Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Conversation about relearning the kinship worldview with author, horse-drawn woodwright, and renowned storyteller, D. Firth Griffith. Unshod is a podcast and community that believes to rebel, we must pause, that we live with Earth as Earthlings, that we must approach creativity, curiosity, and compassion in conversation.… but we must approach this ground UNSHOD. This has nothing to do with "saving the world." It has everything to do with leaving the right kind of tracts in the mud.
Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Living a Sacred Harvest with Mansal Denton
What happens when we strip away heart from agriculture? When cherishing, healing, and loving the land are replaced by metrics, units, and profit margins? Join me in this in-person yarn with my friend, Mansal Denton, as we explore this living and sacred harvest.
Learn more about Mansal HERE.
Visit Episode website HERE.
Buy Daniel's Books HERE.
what was it?
Mansal Denton:the agricultural system yeah I was reading a few quotes today that were meaningful to me specifically as I try and infuse this new project I'm working with with a certain felt sense and emotion, evoking connection to nature.
Mansal Denton:And I noticed Wendell Berry has this quote talking about cherishing the earth and Charles Eisenstein has this quote talking about healing the earth and Albert Schweitzer has this quote about loving. And I just bolded all these words like cherish, healing, loving there's no place for those things in a lot of the conversations around agriculture, around production, around food units and material money and dollars and pounds. And there's a really great quote that I use in my interpersonal relationships, my relationship with my wife, especially because I have a big mouth and I just say whatever comes up to my mind, and I think it's useful here too the truth said without heart is a lie. And the same could be true when it comes to our relationship with the land. If we could talk about soil and we could talk about the sequestration and all these things that come from the mind, and hey, we need that. The mind's a great problem solver, but if all of our truth is coming without any heart, it's still a lie.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, that's really interesting when you think about it from like a scientific perspective, because a lot of my work has been shunned. About it from like a scientific perspective, because a lot of my work has been shunned, all of my circles have gotten quite angry because, um, just to some degree, the, uh, the science, this linear way of putting words to things that I don't think has anything to do with language, not in the word sense, that's in technical, semantic sense is seen as gospel, you know. So, instance if we can linearistically prove that a certain increase in carbon molecules in the soil strata equals a higher return, or higher growth of corn, or higher return of recovery in grass, or whatever that might be, then therefore it is good. What makes the good? To some degree, you can see that as like a gospel. It is good. What makes the good? To some degree, you can see that as like a gospel.
Daniel Firth Griffith:What is good? What makes the good? Well, that's what we can prove to be profitable, we can prove to be substantial, we can substantiate with numbers. There's no heart in that. I think that's another thing of the trickster. I think the trickster motif in agriculture is totally overlooked. What's slowing us down? Should we be slowed down. What's the honor? What's the heart? Is there consent in agriculture that gets people going? Anyways, we can talk about a lot of these things. You notice that how?
Mansal Denton:when you say the good and you equate it with profit and revenue, which is the standard model, what comes up, as you say, that is how there's the Greek triad the good, the profit, the revenue, the numbers you do nothing more than what Christ specifically warns against in the Bible. He specifically uses the Aramaic word mammon, which translates to resources and wealth, and he says you cannot love God and mammon. You cannot love resources and wealth and accumulation and God at the same time. They're opposed and what you acknowledge is what is unfortunately true, despite our best efforts. We consider the good to be mammal, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone at times when I'm unconscious, when I'm unable to see, basically when I'm in ignorance. But that's one of the things that's inspired me about how you talk about the farm and your time here and some of the particular stories which I'm sure either your listeners have heard or I'll leave to you to share. But there are very clear instances where you are actively choosing God, in my view, as opposed to profit and revenue and resources.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I was down in Lockhart Texas doing this live podcast with one of our mutual friends and somebody asked. They said, you know, it was a pivotal moment in my life because it was the first time I ever had to publicly stand for this particular belief of mine. But they were saying it seems like what you're asking is for us to let go, to stand back and to relinquish all control over our ability to heal this very destroyed earth. I said yeah, and they said well, how can you stand for that? People are hungry, the earth is destroying communities and places, and erosion and pollution, whatever All these things that people know about. The earth is destroying, you know, communities and places, and erosion and pollution, whatever all these things that people know about species extinction and such. And I said what I think, what you have to understand, that I fully believe, is that, like when you look at that great white oak tree out there that's 300, 350 years old, I mean I really don't believe. I don't, to my heart of hearts, I do not believe that that oak tree gives one rats behind for our economic dependence upon this, this, this thing called a dollar or a pound or a euro or whatever. Just don't think it has any conception of the idea. I think if it did it would laugh. So thank god it doesn't, because we just don't have time to be laughed at. But I, but I did.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Nature doesn't owe us financial profit. You know, and I think you know, I was talking to somebody recently about agriculture and they were just saying how the more they struggle with releasing control, because there is an inverse relationship between the ability to profit off of an environment and the ability to have a relationship with that environment. They're invers, inversely related. The more profit you have, the less relational. The more relational, the less profit. And they struggle with that, and and and and. I struggle with that. Of course I struggle with that.
Mansal Denton:I have a lot of empathy for anyone who's in that position. Yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And yet, at the same time, humanity, modern humanity, we have placed ourselves in that bubble. And to take a tree out of its environment because of a mistake that I made seems to me to be unjust. And when I say I, I mean the collective I, my ancestors, me, my neighbors, whatever the collective human, I or we, I don't know. There's a lot there. There's a lot there to unpack. Um, you know, there's a lot of things that I've seen that you can't be regenerative if you're not profitable. And the one time I joined one of these zoom calls, these webinars, and I asked, I said well, how can you be regenerative if you are profitable? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, if you understand the idea of profit, that there's a dollar and that you have it, that also means that Manswell doesn't have it. I mean, to some degree, that's a zero-sum game. You know, profit is limited, money is limited, it's a scarce resource, ie. That's why it matters. If money was unlimited and it wasn't a scarce resource and it wasn't a zero-sum game, then it wouldn't exist. It couldn't exist, not in this state. So it has to be a zero-sum game.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But we understand forest andrology and ecology to be not a zero-sum game right. So, like Douglas fir grows next to a beech tree, you cover the beech tree with total photosynthetic cover so that the beech tree has zero photosynthetic ability and you still can monitor carbon pass between the fungal, uh mycorrhizal fungal root systems from a source tree to a sink tree. That is to say, the douglas fir is overproducing, via photosynthesis, glucose molecules, carbon molecules, if you will and there's passing it to the tree that is unable to photosynthesize. And so the point is, if you are profitable, you can't be regenerative, at least you can't be relational. And so how we start to reconcile that with the need for profit, the need for economic stability and everything else, that is a really interesting conversation I think we could have Before we jump into that.
Daniel Firth Griffith:We always just kind of start so you're here with us at the wildland, thanks for being here. Um, we've had some fun and, uh, I don't know how much of that you want to talk about, um, but I'd I'd love to just intro your presence here while you're here. Um, what brought you out here to travel from home? Um, maybe a little bit of what you're working through in your personal life, or personal professional life, or, um, your relationship to sacred hunting, um, and then what just I don't know. Go from there and see what happens.
Mansal Denton:Yeah Well, I heard a call over the past year to a call over the past year to lean further and further into feeding myself in a way that felt in integrity. That's what led me here Ultimately. You know our last conversation here last year you, you know it's funny when we were going through the field harvest. I think I told you I do better with direct feedback and I don't think you gave me any direct feedback necessarily last time I saw you. But you have a strong perspective on things and at times it can come across to some as judgmental, and I'm sure it's not pure.
Mansal Denton:As all humans we have our shadows and our gold Right. But I see it as or I experienced it as calling me up further, or I experienced it as calling me up further. And I hope to be the type of person that when someone points out a flaw or a shadow or a blind spot, I can take responsibility and acknowledge it and then step more fully into it. And so my wife and I I have led sacred hunting for five years and at home, predominantly all the food I was eating was wild game things that I had hunted myself. Honestly, the last couple of years I've I've moved more to to become a scavenger than anything. You've got trophy hunters that come and they leave the whole carcass, or people who kill an animal to get it off their land and don't want it, and so I've started to eat more protein from those sources. But there were still times when I was in the United States where I would kind of outsource my connection to someone that I trusted or someone who had a label that I trusted.
Mansal Denton:We can talk about that maybe and you know I realized that was equal parts a system obfuscating and deceiving, and also my own complicit desire for it to be true, you know. So let me get the better stuff, but don't take full responsibility, for it was kind of how I was living like 20% of my 10 to 20% of my existence. So you know, truthfully, I had a lot of selfish stories. I now see stories of you know, when I'm traveling, well, I need protein. Or we go out to eat Well, this restaurant's known for this type of food. I don't want to limit myself and, yeah, only now have I really seen.
Mansal Denton:Oh yes, those are motivations and oftentimes they're rationalizations to tell myself a story because I want to do something. Ultimately, we're all doing that. We just want to do things, so we rationalize doing that. So what felt really good to me now having a wife starting a family was if we're going to have fat in our diet because wild game doesn't always have a lot, and we want to get a cow into our diet, I have to do it the right way.
Mansal Denton:There's nobody else that I feel, and that doesn't mean there aren't out there, I just don't know everybody. But there was nobody else where I felt like there was the level of self-sacrifice that you make for the way that you treat and relate to the animals. That felt true to me and that drew me out to come visit and come participate in this. And I've taken a lot of life, I've been present to a lot of life being taken, and this was different.
Mansal Denton:This experience of a field harvest of a cow and knowing the cow was important to me. I asked and wanted to kind of understand her story and understand her life and that's part of my process that I bring, even with sacred hunting, of starting to open our heart to the animal. And it makes it harder in some ways, and that's kind of the point. We felt really compelled, both my wife and I, in coming here and we were very grateful to be here and some pretty powerful things happened to me in the subject of life and death before we even came here. So before we even met Mary Gold the cow, we had a pretty powerful experience with that, which I'm glad you were able to participate in.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Last year I wrote a book Stag Tyne Concentric Rewilding that just last month won the Nautilus Award Book of the Year the special honors, which is just crazy to me. I wrote the book in an attempt to describe the introductory philosophies and realities of the Wildland and the Wildland Project here in a way that was both filled with soul and science but also rich amounts of storytelling. I tried to get it published for about six months and many people were interested in it. We had one publisher say that this book was going to be able to do what Gabe Brown's Dirt to Soil did back in. Well, I don't know whenever that book was published, but they hated my storytelling. They said that humanity just wants to be told what to do. They don't want stories to illustrate. To illustrate that and uh well, that obviously is not what we did, and so we went another direction and we're really glad we did. Um, being true to the soul of the work and spending a lot more time telling stories and not just taking science and beating it over your freaking heads. I think it was a good, good idea. Well, the Nautilus thought so.
Daniel Firth Griffith:If this conversation, if any of the previous conversations I've had with my dear friend Taylor Keene is interesting to you, I encourage you to check the book out. You can pick up a copy from our website. I'll mail it directly to you. You can go on Amazon, bookshoporg, go to your local bookstore. Some of them have them. And if they don't, ask them why they don't because it's cool and they should carry cool books, and yeah, that's it. And if these conversations don't mean anything to you, I encourage you to stop listening here, because Manso and I are about to escalate some of these thoughts into a higher dimension that you just won't find interesting. If you don't find this interesting, Well, let's jump back in. It's something that I think is stretching to this modern green movement, Maybe stretching beyond I shouldn't say maybe. I believe it's definitely stretching beyond its intent. Oh, there's a deer right there jumping back. Bye, buddy. No, I think the idea of consent and the idea of an animal being born without a predetermined outcome is not just stretching to the bounds of this modern green agricultural movement regenerative, whatever you want to call it. I think it's beyond the bounds. I think it's entirely, uh, decrepit in its values of life.
Daniel Firth Griffith:We led a harvest last month. We, like we lead a lot of group harvests, you know, as you got to participate in and getting people into the field and you know it's interesting who comes like probably like your sacred hunts that you've led in the past like who actually comes out is always very surprising because you would think kind of people like you and I would come out to these things and it's just I don't know what your case is, but like it's never really the case for us. There's a lot of people who, you know, have eaten meat for 30 years of their adult life and they've never been a part of the process and they just don't feel like they can eat meat anymore without participating at least one time in the process. And so they come out and it's new to them and it's it's aggravating and it's emotional and it pushes them and I think that's really healthy. Um, we've had usda inspectors come out to our group courses just to continue learning how to do their job better, and so you know there's a lot of people who come out to these things.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But this past early May we taught a course, a beef harvesting course. I think we talked about this you and I the other night and we didn't even harvest a cow. We walked out there as a group and really long story short, it just wasn't the day. And we had people flying in from Calgary, we had people flying in from Portland, Maine. We had people flying in from San Diego, California. We had people from just north of Lakeland, Florida. I mean, people came from all over this continent to come learn how to harvest a cow. And we're very clear with that. There's nothing predetermined about the cow dying until the cow says, yeah, it's time and there's a gift there, and if the gift isn't there, you don't take the cow. And so we went out to the field and went to harvest the animal and we didn't harvest the animal and so we had a bonfire and we cried and we smoked and we cried and we cried and we smoked and we dreamed together and we talked.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And I have gotten to speak with a lot of those students about a month after and, um, all their lives changed. Everyone I could speak with, everyone that gave me the time One had a really good conversation about in the field. He said, uh, he's never been that religious or spiritual, but he said, uh, he met God. That's all I'm going to say about that, Cause it's his story. But he met God, and all I'm going to say about that, because it's his story. But he met God and I think that's really difficult to place the idea of consent and harvest being a gift that you're not owed Humanity is not owed.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I think it's really hard to place that into the conversations of agriculture, let alone a regenerative agriculture, but I think that's a huge component that I've only recently been able to find the words for.
Daniel Firth Griffith:You know, we talk about soil and food and nutrient density and we study the palates and you know prophylactic medication and foraging instincts of animals and we see all these books about nutritional wisdom and everything else. But they're just cogs in a machine. It just they're born, their nuts are cut off or separated from their parents and then they die like that's, that's their story. And yeah, I mean they might be happy when they're grazing on pasture, but it's this pasture that I told you to be in and it's this day that you die unequivocally. And there has to start to be some conversation there, I think, Even if you take away all other problems of the USDA system which I think people at Fermi speak about a lot and we can happily talk about that too Stress, cortisol, insulation, post-mortem into the carcass and pH levels and dark cutting and lipid profiles that reduce bioavailability of nutrients and everything in between. But it's just like. What about the consent that reduce?
Mansal Denton:bioavailability of nutrients and everything in between. But it's just like what about the consent? Yeah, what I hear from you and how you're talking about it is where do we actually look at this from the perspective? That's not selfish, yeah, Because even all those things like oh, it's worse for the meat quality to go to a USDA Okay, Meat quality for who? You, the consumer? Nutrients for you the consumer.
Mansal Denton:I really hesitate to make those kinds of arguments, especially with statistics and things, because it weakens the argument that I'm really trying to make, while at the same time I realize it speaks the same language of many people and to some degree there's even a part of my brain that gets tickled by these kinds of numbers and things. But what about the other beings? I mean, the purpose of elevating our consciousness through any type of spiritual tradition is to get to a place where the love can't not overflow to other beings. Right? You know what I alluded to in coming here. Briefly, since we had this conversation already, I'll just say I had a moment last week, a little over a week ago pound kitten just waddling along the shoulder as trucks barreled down the highway going 90 miles an hour, and there was a moment which might have been one of the greatest gifts that that kitten could give me. Where it was, I couldn't not experience this type of divine compassion and love for this creature, what I might liken to Christ consciousness or the compassion that Christ shared for others and I don't always have that, far from it but in that moment I could touch that place where I'm so full in my relationship to spirit and to God that I must give to others, and I don't know that any wisdom tradition would say the opposite, especially as it pertains to the beings that are all around us.
Mansal Denton:I think you and I I've spent a lot of time learning about indigenous cultures in particular, and I think to some degree they were spared the terror of domesticating animals Because most indigenous people of the North and South Americas, they really didn't do much domestication Some dogs up North, maybe llamas down South, but it wasn't anything near the level of domestication that the Europeans had to do. And people around the rest of the world, rest of the world, and we can look at that and we can say, oh, look at how these humans forced their will on these animals, and that is true. But you have to see also the reverse. In order for us to dehumanize the animals, to do that we had to alter our own psyche to our deep, deep, uh, you know, pain, and it showed up in the pain that urban, disease-ridden europeans experienced versus the relatively, you know, free peoples of the americas.
Mansal Denton:So anyway, that is to say we've, we've spent many thousands of years psychologically contemplating how to dominate and control, and you know one of the great things about sacred hunting is I. I get to interact and relate with animals that oftentimes are wild and oftentimes don't have this projection of what they will be, how they will be and what I see coming from that world, and what I see you trying to do here is bring some of the best elements of that. You know, wild life, the sovereign, autonomous, free beings here to your farm, I mean.
Daniel Firth Griffith:at the same time, it's very hard, because if property boundaries and land ownership would be eradicated, I'll be the first person to quit my job. I would quit the day before. The only reason that farming is a necessity today is because of these two things private property and boundaries.
Mansal Denton:There's a perfect example I heard recently. This is a little bit of a tangent. But think about Airbnb. We have this huge multi-billion dollar organization that commoditizes generosity. I don't consider it to be a bad thing necessarily, but we've come to such a place of lack of trust, lack of connection. That's interesting. Strong, you know spiritual lineages, especially coherent lineages you would have no matter what. That's really interesting Poor person in need house Gets a house.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting thought, one of my favorite quotes that I think of when it comes to that concept of the people who are in need, but also can be utilized for the purposes of animals. And I say this I'm just reading this but For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And brothers and sisters include the four-legged yeah, and the wing, and it is interesting, it is that's really, you know, when you said that, the least of these. It's interesting, I don't know a single person in like the regenerative agricultural space. That's like I don't know there's a robin over there in the field, like, what about the robin? You know, like the tree swallows, but the tree swallows, of course, like everybody, has tree swallow boxes in their, you know, regenerative ag pastures, because, well, one, because greg judy, the savior of the world, said so.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But number two, it's because they eat the flies off the cows and flies that cows are bad things and they stress out the meat and everything else. They're the stress of the being that produces stressed out meat and you know, lack of health and but nobody cares about the robins. As you add that mammon, that, that, that the resource, the profit, only the bison matter, right, you know? Or only the cow matters, or the animal impact of the carbon at the soil, the biodiversity, or however you want to come at the issue. Yeah, those big things are the only thing that matters.
Mansal Denton:It completely removes the consciousness piece, the sacred, yeah, one of the most important, because, like I said, I've studied indigenous practices for so long. Obviously now I've been studying Christian theology. One of the most important things that Jesus brings up consistently is hypocrisy for those who are self-righteous. So what I say right now I do not mean to be self-righteous. It was a gift for me to see that kitten. That kitten was the least of these. That kitten could do nothing for me tangibly, but it could do everything for my consciousness I understand what good is it to acquire the world and lose your soul?
Daniel Firth Griffith:yeah, that's it. This whole conversation is like not allowed in so many of the spaces that you and I have run in I think I do a good job of filtering people with a term like sacred hunting.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, cause it tells people right there like this is we're going to get woo, if that's what you want to call it? Yeah, and I think that's how I've avoided some of the too heavy backlash on my, to be perfectly public about it.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I mean, when Morgan and I started farming, we started farming with the full intention to uh, you know, stop me from dying. That was pretty cool. And at the time, regenerative ag was this, this, this, this huge thing. And you know, it was 2012, 2013, and joel salatin was awesome and you know all these things. And then, as we got into it, we were like, wait a second, this just feels like force. And then we got got into it. We were like, wait a second, this just feels like force. And then we got into it and we were like, wait a second, this just feels like extraction. And then we got into it even more and we started to realize that, like you know, a bunch of regenerative grass farmers, if you will, were all about their cows being curious and sampling a diverse array of pasture forages, but like they would still be mob grazing them in these tight paddocks where it was just interspecies and intraspecies competition, and that, and that was what they were saying, was relationship, you know.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And then I started to realize that all these people in these podcasts talking about regenerative ag, they were like, oh no, we are the relationship, we don't have relationship. And they were saying all of these like very progressive, very strong, very kinship based and relational based and honor based words. And I looked at Morgan one day and I said, morgan, this just seems like one massive talisman, right the stone or the sacred object that we can carry and thereby be holy or sacred, but not actually have to be sacred by ourselves, like this thing, this, this clothing, this garb, this breastplate, if you will, that we can put on. That's a talisman that gives us power, but like we don't actually have that power. But as long as we say community, as long as you say regen, as long as we say that we are relationship instead of we have relationship, we say we are earth instead of we, you know we are on earth or siblings of earth or whatever, and we speak about this oneness like we are one, but then we still live our lives in this linear, reductionistic, only profit-based system of control and, I think, colonization and justification for a lot of resource extraction and everything else. But no, no, no, we have the breastplate, we have the talisman, we're wearing the right clothing, daniel, and I see it. I mean it's hard. You know this, you know this is true.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I mean, here on the farm. We have property tax, we have liability insurance because in the state of Virginia they hate farmers and we have to carry liability insurance. And you know, it's 400 acres and it's two miles from one way to the other and it's like if you're going to carry a bucket of water you kind of need a vehicle, for instance, and so now we have, you know, gas. There's a lot of expenses in running, so like we all have these pressures, but at the same time, acknowledging those pressures is one thing, and acknowledging that those pressures are rather not pressures at all, but like a part of your saving godness or your godlikeness, or whatever you want to call it. Your, your, your stewardship, power over earth, your control over earth, and it's a good way, good way. That's a different situation. There's two things going on.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, I read this quote. I'm going to read it. We live a double life civilized in scientific and technical matters, wild and primitive in the things of the soul that we are no longer conscious of. Being primitive makes our tamed kind of wildness all the more dangerous. And that's what I see with yeah, that's what I see as major risks, with problems like, or things like, regenerative agriculture Wow, that's good. And the and you know, vegans and beyond, meat and all that kind of stuff is just as guilty. I'm not taking a side here, I'm just saying they're two sides to the same coin. Yeah, the coin's the problem.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, I wonder how many people who are relating to land, how many people who are relating to land, how many people who are relating to even just you know work in let's say they have a cpg company or whatever. How?
Mansal Denton:many unnamed one yeah, how many decisions, intentionally, that serve your conscience serve the opposite of profit With you? I can see it more readily in that, because I can see it, I trust you more and you know I got my own ways of relating to it where I try and do the same. But I think it's a really important question for all of us, myself included, to consistently be asking how many of these decisions are just benefiting me or just benefiting humans.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, I think it'd be. I don't. I realize this is an outrageous answer to your question and even the formulation of an answer to such a hypothetical question is also outrageous. And I realize it sounds simple, but and the word consent is not the right word. I realize this is just where I am now. It's the, it's the word for now, but if there's not consent in the harvest and I'm only speaking about the harvest, let alone the rest of its life, like unless I mean like let's, let's talk about, you know, dicks and nuts, like you can talk about anything you want in these things. I mean it's just like, unless you feel like that, that that bull looked at you and was like take my nuts. Like we could talk about consent in many ways. There's so many that you've opened my eyes to.
Mansal Denton:I mean like separating families from one another, or cutting off their testicles, or forcing them to rape each other. I mean you. You start to look at this and you're like, wait, wait, wait. What like you exactly? Yeah, and I start to look at it and I start to sound, uh, like a lot of this sounds like what vegans say. You know the ones who are really trying to like I can't believe it.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I cannot believe that pita and vegans, uh, in some sort of organized documentary type framework, haven't gotten together and just made a video like I. I cannot believe that they're still picking on whatever USDA processing centers that process, you know, 13,000 or 1300 cows a day or something like that. That's like that's much harder. There's like billions of dollars there. But like, on this other side you have a farmer with a razor blade in his knife and 50 scrotums on his knees, you know, right before his knees on the ground, and it's just like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you doing? And I realized that that's really difficult conversation. Um, I do I, I? I realized that, um, yeah, and then my mind is spiraling in 50 different directions. But but if there's no consent, it's it. I don't understand what we're doing. And when I say consent, what would you?
Daniel Firth Griffith:What people have to be very clear about is a good friend of mine is a Lakota and he always tells me that all of this regenerative ag mob grazing is complete bullshit. Because before the horse was brought by the Spanish back into the Western Hemisphere, his people, their stories, hold that they would always just kill a wolf, don the wolf's clothing and crawl on their bellies into a herd of Buffalo, then get close enough to spear the underside into their entrails, fell out and they would chase them down and slit the knife, slit their throat or whatever, take out their heart, stab their heart or however. They would have made the kill shot if you will. And he's like yeah, it doesn't make any sense that predators push prey almost naturally in nature in a tight, you know herds that mob, mow and move. Like we literally don the wolf's clothing Jeez, louise, there's a bee we literally don the wolf's clothing to get close to these herds. Like you've totally misunderstood the predator prey relationship. It's a relationship. It's not a competitive relationship or competitive structure or trophic level of predation or something like stupid sounding like that and so again, there's a lot of ways to look at it. Like consent isn't a cow walking into a kill shoot and being like no, I got it.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I understand that's not consent, right, but it's an open system where when you go out to harvest you could very well not harvest just as easily as you do harvest. That's why it's called hunting, not getting. This is the hunter husbandman relationship that I wrote about in stag time. That's why it's called hunting, not getting. This is the hunter-husband relationship that I wrote about in Stag Time. That's the reality. Right, when that deer bests the hunter. Right, that's consent. It's a version of consent.
Daniel Firth Griffith:There force the release of our undeniable, unequivocal, linear progress to harvest right. So we couldn't have a cow born on a farm, a bull, let's say we leave it intact, we leave it with its mom. Four or five years go by and we say we're hungry, our community needs food. We go out there and harvest it and our intent is to harvest it is to kill it, to eat it, to nourish it, to let it be reborn in our life, in our kids' life, whatever. And then it doesn't happen. How can we create structures that allow that to not happen? That is something I'm really interested in, obviously with the reason you're here, but it's also very difficult because it also takes a community to surround that structure based upon consent or seeking for consent, because you have to be open to not harvesting. And if you're open to not consent, because you have to be open to not harvesting and if you're open to not harvesting, you have to be able to share your provisions and your food Like you can't be a rustic individualist all by yourself and trying to survive on your own. You need community, you need support. That's another thing.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I need to finish writing the second book of this series that I'm trying to get through, because this is where it's really held. But not a lot of people understand this connection and I need to make it a little bit more apparent. But in all of our life, all of these concentric rewilding systems that we're trying to play with and experiment with and have conversations with and I always say that we're asking the questions that our great-great-grandchildren will understand how to phrase better Might not be able to understand even the answer, but maybe we'll be able to phrase them better in future generations. So it's introductory work, of course, but what we have found is that the matriline, the matriarch and herd, the maternal lineage of that herd, means more to the success of these systems than anything else. Not the breed, not the species, not the type of animal, not the season, whatever. It's the matriline.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And the interesting thing about matrilines is, as you look at you know, intergenerational linkages like trauma and memory and everything else. The feminine gene, the mitochondrial DNA, passes the effects of memory but doesn't pass the memory itself. The interesting thing is, if what we're finding is true that the matriline matters. That means that the effects of memory is being passed throughout the herd. So that's the land race. But the land race is connected via effect, not the individual memory itself that understands the effects of the intergenerational linkages of memory and trauma, but not an access to trauma itself. You need a herd, a community, a family to surround that to make any sense of it. So, for instance, if you just had PTSD symptoms around hair being burnt but you never knew your ancestor let's say your mother went through Auschwitz during the Holocaust like you're going to be guessing for a really long time. You need to do deep work until you actually understand that you know it's a relationship back to the memory of hair burning because of auschwitz and and and.
Daniel Firth Griffith:So my point is that memory, that connection, that lineage, that ancestral connection, the family, the unit, the herd, is only important when the effects are had, but not the memory. When I say we all carry memory, of course, but the dominant version of that carrying of the memory is the effects, not the intrinsic. When I say we all carry memory, of course, but the dominant version of that carrying of the memory is the effects, not the intrinsic trauma or the intrinsic memory itself. So it necessitates a herd, right, and so, as the major lines necessitate a herd, and then we break apart that herd or separate that herd or wean that herd or sell parts of that herd or, unequivocally, you know, just start processing that herd, you know, with no consent, in these modern USDA based systems, where they're. You know all the things that we can talk about later if we want.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I can see how that herd just carries that trauma in in a lost sort of way, like there's the understanding that you have trauma and there's understanding that you have the pains but not the language for it, you know.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And so, like you can see now, in my opinion, how this whole thing gets so screwed up because you just have these massive herds that you know are just having these PTSD symptoms, for instance, as the analogy goes, as the extension, as this example goes, without ever even knowing that Auschwitz existed.
Daniel Firth Griffith:You know, knowing that Auschwitz existed, you know, but it's that family, that herd that coming together, it's the lack of castration, the lack of separation, the lack of weaning, the lack of selling families and breaking them apart and the lack of just, you know, murdering 10 of them for fun because you needed food and it was unequivocal and linear in that way, like that, that can create some massive trauma that lives for many generations on these lands. And then we get mad when the grass doesn't want to grow. But we know scientifically that the grass grows when a cow's saliva and the enzymes in that saliva are placed on that grass. So the cow eats the grass. The enzymes in its in its saliva tells the grass now to regrow and it stimulates that regrowth. So we know that the cow's saliva the very mouse of that cow is is in communication with the land and we get angry when the land isn't regenerative because the cow is angry.
Mansal Denton:But yeah, what you're speaking to is and you have spent enough time here and studying to try and put the science to what seems to be a kind of common sense, indigenous understanding, like if you mistreat the land, the land's not going to be happy with you it's very simple well, let's go to have a story. There were people on the moon. They stopped making sacred on the moon, it died.
Daniel Firth Griffith:It's real simple right, don't do that, right. What? What do you think do you? What do you think the role is? Because I get torn between this all the time. I really do.
Mansal Denton:I get torn.
Mansal Denton:Do you think science today is in our way or do you think it's a step in the journey, just like there are immense powers that come from harnessing other tools like, let's say, a shamanic ceremony. I was reading an article from Charles Eisenstein. He was talking about a personal journey he did with Iboga and he kind of framed it from these dual technologies that he was a participant where there's the Bwiti shaman who's gone through all these rituals. They bring the bark from the iboga plant or the iboga tree, and then there's this other shaman who has the magical EMT and the magical defibrillator machine and together they create a powerful experience because you get to have the traditional ceremony that he went through.
Mansal Denton:But you still have the protection of the modern medicine and the science and defibrillator and things, because it does have side effects for the heart sometimes, and so I think of it as a tool and I'm reluctant to demonize it. And yet everything has to be put in its place, everything has to be contextualized, and we all find ourselves in different areas of our lives where we don't want to let imbalance lead things. Somebody might be really really, really great at business, and if that's not coming from the best place, it doesn't matter how successful it is. Objectively, if they're overweight, depressed, they're not balanced in themselves, they're not integrated in themselves. And I think the same is true with science, with technology.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I was thinking so, like today, winnie and I were foraging for bark for cambium in the vascular layer or tissue of trees, for the it's tannic acid, so we're going to use it for tanning a hide. And we were experimenting and I was thinking about this very thing because when I say the word tannic acid to some degree I get very weirded out. Like you know, this tastes horrible Tannic acid, tanning hides. And I had this draw knife when we were in the forest and you know I scraped a little bark off a tree and I put it in my mouth. Winnie, our daughter put it in her mouth and we chewed on it and I asked her. I said, how does your mouth feel? And she described it to me and I agree with what she described, which was an indicator of high tannic acid and great amounts of phytochemicals and secondary compounds. Tannins, that is in the tree's bark that was going to be able to, in a bark liquor, bind to the collagen fibers of this hide and actually chemically transform an organic hide into something that's entirely, really not biological anymore the tanning process. It's really interesting with hides You're turning something that is biological into something that can only be decayed through chemical oxidation. No longer can it be biologically decayed.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I've seen people who've tanned hides and they've put them in a compost pile. Everything else turns to humus, to soil. You know, in the compost pile, hot 18 day, you know, twice a day, turned compost pile and you pull it out, it's still leather, you know. And then they compost it again, and compost it again, and compost it again, and compost it again and it's still just leather, because there's nothing biological about it anymore, not from a scientific perspective, of course. It's biological and that's what the tanning acid does, that's what the vascular tissue, the cambium in these certain trees have the ability to do. It's magic, it's just sacred magic, in my opinion.
Daniel Firth Griffith:No-transcript to this little girl, Like she's seven and she's in a forest, she's eating bark and she's tasting the medicine in it and she's able to describe it to me in a way that we know that this tree is no good or it is good for the process of tanning hide, something that our ancestors obviously did a lot of. And it's like when you have the experience, the science is unnecessary, but if you don't have the experience, the science is necessary. Like if for all those people listening to me that don't have the ability to go in the woods and start chewing on bark to see if it has tannic acid in it, that if it binds to the collagen receptors in their tongue and their saliva and starts to tan their mouth, understanding the scientific validity or the scientific understanding of the ways that tannic acid operates on skin is what they need, right. So the experience, science is needed, I think, when the experience is lacking, and sometimes science is needed to make the experience happen, right.
Daniel Firth Griffith:So, for instance, I think a lot of people come to our processing group courses, our sacred and ceremonial beef harvests and goat harvest and cheap harvest, because they've heard me on a podcast or read a book where they learn that you know stress and in you know meat and harvesting processes lead to less bioavailability of nutrients or something like that and that's science. But then when they come here for the experience, like we never talk about that, never, it's worthless. Like that, that entire structure is worthless because now you're covered in blood and there's no science to blood. You know these things like, right, when you're hunting, like yeah, there's, there's specific understandings the way animals move, but it's a dance, it's a song, it's not calculus, if that makes sense, totally, you know, yeah, I often wonder about that. If we got humans more involved in their world their world, you know, in earth as earth would the science of regeneration even matter.
Mansal Denton:I don't think that it would. I mean, I think the science is as much a product of our disconnection as a cause of it and maybe a solution to it.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, it, and maybe a solution to it. Yeah, but there is, to some degree that's interesting half where it becomes part of the solution. I very much believe that. But the spirit, you know, the spiritual element, because what we're talking about is the spiritual, the conscious, the non-material aspect of reality. It's not just with food. That just happens to be where we're most interested and focused. The same is true for can be said about the clothing we wear. It could be said about the choices we make with our inputs, entertainment inputs and we used to have no choice but to have them connected.
Mansal Denton:I shared with you one of my favorite quotes man's first religion was to kill God and eat him. It's so cliche to say that's what we evolved to do, because people use that so often with hunting. My point is not we evolved to do this specific thing which is hunting. My point is that we co-evolved our sense of spirituality, our sense of connectedness to something that is greater than ourselves, with virtually everything that we did. It just so happened that what we mostly did was feed ourselves, right, yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Like, like what most things a lot, maybe like all things alive.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, and we have lost that. And as soon as, as humans, we lose that, honestly, as soon as I lose that, personally, I start making different decisions. We talked a little bit about palatability with meat, you know, and that's where that quote came up. And there are times when I'm really connected to food. I remember this, I told you this story, but this deer that had something in its intestinal tract and we it offered itself, and there was so much gratitude from me in not just being able to have the meat selfishly, but being able to have it come that way, like, oh, this is when I kill. Now I have the feeling that this is genuinely for the good of all, like this is good for this creature, this is good for myself and my family, this is good for the land, and when I can embody that truth, the together, and so it really brings down the, the weighting that mouth taste has. Yeah, and so we're in this world where we've essentially like, if we have all these dials, we have all these knobs, we've turned down like connection to zero, we've turned down like everything to zero except for taste. And so you wonder why that's the emphasis that everybody has throughout all culture. Yeah, because it's just well. We only have one interface with this thing of reality.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, and some people make you can see that some people make small sacrifices to have incrementally better food, right, I mean, there are people who will say you know what? I'm not going to choose the Wagyu corn-fed animal. I'm going to choose like the little bit leaner, maybe not as affordable, regenerative, grass kind of, from a local farmer type thing, and they're in a small version doing that. They're saying there's other knobs here that we can play with that might be higher, higher. On the meaning side, which I would argue, of course this is my bias is far more important. We are finite beings. If I have to go meals without protein, I promise I won't waste away, despite the little nagging story in my head that says I will. And secondly, if it's in service to something that's meaningful, which I'm just privileged enough to have a connection to it and experience, then that just seems more valuable to me. It doesn't even have to necessarily be this totally selfless thing Like there's a selfishness in just wanting my life to be more meaningful.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, yeah, it does. It seems like any bastardization of these baselines is just an honorable distraction from the beauty of the thing. So, for instance, when a CPG company says we just want to regenerate 100 million acres, and that's what we're here for and our company is whatever, that's the beauty of it and that's wonderful. I mean, I'm glad that you're growing grass and soil and stuff on more acres than not, I guess maybe. But we've bastardized the vision, in my opinion, that here, right, you have good meat and over there, maybe, we have good soil, but everywhere in between is just unhealthy, it's just distracted, it's just modern. Everywhere in between is just unhealthy, it's just distracted, it's just modern, it's just capital-based, it's just profit-based, it's just the understanding that carbon matters more than the cow's heart or the cow's relationship, or the cow's not swinging between its legs or not swinging between its legs, or a female cow's ability to be able to select when she wants to ovulate and get bred and when she doesn't want to ovulate and get bred. I mean, it's pretty simple. But talking about the regeneration of 100 million acres is, to me, bastardizing all of these things that matter into a singularized metric of carbon, soil, vegetative biodiversity, vigor of grass, whatever, whatever metric they're actually going to study, or even allowing us to believe that you can quote unquote be regenerative, not in the modern sense, but in the true definition of that word, that you can regenerate, go through an entire life cycle, including the chaos before rebirth, without actually involving the spirit, without involving the family, without involving these deeper, sacred, real things, which has been my critique for a very long time.
Daniel Firth Griffith:It's like, uh, the world has a lot of relational issues and so we just force a bunch of people to marry each other, like that's our solution. Don't get me wrong we've solved the marriage problem mathematically, but like we haven't solved anything. To me, that's what's a lot of what's going on. We just have a bunch of people that shouldn't be married, married, that don't want to be married, but they're still married so that taxes make more sense or whatever. I have no idea. We're not actually looking at what is valuable. Like you said in the Greek triumvirate what is good, true and beautiful. It might be true to some degree, but it's not either good or beautiful. That's the problem.
Mansal Denton:We beautiful. That's the problem.
Daniel Firth Griffith:We've missed these two parts. You could say it many different ways. Yeah, I mean the true and the good are only worthwhile if it's in service to the beautiful. And I think at a certain point and this is where I think a lot of people get lost and that's fine. It's hard Is the animistic agency acknowledgement side that so many indigenous cultures see as not even a side but just're fucked Through and through. If the grass isn't a linear mathematical measurement that says cow eats 30 days later, it recovers and it's good now, and cow eats in 60 days later if it's the heat of the growing season, or 90 days later, depending on if you live in this area of the world or that area of the world, like if it's just this linear machine turning on being eaten, turning off, then turning on being eaten, turning off, then turning on being eaten, turning off. If it's anything more than that, ie if it has any sort of volition or self-understanding or self-agency, self-determination, self-direction.
Mansal Denton:Well, I think that's what podcasts like this are valuable for and individuals are valuable for, because the people who have the most followers on Instagram and the people who generate the most wealth and, you know, reach the most people are probably the people who can play the game that includes, you know, the materialist, capitalist game the best, but that's actually a pretty limited subset of people who have those skills.
Mansal Denton:Everyone wants to play that game, though to some degree, but the beauty is, each and every one of us and it comes especially naturally to children can love the grass, and it can be done from the park in your neighborhood to the farm that you live on, to any place that you visit, whatever intention you want to bring, and that's the great equalizer is, we can all pray, we can all write love letters and act in devotion towards the plants and the animals and the living beings the plants and the animals and the living beings and that's a democratizing conversation to have for people like us who are essentially saying like there's this whole other side we can't neglect, which is the relational with things, with with beings that are non you know, non-human beings, and human beings yeah, I mean, geez, most people don't even have good relational skills with humans.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, a mentor of mine, um, omaha, omaha, fella, he says, uh, he says, until we love mother earth, this mother, like we love our own mother or as our own mother, we just don't have many places to go. You know, and it's like that that, like that love that we have for our own kind, like when you this, this consciousness that you're talking about, when that extends to all kinds, you know, the four-legged and the winged, and then the plant nations and everything else their health is. And I think a lot of these modern structures are trying to limit our gaze, maybe not intentionally, they're just good at what they do and that what they do is limiting, but they limit our gaze into a particular thing. You know, um, for instance, you know one of the ecological monitoring processes that we've been a part of for many, many, many years that we're now not a part of, you know, would score pasture health based upon the existence of certain species and the lack of existence of other species. And when we were pretty deep into it, I started to play with the idea and one day maybe I'll write something to this regard. But you know, we think about biodiversity from like a regenerative, green perspective as a need like.
Daniel Firth Griffith:To some degree, biodiversity is generally lacking today. It's definitely one of the biological indicators of a unhealthy environment forced biodiversity loss or just biodiversity loss because the plants are saying I'm out of here, I don't want to be here anymore. You guys are assholes. Either way, this lack of biodiversity is a problem, but we look at biodiversity from a numerical perspective. We measure biodiversity based upon the number of species, and I think that's really weird. I think it's not really weird, it's completely expected given the system that we're in. But I think biodiversity is much more interesting when you look at it from an opportunity perspective, which is kind of what you're getting at, maybe not in regard to biodiversity per se, but in terms of the general conversation at hand Biodiversity as a value set, as a valuable reality. Either way you want to look at it both are true is a biodiversity of opportunity, not numbers.
Daniel Firth Griffith:That is to say that when plantain is needed, she's able to come into the system and do what she needs to do. When she's not needed, she has the ability, the freedom, the volition, the self-determination, the agency to then leave when she wants to leave, and so it's not a biodiversity of numbers, it's the biodiversity of, that is to say the existence of a biodiverse system that can be as diverse, that is to say, positive or negative, given the need. So, for instance, canadian bull thistle horrible plant and ecological monitoring, given many different regenerative frameworks, would see that as a degenerative plant. Can't believe that's even coming out of my mouth, what a strange thing to say. But the fact that Canadian bull thistle can come into a system, heal it, say mine phosphorus, and then leave the system when the phosphorus has been mined from the soil, that is to say uplifted through a very selfless soil-to-root connection system network, if you will, family set given to the plants around it that need the phosphorus, because the Canadian bull thistle doesn't need phosphorus, let's say I think it might be potassium, I don't know, I'm confusing my peas and then it can leave when its job is done. That to me is unbelievable, right, that to me is health, but it takes a very passing understanding of life and I think this is what the West, and definitely science, has a hard time understanding. And I think when people come to harvest, these harvesting courses and these sacred workshops that we throw, like, I think they get to meet this for the first time, that like when the cow died the other day, I guess she died, but she also didn't. She's now reborn, right, like you guys were talking, and and it's just like she's literally going to become tomorrow. Like whatever that is for me or you or whoever's eating it eating her, like it's literally that tomorrow. And so, like when our kids today we were eating lunch and the meat tasted a little bit different than uh, gumby was familiar with, cause, we've been eating a cow named Bighorn for a while and we we started eating another one, um, just picked from different side of the freezer. This morning we pulled it out of the freezer and defrosted it and Gumpy goes this isn't Bighorn, no, it's not Today. We're not going to become Bighorn. Bighorn's not going to become us. He's going to freeze in the freezer for another.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Like the point, like how cool is that? Like the idea of life, death, chaos, rebirth, growth, life again, the cycle of life not being ever really fluid, right? So like a field isn't always a field, it's a field but it's also a forest, just not yet, right. Or a forest is a field, but not yet. Like all of these nonlinear ways of seeing time.
Daniel Firth Griffith:This is the role of, I think, mythology of oral storytelling, of a lot of more ancient techniques on carrying story and carrying tales.
Daniel Firth Griffith:There's no beginning, there's no end. It's fluid. It's not like you begin at the beginning. You follow this like hero's journey and arc that rises in a linear fashion, then maybe dawdle a little bit at the climax and then crescendos again, like that's very Western understanding of storytelling, but like, just as life is, so our stories used to follow, because our stories were living in the ecotone. That's what mythology is. And you know, sometimes you would begin at the end or the end of the beginning and then you would follow the cyclical pattern where you just see the circle, circle, circle, circle, circle through the seasons, through life, through death and rebirth, and we were comfortable and familiar with that. And I think today, even in regenerative agriculture, that petrifies us to think that a field would be anything else in a carbon sequestering grassland full of herbaceous perennials that don't go, you know, into canadian bull thistle or horse nettle, or, you know, burdock, or I'm just naming plants that are just so bad for the regenerative land, you know yeah it.
Mansal Denton:It brings up a. I know you're not necessarily vilifying regenerative agriculture I would never do that and I see the value in all of these systems, including the science, technology, materialist system and one of the things I was listening to Bishop Robert Barron recently and he was talking about the Aristotelian concept of being as good. So everything is good by virtue of its isness or its beingness isness or its beingness. Where evil arises in the Christian worldview is when something is corruptible or corrupted. So even that which is considered to be the most evil in the Christian story, satan, is not evil because of some innate evilness. It's actually good, he was one of the angels, but he becomes corrupted.
Mansal Denton:And similarly, in this story of eating meat, the vegans might say eating meat, that's something. There's evil there, there's wrong there. Say eating meat, that's, that's something. There's evil, there is wrong there. And we might say, well, something about the regenerative movements, like out of whack it's. It's really the corruptibility that is changing things and that's not to say like corruptibility, like there's some individual who's corrupting it, insofar as we are imbalanced. And so all those things you shared, and understanding of all those different plants and where they go and their life cycle, and all these things. None of those things are bad. It's just if that's the only way we're relating to the land and if we're out of balance, that's when it starts to become corrupted. And so I feel pretty confident now, as much as it is a new thing for me to say and a pill for me to swallow, but our system of doing food in this country is leaning towards evil.
Daniel Firth Griffith:This is so bad to say publicly because now people are going to start to notice that I do it. But I love when I give tours. When people come out, you know I always bring them to the horses because within about 50 feet when we get to to the horses, like the horses are going to tell me those people's hearts and I use it as like litmus test. You know, and, uh, and, and, and and. It's that physicality. You can't do that over the phone, I can't just sew a picture of the person to the horse. You know it's like this.
Daniel Firth Griffith:There's something, something very real in the way humanity wears our hearts. You know, on the outside, if they're cropped, if they're balanced, if they're good, if they're holy, if they're beautiful, if it's true, you know all of these things and I think animals, especially horses, I think that kind of, you know, human connection is something very interesting. It, the equine, to you know, human connection, is something very interesting. It's ancient and I think the human equine connection is, is just that way. I mean, they've been around humans for a very long time and humans have been around them for a very long time, even if they weren't domesticated, they were always together. My point being. Um, there's a physicality to this balance. How we start to facilitate that physicality in the rebalancing of modern man is an interesting conversation. I think it's a very hard conversation Because a CBG company. What they're doing is they're able to take really good food and replace the really bad food alternatives that most consumers have. I don't want to say the necessity to buy from, but I mean you can go online, you can order a pack of really good ground beef and get it delivered to your door. I think it's a really wonderful thing. Uh, it's beginning, it's a step right in that wonderful direction.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But at the same time, and until the human, that human, the consumer who bought that pound of ground beef, starts to actually inhabit earth as an earthling, that experience, I just don't think rebalancing could actually occur. And so I think we need both of these conversations to be happening simultaneously, like, yes, for instance, let's increase the number of plants in a field, let's call that generally biodiversity, although I disagree with the term, as I said earlier, that's generally going to be a positive thing. Let's increase the soil's, you know, aqueous, uh, nis. Let's say if it's, if it's organic material, is stability, if it's organic material. And let's say we can sequester more carbon and we can have more mycorrhizal and saccharophytic fungal food systems and networks and, and you know, webs of of relationship in forests, in fields, and let's say that's also a really good thing.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But, but at the same time, until the human's hand is in the dirt, we don't understand fungi. We can't have a relationship or a balancing relationship or kinship with fungi. We can't do it. It can't just be hypothetical or theoretical, it can't just be scientific, it has to be experience-based. How we start to facilitate that.
Daniel Firth Griffith:A whole other thing, you know, like with your sacred hunting, with our sacred harvest, let's call them like. It costs money and it's, it's time, and we don't all have money and we all don't have time and we don't have the ability to just leave our families and come out to, you know, the wildland here in the middle of nowhere, central Virginia, and do these things for days on end. Like, I get the restrictions, but I think we somehow need to start formulating a conversation around experience, around actual time spent together and actual conversations. Not just I buy my food from this CPG company and therefore I'm good. No, how we nourish ourselves, like you're saying, is very important to the human experience, to the human psyche, to the human heart, to the human relationship with our creator, our God. I think that's very important. But food isn't just amino acids, nutrient profiles, primary or secondary compounds. Food is relationship, food is energy, food is naming, Food is experiencing the blood all over your fingers. I talk about this all the time in courses, but it's just that grief and the glitter.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I don't know how long it took you to like get the and you've processed enough animals. You get this, so it's not entirely new to you. But like it just takes so much time to get that smell. Like off your fingers. Like I still have that hide smell like the grizzle fascia fat smell from fleshing that hide. The other day that was two days ago Like I still smell it still there Like glitter. You can't wash it off and I think that's really healthy. You know, I think in its time, in its way, in its evolution, in the human's ability to be able to access that human evolution. Like I get the complexity but we can't just export resources and call it a day. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Mansal Denton:Yeah and uh. My hope is, you know, we have in-person experiences that we bring people out to and it's a fine line to walk in the world that we have Cause, like you said, they're a resource.
Mansal Denton:It costs a lot of time and energy and money and not everybody has that and I don't want this opportunity to expand consciousness to be, exclusively for the wealthy or people who can commit to those things, and I want to make it available and I'm working on how to communicate that properly, get available and I'm, you know, working on how to to communicate that properly. But the beautiful thing is, nobody needs any money to commune with nature. Yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And be kind and honorable. Yeah, I agree with you and I think that's why there's this kind of conversation, cause I think about all the time the of podcasts. You know I do. It's why there's large blips in in the podcast that we post. There'll be like 10 podcasts and then like a month or two and it's just like is this really doing any good? So I think about these things all the time.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But but I think what you said it's very important. I think you know a lot of people have the ability to listen, to start letting that ferment in their own body and and go through that fermentation phase and swelling phase and transformation phase and slowly to shift that consciousness and awaken to certain things and like we're all going to have the ability to do things differently. But I always tell people and I don't know if it ever lands, but I would be curious about how you talk about these things when people ask like what do you? What do we do? You know it's whatever. I hate that question. I hate that question so much.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But if I had anything to say, it's I always tell life, how many lives around you did you notice, did you talk to, did you acknowledge? And like I don't know, just like, start to think about that, like, why didn't you notice the Robin? Like, why didn't you notice that beautiful ornamental, planted, invasive, you know rosebush? Like? Why didn't? Why didn't you see its beauty? Like, why didn't you stop and like dance, like, why, why didn't you celebrate the bounty of life, planted or otherwise, invasive or native, I don't care but the bounty of colors and smells and aromas and touches, like when you walk by the rosebush? Why didn't you like, gracefully, like, flick one of its, one of its little briars, you know, just gracefully, be like I see you, I see you Like, why didn't you do this? And then, just like, start there and let a decade go by before you even touch the rose bush, I don't care but just like, start to really question why in your own life do you prohibit experience, that joy, that kinship, the relationship, whatever, that is, the observational, the wonder sense, and then go from there.
Daniel Firth Griffith:That's not like a singular thing. I say many things. How do you see it? How do people really start to experience life as an earthling?
Mansal Denton:Well, you know that last part that you're speaking to reminded me of and I apologize for people listening so much Christian theology here. Hopefully I've helped to reframe or re-envision it. I'm not Christian and I know that there's a lot of trauma around Christianity, but there's a really great Orthodox book.
Mansal Denton:I'm actually going to order it for you because I think you'll appreciate it, but it's called the Mountain of Silence and in it Father Maximus is talking about what disconnects people from God, and one of the things he talks about is forgetfulness. One of the things he talks about is ignorance. So you know, just not knowing and then forgetting. And then the third one he mentioned, which is so present for me right now, is a hardened heart, and I really do feel so blessed for that little kitten because I say it softened my hardened heart. That kitten I cried so much in like 72 hours, more than I have in probably the last 10 years combined, and partially what it was was that it just completely broke open my heart.
Mansal Denton:And so Father Maximus says what the saints do and what the saints. The saints were those who followed Christ. They lived most like Christ. And Father Maximus in the book he says what the saints do is they pray for a crushed heart, heart they pray to be brokenhearted so that they can be soft. And with that softness comes that love, the outpouring of love Because we all do it and I'm so guilty of it as well Just harden my heart. Don't trust this person. This person's not giving me what I need or want, this person's betraying me in this way and in all our human relationships. If we behave that way, it transfers exactly in the same way with the earth and with nature.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, and as I think about that, when I think about humans and I'm reserved with humans, it's because of, uh, fake stress, right, Like when I say fake stress, what I mean is like I'm reserved around humans cause they could hurt me, but but very few humans could hurt me physically my life, Right, but it's they might hate me, or like I remember I was raised Christian. I don't think I've said this really on a podcast before, but I was raised Christian and I had a lot of questions and so I converted to Judaism because it seemed like either they dismissed my questions as, like doesn't really matter, which I supported, or they had relative answers and I appreciate language, and so I could learn the biblical Hebrew language and I could study the Bible in that way. And God, what an experience that was. I'm not a Jew anymore, I don't practice Judaism anymore. I should say it more properly because they got so in trouble, Like they got so mad at me. I got so many emails and of these people, like the Jewish farming coalition and all of these other places, were just like no, how dare you? Like, you're not Jewish, You're Irish, You're not allowed to be Jewish. And I was like well, I'm not Jewish, I practice Judaism. I think there's a lot of truth in that and I had learned the language and I read, you know, your Holy scriptures in your language. And you know I'm not doing this half-ass like I'm, I'm, I'm all the way, Like you don't even read the Bible in your, in your own language. And they're like no, no, you're not ethnically Jewish, you can't, you can that. Now I say that that led me into like Celtic paganism or whatever, which is funny, but that's like a false hurt, Like I can't tell you how angry I was and how hurt I felt when these people were just like, no, you know, like it was false. But when I think about life, like when I think about earth as earthling, as an earthling we were, you know.
Daniel Firth Griffith:So here at the wildland, I don't believe in pumping water anywhere, like underground through, like aquifers and things, so like we've built all these ponds, and when we can't graze out of a pond, we just simply pump it uphill real quick into a tank, and so the water is always at least, uh, surrounded by birdsong, if it's not always moving or something else like this. A lot of other conversations to have. Well, anyways, we were filling some water buckets at a pond recently and the kids were all there, all three of the kids and my wife Morgan, and we were scooping out the water and a copperhead came out of nowhere. And a copperhead out here is the really only dangerous like if you're going to die out here, it's going to be a copperhead. That's about the only thing that's going to kill you, especially a four-year-old, 30-pound little baby. You know, three or four-year-old little baby, If it puts venom in its fangs and it strikes it could take your life. And it came out of nowhere and it was maybe two feet, two and a half, three feet away from Sequoia, our four-year-old, and you know the kids started screaming and they all ran away and she didn't know what was happening. So she stood and I mean it should have struck her, I mean it just it didn't, it just stared and it should have done it and so it was very kind.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But like that's actual stress, like that, that that's a, that's real Right, but there's nothing emotional about, like the don't be wrong, it's emotional Cause it's a whole body experience. But like it's not the Jewish farming coalition being like oh you bastard, you know it's like a snake, it's not personal, Exactly, Exactly and but my like it's. It's full hearted, you know it's it's, and when you would think that that's what the word that just came up, came to me and came to me, and came to me when you were speaking, was just it's full hearted, Like when I, when I think about being an earthling with earth, I think full hearted, there's nothing reserved about it, Like you're either in the pond with a copperhead or you're not. It's foolhardy when you harvest an animal, the number of times I've just screamed, just bloody, freaking screamed, because it was just like this emotional experience where I didn't know I had something built up and then when the animal died and it was screaming, I was screaming it. The amount of healing that I've experienced during that process of just unprecedented amount of grief, good grief, honest grief, present grief, bloody as fuck kind of grief, just like covered in body.
Daniel Firth Griffith:There was one time, this really short story that should be an entire hour long, so it's going to feel a little unfair but this cow was loose on the road and cops and state departments were all around trying to get the cow back. It was crazed, Something was wrong with it and uh and uh. You know I was a part of this and I had a rifle and I was trying to bring the animal down. Um, it was just this neighbor, this neighbor, this whatever doesn't matter and somebody needed to take the animal down. And so I came out there and I shot it and she didn't die. And so I shot it again and I was moving forward.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I was shooting and walking forward with this rifle at her and this greatest moment not when I don't mean the greatest, as in the most heroic, I mean greatest, as in the most pivotal, one of the more pivotal moments of my life and the more like open-hearted moments of my life she turned and she started running at me. Like you've been in a field with a cow and a rifle. This animal was massive and not mine, if you know what I mean. And I'm shooting and walking forward and I'm screaming at this point, you know, cause the cops, and like it was just horrible. And she started running at me, running at me, and I had this big knife, cause you know I understand how to harvest a cow and I'm shooting her.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I ended up putting maybe four or five bullets in her, in her head, and she still was coming at me and right at the last second I dropped the gun. She's coming at me. She didn't have horns, thank God, but I took my knife and I speared her through the sternum right into her heart, as she's like standing, and I'm screaming like how dare you put me in this situation, Not in a physical way, but just like. How dare you make me have to do this to you? You know, like the only reason that I'm killing you is because of roads, of boundaries Like you are causing nobody harm, but you will not stay farmed on whatever farm you come from. Like you're, you're, you're just in everybody's way and the cops are being called and the state troopers are trying to get. Like you're going to be peppered with a fricking bazooka here soon. Like I mean it just like many days of problems.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And uh, and I'm screaming and I, you know, I'm just stabbing her in the neck and the neck and the neck. And we both fell together and I'll never forget that feeling massive cow, 1500 pound cow probably and we just fell to the ground together and I just kept my knife in her and I just screamed so loud. I was just screaming fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And I mean I was screaming at myself, I was screaming at society. I was screaming at domestication. I was screaming at her fricking farmers who couldn't treat a cow in a good way and cause this to happen. And I was screaming at the ancestors who, you know, fucked up her lineage and gave her all this trauma. And I'm just screaming at everything in this moment. You know, I do know, yeah thing in this moment.
Mansal Denton:You know, I do know, yeah, yeah, and you know we have to each find the embodied portals to those kinds of emotions if you want to stay open-hearted. Yeah, and you go through enough of these field harvests that you know it's present for you and and I used to go through enough hunts, but now I don't. And what has consistently brought me those kinds of feelings and a lot of tears just driving the way up here was roadkill, animals hit on the side of the road, left to die, mangled, broken legs, pregnant babies, broken legs, pregnant babies. And I'm not crying and grieving just those animals.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, I'm touching all the creatures crying out. I'm crying for the vulnerable child in me that was two years old and was hit and vulnerable, and that's going to look different for everybody. You know what allows them to stay open hearted, but it's not a pleasant feeling. It's not a pleasant feeling to stay open hearted to some degree, mm-hmm, and it goes both ways. It's not just uncomfortable, but you can't dampen uncomfortable emotions and have all the positive emotions. Yeah, you're just going to dampen all your emotions, right, and so they're needed.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I was telling this to Kendall, your wife, when you were gone yesterday, whatever yesterday, whatever it was. We were, I think we were making lunch and we were walking back and she asked if you know, in a lot of our bigger group courses if we had any organized ceremony or something. And it's interesting, I really struggle with this. We don't. There's nothing organized from a ceremonial perspective about it. There's nothing predetermined or strategic or whatever planned, if you will, whatever word is more proper there. And I think about these things often. I don't think I I'm static in place, like I think it's still a very open question for us at open consideration.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But one of the reasons that we've removed the very planned ceremony from the really big group course, when the modern human experiences that full feeling, open hearted, broken hearted let's call it grief in the harvest for the first time, it's unbelievable.
Daniel Firth Griffith:It's unbelievable but it's also entirely new to them, because I think it's it's. It's really unexpected to be on a farm, to be in a field that's fenced, to be with a cow and think you're going to have a ceremonial, sacred, divine encounter. But it happens, you know, and there's no way to prepare for that. It's not like you know again, like you're getting dressed in camos and it's 5am and you're walking out to the forest and it's hush and it's not like there's like the ceremony of, like the physical hunt. There's no lead up, it's just, it's a domestic farm, like there's fencing and there's gates and there's electricity. You know, you see, you know I'm trying to say it's. It's just different and how people approach it is different. And I think in time we're going to start to develop some plans and you know, we're working through these things and slowly understanding them and feeling them through. But my point in bringing this up is to say, simply, when people are in the field, it's it that, that full-bodied emotion, it's. It's that full-bodied emotion, it's unbelievable, it's life-changing.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, it sounds to me what you're saying is the experience itself, is the ceremony, yeah, yeah and yeah, I 100% agree with that. The hunt itself. When I take people on sacred hunting trips, it is the ceremony I mean every day is a ceremony. Life is the ceremony. Every day is a ceremony. Life is the ceremony. That being said, I like and I invite people to find the ways in which they can take the time to allow that ritual to start to permeate their life more fully.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, Because, when I bring the tobacco. Yeah, there's a reason for it. Tobacco is a sacred plant. Tobacco and people of North America was a gift. It's used as a gift and, more importantly for me, it's a totem. It holds, yeah, like when I hold tobacco. Everything in my experience in life just tells me be grateful. And so it's a reminder. Okay, be grateful, be grateful. And you hope for enough of those reminders until you can start to do things without them. You can start to feel that way without them, and so a lot of, and I have been just as guilty of being performative in my spirituality or in ceremony in the past, and maybe even still to this day. And I don't know that it's the worst thing, because form follows function and if you can act it enough times, it can become real.
Mansal Denton:And we have never been taught. Through our life experience, through our elders, through our culture, cultural context. We've never been taught, so we got. We have to make believe a little bit I think.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I think what you're saying is, to some very large degree, the purpose or maybe the impetus behind a lot of the recent favor of the Orthodox Christian church.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I don't want to say conversion or something like this, but favor, I think, the human species. I think it's wrong, you know, the human species. I think it's wrong, I think, when people, anthropologists, talk about the human species being a tool, using species, and that's what defines us. I've watched this documentary recently about how the human species can be defined as something that understands death. No other species understands death and I think that's absolutely ridiculous. I think the human species could be a storytelling species. I think the human species is just the human species. I think it's good enough to leave it that as well.
Daniel Firth Griffith:But we're also ceremonial, you know, and I think a lot of life is ceremonial, but it's special to us, maybe because we're alive. However, we want to see it. Ceremony is very important and yet we lack ceremony because of thousands of years of colonization, because of thousands of years of migration, because of thousands of years of culturalization. Right, there's a lot that could be said there, but the point is we lack ceremony, and so when we get to be in ceremony, we find ourselves, we find God, we find connection, we find, you know, salve to the broken heart, like all of these things, that balance. Let's just say balance. We find that balance and the Orthodox Christian church is heavily liturgical, it's heavily ceremonial and it's also welcoming.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, I tell you that's been one of the most beautiful experiences in my wife and I's life has been Sundays. We drive an hour and a half, so three hours, round trip on Sunday to go to liturgy, which is a two hour liturgy, so I mean it's a whole day thing, but it there is so much prayer, there is so much veneration and ceremony and ritual and you know I can find it in the middle of Alabama, right In Birmingham Alabama. I tell you, I looked for sweat lodges, didn't find any. I asked all my people Couldn't find any. And I want to do that too and I want to, when it feels right, do plant medicines as well.
Mansal Denton:But there is something special. Well, I do plant medicines and I do ceremony at the same time in liturgy. But there is something special. Well, I do plant benedicency and I do at the same time in liturgy. But, um, there is something special about it. And you know I it's not lost on me that a lot of people have a lot, a lot, a lot of trauma around christianity and a lot of people have, uh, closed their heart to it and I understand that. I've had my own journey with it and had to come to seeing the value in it, and also to having the groundedness in myself and my beliefs to be able to discern the faith.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Yeah, studying biblical Hebrew and becoming proficient in it and then reading the Bible in its original language was, I think, the hardest thing that I've ever done in terms of my Christian faith. I don't know if you've ever dove into that. We don't need to get into it now, of course, but I mean you just. You see, 2000 years of thoughts, evolution yeah, right, and and, and. I'm not saying that the old Testament, the Torah, has evolved only in the last 2000 years, but, like over the last 2000 years, we see a particular reading or translation of it that might not be the original, if you know what I mean. Yeah, and it's and it's interesting, and and and, and.
Mansal Denton:That's the part of reminds me of this quote. This beautiful book, the wisdom Jesus, one of my favorite books by cynthia bourgeois, sounds like a sweet book. She has in the early phrases she's they're talking somehow. They're talking about, uh, other languages and immigration, and this person stands up and says if english is good enough for the bible, it's good enough for me. It's not, though, and yeah come a long way.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Your work has challenged me. Maybe this is a fine beginning of a conclusion, but your work has really challenged morgan and i's understanding of farming and such, because from an outside perspective because I've never been on one of your sacred hunts, but from an outside perspective it's I've never been on one of your sacred hunts, but from an outside perspective it's it's um, let me say it this way, if I didn't have to farm, I wouldn't. And that's a really weird thing to say as a full-time 400 acre farmer over the last 10 years, um, somebody who has no expectation of doing anything else for the next 50, 60, 70 years, that I live, god willing, like I have no intention of doing anything else for the next 50, 60, 70 years that I live, god willing, like I have no intention of doing anything else. And at the first moment that I don't have to do this, I'm not going to do it Like I don't.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I don't necessarily believe that farming and agriculture is the world salvation, and many people in my shoes obviously do. Maybe almost everybody in my shoes does. I think the reason that they do is because it's really hard and it's not profitable and it's dangerous and we have no health insurance and every day we're dealing with death, maybe even our own, and so it's really healthy to think that what you're doing is really good, like you're on the front lines to World War I. You're in trenches, everybody's getting blown up, you have trench foot rats are eating you alive, but maybe you're defeating the devil. It's really healthy to think that you are, because when you're done, thinking that you're also done, and I think that's a lot of the reasons that the regenerative agriculture space has such a salvation complex or savior complex, because it's really hard and it's not profitable and it's really difficult. It'll be much easier just to let the cows open, graze and ruin the environment. So you have to. I think you have to believe that you're doing God's work, because the second you stop doing that, you start to realize that you're just in pain. And I'm not saying that pain is bad, I'm not saying that pain isn't warranted, I'm not saying the pain isn't ours to bear in the modern era, like it might be, of course. But the point is, the first moment I have, that I don't have to do this, I'm not doing it. I don't think agriculture is necessarily in its modern sense of property, boundaries and high tensile fences and everything else.
Daniel Firth Griffith:The solution I believe it's maybe an aspect in the journey to get to a solution, if the solution exists, if the human species has time enough to do this, um, but your work around sacred hunting has been really eye-opening for morgan and I, in the sense of integrating this, this concept that I just called the hunter husbandman. You could still be a husbandman because of property boundaries, but what if you acted more like a hunter? What if harvesting and agriculture was more like hunting and less like getting? What if it was undetermined? What if it was open? What if it was consent based? Because, at the end of the day, you know this, you've hunted enough.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I've hunted enough to understand that, like you can, like my son and I, we hunt with long bows not often, but we're pretty good at it and, um, you can have one hell of a shot and you can be in a kill shot and it can be in a kill distance and it's amazing, and it goes right through the lung and the animal doesn't die. It's happened, you know, we all have these stories. Um, it's still open, no matter how good of a hunter, no matter how tactile you are and how perfect you are with aim and whatever, it's still open. You might come home empty handed.
Daniel Firth Griffith:And so your work has really challenged Morgan and I to understand that hunter husband relationship where, like, yeah, you might not castrate, yeah, you might not separate, yeah, your raising system looks the one way, but what about the harvest system? Um, so I just wanted to let you know that your work has effects, even if it's not in the hunting space. So I appreciate you, I appreciate you coming out. This has been fun. I mean, your time here has been fun. Tomorrow's going to be even fun and we're going to have a lot of fun. But we're also really blessed by your thoughts too. So thanks for being with us.
Mansal Denton:Yeah, well, thank you for having us and I appreciate the reflection there. And Kendall and I had fantasies that we hopefully can live into of making the migration here every one or two years and bringing the kids as they get older and being able to, you know, share time with you out here and also to be able to make a pilgrimage and show our children through our actions that these things matter.
Daniel Firth Griffith:I don't often remember to ask this, but now that I remember it I'll ask it. I don't necessarily want to assume you want to be found, but if anybody listening wants to find you and you want to also be found, where is the best place that that could happen?
Mansal Denton:If you just want to look at me and things I do, go to Instagram Monteldon, m-a-n-s-a-l-d-e-n-t-o-n. If you want to send me something thoughtful or meaningful or have thoughts that are engaging, you can email me info at sacredhuntingcom, and if you just want to see what I'm doing, you can visit sacredhuntingcom. Awesome.
Daniel Firth Griffith:Well, thanks, bansal, I appreciate you.
Mansal Denton:You as well.