With two hurricanes bearing down on Hawaii, people flocked to the supermarkets and big-box stores to stock up on supplies.
But to "Brother Noland" Conjugacion, one needed only to look to nature to find what’s required to survive. To him the definition of the "sustainable" is: "I walk into the forest with just my knife, my backpack — that’s it, because my forest is Costco."
Since 1996 the multiple Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning singer and musician has been taking groups into the wilderness to learn survival skills. He teaches how to make fire, find shelter and track, bag and dress wild game.
Much of his learning is encapsulated in his new book, "The Hawaiian Survival Handbook" (Watermark, $16.99), a simple how-to guide that is filled with traditional local knowledge about living in the outdoors.
The book’s message is to "simplify, right down to the core," said Conjugacion while demonstrating some of his wilderness know-how at Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden in Kaneohe last week.
Conjugacion, 57, said he was fascinated with survival skills while growing up on Hawaii island. As a young man he met Native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte, then known for his involvement in the effort to reclaim Kahoolawe for Hawaiians. Ritte invited him to Molokai to track deer.
"He told me, ‘I’m a hunter. I’m a gatherer.’ So without any weapons or anything, he said, ‘Let’s go into the forest and let’s trap a deer.’ And that’s what we did. That was a fascinating day for me, and I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’"
He eventually supplemented his knowledge through visits to Native American medicine men in New Mexico and upstate New York, and aboriginal trackers in Australia. Similar to the way musicians track their lineage through their teachers, he pays tribute to one of his wilderness teachers, John Stokes, who learned from an Australian aborigine, Jimmy James, a decorated tracker who helped Australian authorities find fugitives and missing people.
INTO THE WILD
Excerpts from "The Hawaiian Survival Handbook," by Brother Noland
ON DEVELOPING THE EYE OF THE TRACKER
Peripheral vision incorporates the full extention and capabilities of your eyesight. Some call this wide-angle vision, full-court vision or open-field vision. Trackers call it "soft eyes." When outdoors, look out and take in the full landscape or seascape in front of you. Notice all movements and then focus on and isolate certain movements.
ON READING THE WEATHER
If you see lots of cows lying down in an open field, they are getting ready for rain. Birds fly low before a downpour or squall of rain. They will hunt for insects and bugs just before inclement weather because the insects also stay closer to the ground before bad weather.
ON MAKING USE OF NATIVE PLANTS
The phrase to remember is "No bolo head the tree." That means don’t harvest so much off one plant that it looks like someone has given it a haircut ("bolo head" = bald).
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"I couldn’t be more fascinated and fortunate to be the second generation who came after guys like Jimmy James," Conjugacion said, adding that learning from Stokes "was like visiting the oracle."
In 1996 he established Hawaii Inside Tracking, a program dedicated to promoting traditional outdoor skills, and started wilderness camps. Some participants have been with him for years, going to mainland camps to learn from his Native American colleagues.
"In order to graduate, you have to make fire in front of your teachers," he said. "And then you have to do it again to prove it wasn’t a fluke."
He usually camps a few weeks on Molokai every summer, holding camps for adults and children that last anywhere from three to nine days.
"As much as we can, we use Molokai," he said, "because it’s like the Outback. It’s just wide open. … Cellphones don’t work, so already you’re not attached to technology. You’re off the grid."
Being detached from the bustle of daily life enables campers to undergo a spiritual "cleansing," Conjugacion said. Participants at one camp this year included a therapist, a comedian, a farmer, a businessman and a psychologist, who seemed to be using the camp to prepare for an apocalyptic "day of reckoning."
Conjugacion’s advice was to "just come out, because it’s so peaceful. You got to settle your soul first. … I told her, ‘You’re sleep-deprived, you’re overworked, you’re overwhelmed, or you could be constipated,’" he said with a laugh.
Though that kind of humor is scattered throughout his book — there is a chapter on "how to poop in the woods" — the spirituality of Conjugacion’s teaching was alive and well when he demonstrated some survival skills with several of his disciples.
Palakiko Yagodich told of his personal throw net, made for him by his uncle, and how he neglected it for years despite his uncle’s constant reminders to use it.
When he finally decided to try it, he went to the Kapahulu Groin in Waikiki, whose waters were crowded, as usual, with swimmers and surfers.
"I’m going to catch people, I think, and you look down and there was all the fish, right there. So when I see that, I think, ‘Man, I gotta take care of this a little bit better.’"
The art of throwing net, meanwhile, is an entirely different story — not nearly so quaint, especially when done by awkward amateurs. Gathering and folding the weighted, circular seine so that it doesn’t tangle, draping it over different parts of one’s body so that it hangs evenly, flinging it in a smooth backhand motion so that it flows into a disklike shape as it lands — none of that was easy.
Yagodich’s wife, Jenny, gave a demonstration on making fire with sticks, explaining that fire is sacred according to Hawaiian beliefs.
"It’s kind of like giving birth," she said. "It’s not the kind of fire that you throw things into or use for destructive purposes."
Using some dry pine needles for kindling, a bow, a spindle, a handle to hold it all in place, and a baseboard with deep dimples worn into it, she managed to whip up a smolder in a minute. With a few breaths delivered delicately and intermittently, she soon had a small blaze flaring from her hand.
That too, isn’t always so easy.
"There’s never a guarantee in making this kind of a fire," she said. "It took me about a year to try to make fire, without success. The first time I made fire, which was on the last day I could do it to prove to my teachers that I could do it, it was about an hour and a half."
Musically, Conjugacion is working on a live album, "Alive and Well," to pair with the book. He’ll also perform at Henry Kapono’s Back in the Day show at the Waikiki Shell on Saturday.
His book contains just a small amount of the information needed to become a true outdoorsman, "like the dirt underneath your fingernails," Conjugacion said, but he hopes the book will spark readers to develop a close connection with and Hawaiian understanding of nature.
"It’s sprinkled with aloha," he said. "Aloha is the key. I knew that when I started working with the medicine men in New Mexico and the trackers and all the other guys from all the other places of the world, they found that fascination with aloha so fascinating.
"Our spirit, our Hawaiian way of doing things, it was so simple, but it was so sincere."
ON THE NET:
» For information on Conjugacion’s camp, visit hoeainitiative.net.
