Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 10A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. DECEMBER 24. 2020
Continued From 1A
Saying it has seemed like more than one lifetime, Warren
has won national championships in both whitewater canoe
ing and longbow archery.
Warren
He has also written a tril
ogy of well-received works
on Wyatt Earp, composed
music for the Atlanta Sym
phony and, as though that
weren’t enough, won a na
tional championship in
whitewater canoeing in 1998;
then a national championship
in longbow archery in 1999.
At this point, the business
of teaching Native American
survival skills and Earthlore
are his bread and butter, (or
in this case his groundnuts
and greenbriar).
With unease across the na
tion, more people have de
cided that knowing how to
gather food from the forest
may come in handy, Warren
explained during an inter
view conducted while hiking
around his wilderness class
room at Medicine Bow in
early December.
Warren’s classes are
booked solid until March and
his publisher is re-releasing a
four-volume set of his
wilderness skills books: •
Wild Plants and Survival
Lore • Fire-making, Story
telling and Ceremony • Stalk
ing, Tracking, and Playing
Games in the Wild and •
Archery, Projectiles and Ca
noeing.
Warren said the collec
tion, Secrets of the Forest I-
IV, encompass what he has
been teaching for the past 50
years stressing specific sur
vival skills and generally pro
moting self-confidence in the
wilderness.
It was an interesting path
that saw a med-school-bound
UGA graduate wind up a
leading Georgia environmen
tal educator for the past five
decades. (That is not a math
error, Warren has been teach
ing in the outdoors since the
mid 1970s. He looks at least
a decade younger than his
73.)
Warren grew up in Col
lege Park with a family who
considered wilderness travel
to be looking for a golf ball
in the rough. “No, I didn’t
have any Native American
grandfather, figuratively
speaking, to teach me these
skills. But it would have been
nice if I did.”
His parents were support
ive of their child who spent
days exploring the forests
around his house and they
trusted him. At age 14, his
parents would let him get a
ride with a neighbor who
dropped him off at Tallulah
Gorge with camping gear on
Fridays and then pick him up
on Sundays so he could ex
plore the remote areas of the
park alone.
After college, he was
headed to med-school, but “I
knew it would be impossible
to spend that much time in
side. You can imagine how
that went over with my par
ents.”
So, he started working in
a youth program, taking kids
from Roswell into the North
Georgia mountains. He also
began a one-man litter patrol
to address illegal dumping.
“I had pretty good success
going through garbage and
finding a name,” he said.
“Then I would call them with
a made-up office and tell
them they had so many days
to clean it up before we
would press charges.”
Warren said he developed
an idea (he now recognizes as
being impractical) to depu
tize kids around the state to
seek out illegal dumps and
call the owners as he had
been doing but with real au
thority.
Warren, who says he is
not normally the type to
barge through doors, went to
see then-Govemor Jimmy
Carter at his office. The gov
ernor also saw problems with
deputizing kids but must
have been impressed, as the
governor wrote a letter of in
troduction to the state DNR
regarding the litter campaign,
which landed Warren a state
job.
Warren said from there,
whenever a group needed a
DNR speaker, he would vol
unteer and this evolved to his
going on his own with a pro
gram that became Medicine
Bow.
At Medicine Bow, Warren
instructs on everything from
medicinal plant use to knife
and tomahawk throwing, fire
making, conservation, and
quite a few archery offerings.
Browsing the class descrip
tions piques all sorts of inter
est, who wouldn’t want to be
able to make a wooden bowl
from hot coals?
Warren offers traveling
classes and one of his fa
vorites is to teach on a per
son’s or group’s home
property. It’s very fulfilling to
take someone out and show
them things they have never
appreciated in their own
woods, he said.
With youth groups it’s im
portant to teach the skills and
the environmental lessons as
they are open to the message,
he said. “You can’t change
adults’ minds.”
However, it is a luxury
that adults who come to his
classes do so because they
are avidly interested in the
skills they sign up to learn.
“COVID, like other crisis,
has my classes filled,” he
said. “In times like this we all
feel a need to be a little more
self-reliant.”
Warren developed his
skills from regular wilderness
trips. “I didn’t say I was
going hiking. I would just
wander and see what adven
ture I could get into.”
And he then honed the
skills through his “first men”
approach. “I would try to fig
ure out something as long as
possible on my own, first.
Then only after I got so frus
trated and couldn’t continue,
would I consult a book or
A sign indicates you have found the parking area for the Medicine Bow property where
the founder continues a more than five-decade career educating people in the secrets of
the forests.
With so much unease in the world, wilderness survival classes are booked solid through
March and a four-volume se
is being re-published.
someone else. For a lot of
these skills, we rely in the
long run on those who came
before us.”
Through the years, he has
seen all his classes draw an
increasing percentage of fe
males. Now some of the
classes are more than half fe
male.
Among his offerings, he
says the stalking class is spe
cial and physically demand
ing. It is like “walking
through the door that tndy
puts us integrated into the
forest.” Aside from the prac
tical skills to get you close to
animal, there is a spiritual
side. “People say there is
something missing and it has
something to do with nature,”
he said of many of the class
attendees.
His fire building class,
similarly, is much more than
pour on the kerosene and toss
a match. It involves alterna
tive ways to get a blaze going
and he challenges anyone
who feels like they are a mas
ter fire builder to take a one
match challenge.
Like many who view with
trepidation the world of cell
phones and kids who never
set foot in the woods, Warren
has a growing concern that
of books on self-sufficiency i
these first people skills will
be lost. “There is so much
competition with those flashy
screens,” he said.
All his books and more in
formation on the classes and
contact information can be
found at http://medi-
cinebow.net
Postscript:
During the interview re
garding classes and books, I
had to veer off with some ad
ditional questions because it
is rare to meet a guy who has
won national championships
in such different sports and
studies both the southeastern
Cherokees and the Wild
West.
For whitewater canoeing
he won the national champi
onship in a combined down
river and slalom event. For
this, he trained rigorously on
courses he set up on the
Chestatee River and regularly
drove to the Nantahala Cen
ter.
For the 3-D Archery
championship, it was more
personal, he said. “I didn’t re
ally go to many tournaments.
But I was always out in the
woods shooting at different
things, ‘stump shooting’ and
coming up with different un
i the woods by Mark Warren
usual shoots.”
When asked how he did
so much, he notes he was sin
gle for much of this time. He
is now married and lives with
his wife at the Medicine Bow
property.
But after thinking a few
moments, Warren adds, “I
don’t know how I did all this
stuff. It seems like it’s been
more than one life.”
So, what about this Wyatt
Earp thing?
“I was given a book on
Wyatt Earp when I was
seven-years-old. Those early
biographies were highly fic
tionalized accounts. His real
life was more interesting. I
have studied him for 60 years
and finally understand some
thing about him. He was not
a man of courage; he was a
man without fear.”
What’s the difference?
“A man of courage under
stands the consequences of
what may happen if he
crosses a figurative line and
he does it anyway. For some
one who is fearless, who
lacks fear, there is no line.”
For the Billy the Kid
book, he will include the
music to a song and that is
how he hopes to boost his
music career.
Continued From 1A
Adams
no one showed any interest
when he was still in a house
and often without food for
days. He added that more
people stop to check on his
animals’ welfare than his.
Adams said his car broke
down, under some suspicious
Continued From 1A
Voting
at regular polling places from
7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Republican Public Service
Commissioner Lauren
“Bubba” McDonald also
faces Democrat Daniel
Blackman.
Roberts said as of press
time Tuesday, Dec. 22 there
had been approximately
3,100 in-person votes cast at
the rec. center, and about
2,600 absentee ballots re
ceived.
She said voting had been
running smoothly, with lines
only getting up to around a
five to 10 minute wait at
times. Still, she said for a
runoff election turnout had
been good to that point.
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24 hrs.
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pickensprogress.com
circumstances, and he has
lost his house under what he
feels are even more suspi
cious circumstances that in
volve the World Bank and
United Nations. So, he left
with his horse for transporta
tion and initially only a
“turkey blind with no floor”
for shelter.
The camping gear has
been given to him by people
who stop to check on him
and the animals. He first
started behind the RaceTrac
but was asked to move from
there, and on Sunday was
asked to move from the Tate
four-way.
A spokesman for the sher
iff’s office said they had no
tified Adams that the
property owners in both
places had made complaints
and he had voluntarily
moved. There were no
charges nor was he was
forced from either property.
Based on a Facebook
thread, the owner of the
grassy field where Adams’
tent was Tuesday is David
Shouse, who ran for commis
sion chair, and he posted he
would find him something
more permanent.
Adams said he had turned
down a couple offers for
housing because they were
less public. He wants to be in
view to further his crusade
against the forces that have
been after him.
He said to tell people, he
doesn’t need anything; “I just
want justice.”
U
55
BRING ONE FOR THE CHIPPER 2021
CHRISTMAS TREE RECYCLING EVENT
WHEN:
WHAT:
WHERE:
30 Years of Treecycling
Saturday, January 2,2021, from 9:00 am. to 4:00 pm.
Area residents will go green and drop off Christmas trees to be chipped into mulch or
used as a wildlife habitat. The event educates the public on recycling and environmental
conservation. It also allows communities to put discarded Christmas trees to good use.
The program has been a holiday tradition in Georgia for 30 years and is the largest tree
recycling program in the nation.
Your old tree will be reused as mulch or wildlife habitat. Drop off your un-decorated
Christmas tree for recycling at the Park’n Ride across from the Pickens County Chamber
of Commerce building in Lee Newton Park, 500 Veterans Memorial Blvd. (500 Stegall
Street)
FOR INFORMATION CALL: Keep Pickens Beautiful, 706-253-3600, and leave a message or email us at
keeppickensbeautiful@gmail.com
Pickens County residents recycled 120 Christmas trees in 2020, diverting them from landfills, and chipping
them up into useful mulch. In this day of artificial Christmas trees, that’s not bad. Let’s see if we can do better
in 2021 and set a new record.
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with Adults, Teens and Children
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Licensed Professional Counselor
Over 30 years experience helping people live better
770-548-1966 • 505 Cove Rd. • Suite 3 • Jasper
www.robinwdunnlpc.com
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