I decided to study people who lived in nature. Historically speaking, there are a lot of different peoples who lived intertwined with nature and I decide to study the methods and tools that they used to do so effectively. I would learn of an item or skill, do a bit of research on it, and try to either make it or learn it. I made many items and tools through this process such as clothing, beads and bags. I also learned about many different skills and tried to implement them as much as possible in my life. I used old crafting techniques such as wire inlay, bag making and different cooking techniques such as coal cooking and baking in clay. The goal of this project was to revive the old forgotten skills and crafts of historical mountain people and to use them in my life. (A more extensive show of the work that I did can be found in the presentation that I made and the log that I keep all of my project notes in)

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZZy57Auno7fdNzEJrBgbWj2PvVI3ofhp9vhl9oyYWls/edit#slide=id.p

Log: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BmlLPDeV4ScvOF-wJdRvauz5N3kdOMuifxiI_aXhL7A/edit

Please write a description of the project you are proposing. Why do you want to take this on, and what do you hope to learn?

The project I hope to do revolves around the concept of the mountain man of the 1820’s and why they went extinct. The mountain men were a rather small group of individuals who decided to test their strength and skills against the wilderness of the Northern parts of the newly made country of America. Their primary commerce was based around the catching and selling of fur and hides, but when that business shriveled up they were seemingly content with simply living for themselves in the woods and mountains. After 20 odd years of living in that fashion the spark for exploration and survival sputtered out and soon there were no mountain men left. These men were the very best at what they did; surviving and being self reliant, but yet they did not survive the industrial revolution. In this project I would like to revisit the ways and lifestyle of the mountain men and test and practice them myself to see if they could be applicable for survival in a time like 2018. In doing this I hope to see what it is that mountain men of the 1800’s would look like should they have had to adapt to live in the 2000’s.

What is your proposed outcome? How will you be able to demonstrate successful completion of this Project?

I envision doing this project in two separate parts:
1) Do research on historical mountain men and, in doing that, learn about the different tasks and skills they needed to live their lives
2) I hope to learn (at least minimally) the aforementioned skills and tasks to then be able to test some aspects of the mountain men’s lives in a more modern environment/time.
To demonstrate the completion and success of this project, I plan to make a sort of video log for each of the activities and tasks that I learn. Each video shall have a historically based description to go along with it explaining the purpose of the task and how it was executed in the past. Some examples of the jobs that will be included in the presentation would be woodwork, hunting/foraging, making clothing, construction of shelter and creation of a fire.
The product of each of the tasks that I complete will be shown along with its corresponding video. The result of this compilation of video, explanation and artifact would be a sort of digital and physical museum.

Who is your Honors Project Teacher, and when do you plan on meeting?

Ann Carroll.