Not long after I was writing on this blog about cavemen and stalking the wild tortilla chip, I had the chance to sit in on a primitive skills class. Since many people are gradually coming around to the idea that it might not be such a bad idea to have the knowledge to grow one’s own food, why not go one step further and learn how to really cook from scratch?

My teacher in this pursuit was Patrick, a representative of the Sequatchie Valley Institute. Patrick had long hair that looked not terribly unlike the brush he was using as kindling, and he wore a tank top that said “Extinction is Forever” tucked into a sort of hippie version of a fanny pack. His eyes were round with an earnest sweetness. Patrick was a believer.

Before we got around to the whole fire-starting thing, Patrick explained to us the fundamentals of “road harvesting.” All sorts of useful things, he assured us, could be found dead by the side of the highway. Let’s say you find a deer. If its eyes are clear, the meat is still good. “And even if it’s not,” Patrick told us, “some people are really into frying up the maggots.” After you skin the deer (simple, apparently, and not unlike peeling a banana), you can harvest up to forty pounds of meat from a single animal. But if you’re just looking for a quick road harvest fix, you can cut about four pounds of prime venison from the area around the backbone.

Of course, road harvesting is not limited to deer. Patrick informed us that he knew other primitive skill experts who were into harvesting hawk and eagle parts for some “pretty intense medicine.” And just recently, he had found a dead fox and eaten its testicles. “What did they taste like?” someone in the audience yelled. Patrick got a distant, awed look in his eye and told us they tasted like…well, the substance you might expect a testicle to taste like. They were also “like, wow, a really intense aphrodisiac, man.”

It was hard to move away from subject matter as riveting as this, but Patrick was keen to show us some fire-starting tips. As it turns out, starting a fire with a wooden bow is quite complicated and left me thankful that our ancestors ever figured it out in the first place. I admit that I had some serious doubts about whether Patrick could pull it off, but after only a few minutes, he knocked a tiny ember onto a tuft of kindling and as the flame bloomed in his fingertips, it was beautiful.

Okay, so maybe I’m not quite ready to carve my own fire-starting spindle or dig into a serving of fox balls, but I sympathize with Patrick’s desire to break our overcomplicated world into to simpler and more natural processes. It’s why some people take to knitting or camping or canning their own food for the winter. “It makes me feel so empowered to know how to do these things,” Patrick explained. Amen, Patrick. I’m a believer.