Getting back to nature: SkyEarth outdoor skills event in April News Staff Tue, 02/20/2024 - 11:56 am
- (SCOTT EZZELL | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) An instructor teaches a skill at the SkyEarth family outdoor skills gathering event in Graham. The event will be held this year from April 14-20 just outside Graham on FM 1287.
- (SCOTT EZZELL | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Members attending the SkyEarth family outdoor skills gathering event in Graham come together at night.
- (SCOTT EZZELL | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) A campsite at the SkyEarth family outdoor skills gathering event in Graham. From making fire and tanning hides to weaving baskets and forming metal, the event provides a number of classes with skilled instructors.
Thomas Wallner editor@grahamleader.com
Located outside of Graham is Prairie Haven Texas which is a 120-acre property that hosts the SkyEarth family outdoor skills gathering event and is gearing up for its seventh annual event in April. From making fire and tanning hides to weaving baskets and forming metal, the event provides a number of classes with skilled instructors.
The event is held on the family land of Scott Ezzell who started the event in 2018 with help from Rabbitstick/Wintercount founder Joshua Sage, which are similar events striving to reconnect people with primitive and homesteading skills.
“In 2014, I went to my first Rabbitstick gathering, which is in Rexburg, Idaho. It was life changing. (It was) a lot of people practicing primitive skills, or ancestral skills,” Ezzell said. “...To my knowledge, there were none of those kinds of events in Texas and so I started talking to someone there and we put one together here in 2018.”
Ezzell took over the event in 2020. The event is focused on self-reliance as a theme and incorporates wilderness skills, survival skills, homesteading and outdoor activities which enable people to do things for themselves.
The event will be held from April 14-20 at the property located at 4139 FM 1287 in Young County. Ezzell said he expects around 150 people to camp for close to a week and a few dozen instructors from around the country.
“There’s five days of classes Monday through Friday. You get here on Sunday, we’ll have an opening ceremony and start the fire and it’s pretty community oriented,” Ezzell said. “We have lots of music, not electric music, not radio music, but live music played on drums, flutes and guitars and just real, we’re looking for real. We’ll have that every night.”
Classes are held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and special activities occur in the evening after a meal break. The event schedule and registration can be found online at skyearthgathering.com.
Classes this year include things such as making a friction fire, a plant walk and making buckskin, which is an ancient clothing made out of animal hide. The plant walk has an instructor identify native and invasive plants and determine what is edible and medicinal.
One of the instructors attending the event is the fourth great-grandson of William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
“His name is Churchill Clark and he got into building canoes, just like his great, great, great, great-grandpa did out of a cottonwood tree,” Ezzell said. “He’s going to be showing people how to make a dugout canoe in the old style.”
Since the event is not until April, Ezzell said those attending can plan out their week and see what classes they want to take. Classes are not limited to the five-day registration. A day pass available for purchase on the event website.
One of the things practiced at the gathering event is to have an acceptance of all who attend.
“It’s not politically driven. We’ve got right wingers and left wingers, people who love the Earth and are hippies and then people who want to really focus on self-reliance, homesteading and everything in between,” Ezzell said.
While the gathering skills are what draw people to the event, what changes the lives of those that come to the event is the fellowships formed, Ezzell said.
“It has the feel of a little community and I would say that’s what brings people back over and over,” he said. “You can learn these skills from books, or YouTube videos, or going to other classes, but because I’ve been to so many now in Idaho, Arizona and Utah, it definitely has a feel of a family reunion, a lot of the same faces you see over and over and folks who come to things like this tend to be a unique character.”
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