eyes were glazed a bit, and I was unsure if he had gotten
soap in them or if I was speaking to a madman.
I nodded weakly.
“Now, before we go hunting, you’re going to have to
sign this non-disclosure agreement.”
\hairline
Thanks to the fine print of that agreement, I
can’t tell you much of how the Blackbush Tribe hunts. I
can tell you only this: there is warpaint, there are spears,
there are laser-beacons, and there is quite a bit of blood.
I found myself in awe at the transformation of Mike and
the others, and even a bit at myself.
\hairline
I stayed another night in the guest lodge and
Mike drove me to the airport in the morning. The ride
was mostly quiet, both of us contemplative, until I
asked my final question as a journalist: “What about the
future?”
“I’ve learned a lot during my two years here. And the
most important thing is—money can’t buy you happiness.
If you’re doing alright, comfortable, say 200,000 a year?
Who needs any more?
“And I figure, people need to figure this out on their
own. If I go out and set up a franchise community, it
doesn’t help those people very much. It’s like charity: if
you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But if you just
show him that \emph{you} know how to fish, he’ll sink or swim.”
Attempting to play along with the painfully mixed
metaphor, I asked, “That’s an interesting point about
what you’re doing here. Do you think that there are
too many people in the world for everyone to live more
naturally, like you do? How do you propose that other
people might be able to follow your footsteps, without
over-fishing the waters?”
Mike looked at me seriously. “I’m not going to answer
that. I think we all know what needs to happen, which is
that people need to shit or get off the pot.”
A week later I exchanged emails with a tribesperson
who spoke with me candidly on condition of anonymity.
“Forced sterilization after one child. Maybe, with an IQ
test, you could be trusted to bear two. And I don’t want
to hear about how it’s cruel to the poor. If there were less
people, there wouldn’t be any poor. We could all live this
way. It’s a simple question of resource allotment.”
\hairline
Never have I met a stranger group of people. As
I write this, I still feel the warmth of the gazelle soup,
spiced with wild herbs. I still remember the precarious
feeling of perching on the back of a Segway before I
learned to trust its dynamic instability. And at night,
sometimes, I still dream of the hunt. Of bow and spear,
the hum of electric motor, the death cries of a wounded
animal, of blood.
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find each other.
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Gerald Edmonson
Yuppies With Spears (Beating around the Blackbush)
a magazine article so horrendous we had to republish it
April 2007
\bigskip
Retrieved on 2021-08-14 from \href{https://tangledwilderness.org/pdfs/yuppieswithspears-web.pdf}{\texttt{https://tangledwilderness.org/pdfs/yuppieswithspears-web.pdf}}
Article from “Dot Bit” Magazine, originally titled “Beating around the Blackbush,” by Gerald Edmonson, in April 2007.
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