End of the Trail
by Jason GodeskyWell, the long vacation might have tipped you off, but it seems that we, the Tribe of Anthropik, have come to the end of the trail. We’ve waited this long mostly to clear up some issues of timing, but in May, the Anthropik Network will come to the end of its five-year run. But don’t fret too much—at 1:30 PM Eastern time, on 18 June, you’ll get the first issue of Toby’s People.
This means more than just a name change for us. I suppose David Abram planted the seed when I talked to him on the phone, trying to get an interview for the podcast; he asked why we had such a, well, anthropocentric name. I replied with the emphasis that we only have our humanity in connection with a more-than-human world, and Dr. Abram didn’t press the issue, but his question lingered with me. Particularly with our discussions of bioregionalism and the reunion of family and land, I looked at the patterns of names that indigenous people give themselves, and came to the conclusion that we needed a better name.
The Clarion River got that name from Daniel Stanard in 1817; he came as a surveyor, and camped along the river one night and remarked that it sounded like a distant clarion. The name stuck, in good part because stuck-up burgeois types much preferred the elegant sound of the word, “Clarion,” to the name the roughneck settlers used: Toby. The ultimate origins of that name lay in the Lenni Lenape name for the stream, Tuppeek-hanne, meaning, “it flows from a great spring.” In usual fashion, the European settlers couldn’t pronounce the native name, and ended up with “Tobeco,” and ultimately, “Toby.”
I love this name. Not only does it harken back before a time of Eurocentric snobbery, but it comes from a rather parallel situation of Europeans trying to pronounce native terms. Moreover, it relates to the watershed as a person—and even better, even as an approachable, affable sort of fellow, with a friendly name like “Toby.” It adds a warmth and character that my writing generally doesn’t reflect, and it speaks immediately, I think, to the most important thing in rewilding: the relationships we nurture.
In June, we’ll finally move out of our current abode, and we’ll finally have time to really enjoy that virtuous cycle. Besides changing our name and identity, we’ll take this opportunity to change some things around here, as well. Most importantly, I’ve gone through a significant change in perspective, beginning back when I read David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous, and reaching new heights now as I make my way through Tim Ingold’s The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. With the new site, we have a chance to start fresh from that new perspective. We also have a chance to start fresh with regards to tone. I want to write more E-Primitively; I want to use this space to become a better storyteller; I want to go deeper into that creative non-fiction direction, with longer form articles. I think I can introduce more story without compromising the academic content I usually bring in. And I want it to sound more like my own voice, and finally get past the stodgy journal-speak my writing has retained since college. Perhaps even more importantly, I want the discussions to have less heat and vitriol. I had a lot to do with that, and starting fresh, I hope I can set an example to make for a more productive and collaborative discussion area.
Beyond tone, some specific things to expect from Toby’s People:
- You’ll get a new issue every full moon, starting with the Strawberry Moon 2008 issue. Each issue will have a particular subject—beginning, naturally enough, with the vitality and importance of soil. You’ll find a long feature piece by me, a “Toby’s Perspective” section with an article on how that issue’s subject relates to Toby, a “Storied Landscape” section where I’ll continue the current Storied Landscape series, a review of a relevant book (in the first issue, William Bryant Logan’s Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth), and a Fabulous Forager article.
- At the new apartment, we’ll have the ability to record things, so we’ll also release “Toby’s Podcast” with each issue. I haven’t figured out all the details on how that will work, but I think a format of responding to voice mails and emails might work well, so if you want to prime the pump, go ahead and email me now!
- Yes, we’ll also have Toby’s Library, and yes, we’ll actually fill it in this time!
- For more day-to-day things, we’ll have Toby’s Tumblr. Don’t worry, we’ll integrate it onto the page; we don’t expect you to check two seperate sites, now.
- I have spiffy design ideas up the wazoo, all kinds of different ways to merge organic flash and digital storytelling and mythic cartography and wayfinding—but trying to describe such a thing never does it justice, and if you try it just makes it disappointing when you finally do get to experience it, so this will have to wait as a surprise. But hopefully that whetted your appetites, all the same…
- Fabulous Forager and the Fifth World will continue without interruption.
- We certainly won’t trash the backlog; this will all go into storage under “The Anthropik Archive.” And don’t worry, anthropik.com will just redirect to tobyspeople.com.
Love it! Definitely looking forward to seeing what your evolution brings forth next, especially as it relates to your relationships with the land. This is very meaningful for me being a regional neighbor and all.
On a separate note, have either of you read the book Juniata, River of Sorrws?
Comment by Paula — 19 March 2008 @ 9:29 AM
Great new name! I really like the story behind the seemingly common name “Toby.” Good luck with the changes, that kind of thing can quickly become very frustrating… fingers crossed.
Comment by Archy — 19 March 2008 @ 10:27 AM
Hey y’all,
Best of luck with the transition in living space, life patterns and online work. I feel excited about the new direction, and look forward to it greatly!
-A
PS- Was it an intentional stacking of functions that the new name shares itself with the permaculturalist who helped allay your suspicions about horticulture?
Comment by Archangel — 19 March 2008 @ 10:32 AM
another journey another story! Travel Safe!
Comment by timeLESS — 19 March 2008 @ 10:35 AM
Thanks, all.
Paula: Nope, haven’t read it.
Archangel: Heh, purely coincidence. In a recent email exchange, I told him what we had coming, and told him, “Sorry, different Toby.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 March 2008 @ 4:22 PM
hey jason,
this essay read fresh and clean. if it gets muddy sometimes that’s fine too - its the back and forth that is real.
spell of the sensuous mattered a lot to me too.
the word “stodgy” made the whole essay funner, honester, sympatheticer.
i’m heartened by your discovery of a way to continue contributing without wearing out your soul.
much good luck.
Comment by juggleandhope — 19 March 2008 @ 5:56 PM
Will you still call your tribe Anthropik?
-Jim
Comment by JCamasto — 20 March 2008 @ 12:20 AM
No, Toby’s People.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 March 2008 @ 6:03 AM
Sounds great Jason. “Toby’s People” has a nice ring to it. Glad you’ll be keeping the anthropik stuff in archive though, it’s a very important resource for people, I think. I might even suggest just keeping this site up as is, and putting your link to the Toby’s People site in your final post…just a suggestion. I’d definitely like it if people could continue to find all the information contained here easy to find and readily accessable.
Comment by RedWolfReturns — 22 March 2008 @ 1:08 PM
Well, I’ve already got tobyspeople.com set up as a redirect here, so what I’d like to set up would have all the Anthropik articles remain at all their current URL’s, so the search engines stay happy, but anything at anthropik.com just silently redirects to tobyspeople.com, and we go forward from there. So it shouldn’t break anything already up. I agree, we’ve done too much here so far to just leave it by the wayside so easily.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2008 @ 1:23 PM
I love this change, Jason. I think it reflects a lot of your personal growth, as well as the growth of the rewilding movement (or my own growth as a rewilder, at least). Anthropik spent a lot of time setting up the premises of why we need something different, and now Toby looks like it will explore how you plan to do something different. Not that I expect you to start writing how-to articles, but if the new stuff looks anything like the Storied Landscape series that you started here, then I expect to enjoy feasting on it.
I also love the storytelling aspect that you mention and eagerly anticipate how “all kinds of different ways to merge organic flash and digital storytelling and mythic cartography and wayfinding” will look.
Comment by Rix — 22 March 2008 @ 2:33 PM
The Storied Landscape will become a regular feature in each issue. And thanks for focusing our attention on the Full Moon names, it gave me a much better pattern to focus the issue schedule on than months (a word which comes, of course, from the word “moon”). I plan to write a lot more in a creative non-fiction style for the features, and to have a whole regular section on how those issues apply to my own bioregion. For people from other parts, I hope that will work as an example of how to bring these issues home, if you will. So if that counts as what we do, then yes.
I still won’t post up our foraging grocery lists, though.
By the by, we’ve started up Toby’s Tumblr. Tumblr uses more of the short-form blog posts, kind of like what you usually see on Ran’s page. I’ve filled in a good backlog, and I think Giuli & I will probably update this something like daily, more or less, even before issue #1 of Toby’s People comes out.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 March 2008 @ 4:55 PM
Hey, you had me scared there for a minute. I just joined the network yesterday, so when I read the “End of the Trail” title I thought to myself “Crap! I’m late again!” But I’m glad to hear that you’ll be shifting over into a new format rather than bringing things to a halt. In any case, I love what I’ve read so far and I look forward to reading more in the future and being part of the discussion!
Thanks,
Jeremy
Comment by jmtrombley — 3 June 2008 @ 8:53 AM
18th June has past. Is toby’s people still in progress?
Comment by anon — 19 June 2008 @ 7:04 AM
I didn’t think anyone still paid attention–no, I haven’t given up on Toby’s People at all. I knew June 18 would mean a pretty demanding schedule, and I thought I could do it, but things ended up taking longer than I’d expected. I did make a conscious choice, however, to spend more time with my own personal rewilding now that I have more of an opportunity to do so, and that has made the website schedule slip. I make no apologies for that. I could rush one out for July, just to run into problems in August when we head for our permaculture class, but I think it makes more sense for us to simply plan for issue 1 in September.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 June 2008 @ 11:36 AM
The irony of your comment, Jason, is rich. You preach a return to primitive living, and then you go and set schedules, attend classes, and participate in the online world, all of which are antithetical to primitive living. The weather’s warm, and the living’s easy. Instead of attending a class on “permaculture” (whatever the hell that is), why don’t you go spend the weekend in the woods with a knife and a hatchet?
Comment by ArtIsLife — 20 June 2008 @ 10:08 PM
And yet, not nearly as rich as yours. I preach nothing, but you deign to preach to me about something you misunderstand so deeply as to think that schedules, classes or a medium lie antithetical to it–and you do so without any knowledge of how I live, or care to even try to understand. In fact, I let that June deadline slip by precisely because I chose to spend a weekend in the woods with a knife and hatchet, and a good deal besides that. Rewilding doesn’t contradict planning ahead or learning from others, nor communicating with one another by whatever means we happen to find at hand. Rewilding means first and foremost reconciling family and land. Now, how can you possibly do that when you busy yourself so thoroughly with passing judgment, even when you obviously know nothing of who or what you’ve decided to judge?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2008 @ 1:27 AM
Good to hear its still planned Jason. Look forward to it. Hope my previous comment didn’t seem curt.
Comment by anon — 21 June 2008 @ 4:00 PM
Hi Jason and Guili,
My name is Rob Content, and I work as Program Manager for Community Solutions, a non-profit in Yellow Springs, Ohio that works on local-level solutions to the challenges posed by fossil fuel depletion and global warming.
As a long-time follower of Anthropik (and we almost met at Seneca Rocks a couple Septembers back), I’d be pleased if we could send you a complimentary copy of a new book by our executive director Pat Murphy called “Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change.” The book has grown out of the New Solutions newsletters that Pat has been publishing on our site for the last four years, as well as the annual peak oil conferences we sponsor, and an hour-long documentary film called “The Power of Community” we made in 2006 about Cuba’s response to the cut-off of fossil fuels around 1990.
I believe you’ll find the book a valuable contribution to the literature, and we’ll put a copy in the mail to you at if you’ll kindly send us the mailing address where you’d like to receive it.
And let me add a personal note to say I’m looking forward to news about Toby’s People (if that’s still what’s ahead for you these days)!
Best,
Rob
937 767 2161
rob@communitysolution.org
Comment by Rob — 10 July 2008 @ 10:49 AM