What We Carry Forward: A Conversation with the Hosts of Lost Skills Gathering
by Brandon Elijah Scott
In just a few days, after more than a year of imagining, planning, asking questions, making phone calls, walking the grounds, finding teachers, solving problems, changing plans, and watching an idea become something far larger than we originally imagined, the Lost Skills Gathering will finally come to life.
On October 3, hundreds of people will come together at Clary Gardens for something that, on the surface, might look like a festival devoted to old skills. There will be people teaching how to grow food, work with plants, preserve a harvest, make fire, butcher an animal, repair what is broken, create beautiful things, work with their hands, read the land, and carry forward knowledge that once moved naturally from one generation to the next.
But the closer we have come to this day, the more convinced I have become that Lost Skills is really about something much bigger.
It is about remembering that we are capable.
We live in an extraordinary age. We can summon food without cooking it, buy almost anything without leaving home, ask a machine nearly any question, replace what breaks instead of repairing it, and outsource enormous portions of daily life to systems most of us barely understand. There is real usefulness in much of that progress, and Lost Skills has never been about pretending otherwise. But convenience has a strange cost when we surrender too much of ourselves to it. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped learning how things work, where things come from, how to make them, how to repair them, how to grow them, or what to do when the system that normally provides them is suddenly unavailable.
And perhaps even more importantly, we lost some of the confidence that comes from knowing we could figure it out.
That is what I hope people rediscover at the Lost Skills Gathering.
Not some romanticized return to the past. Not the idea that everyone should disappear into the woods and become entirely self-sufficient. Human beings have never truly lived that way. We have always depended upon one another. The strongest communities were built from people who each knew something useful and were willing to share it.
What I hope we reclaim is that beautiful middle ground between dependence and isolation: capability, community, creativity, resourcefulness, and the willingness to participate more fully in our own lives.
Maybe you learn one plant you have walked past a thousand times and suddenly your own backyard looks different. Maybe someone teaches you how to mend something you would normally throw away. Maybe you watch a person create fire with their hands, turn fiber into cloth, shape a tool, prepare food, tell an old story, or make something beautiful, and a little voice inside you says, I want to know how to do that.
That little moment matters.
Because skills are not really preserved by writing them down and placing them safely on a shelf. They survive when one human being shows another human being how to do something, when curiosity becomes practice, when practice becomes knowledge, and when knowledge becomes something worth passing forward again.
That is why we built this Gathering around teachers rather than attractions, participation rather than spectacle, and conversation rather than simply consumption. I want people to meet the person behind the skill. Ask the strange question. Watch their hands. Hear the story of how they learned. Try something badly the first time. Laugh about it. Try again. Take notes. Exchange a phone number. Go home curious enough to keep learning.
As we approached the Gathering, Jenni Parsons and I were asked a series of questions about the deeper ideas behind Lost Skills: what these traditions mean, why they matter, what we lose when practical knowledge disappears, what the land can still teach us, why learning from another person matters, and what kind of future we hope events like this might help create.
Our answers became something much larger than a description of a festival.
They became a conversation about the kind of people we want to become and the kind of world we hope to leave behind.
So, before October 3 arrives, I wanted to share that conversation with you.
If you are already coming to Lost Skills Gathering, I hope these words give you another reason to arrive curious, openhearted, and ready to learn.
And if you have been watching from the sidelines and wondering whether this day is really for you, consider this my personal invitation.
Come learn something.
Come meet someone.
Come put your hands to something real.
You may be surprised by just how capable you already are.
Q&A with Brandon Elijah Scott & Jenni Parsons
The Skills That Make a House a Home
Q: What everyday skills did you grow up with that still shape how you live today?
Brandon: Some of my earliest lessons in capability happened quietly, as part of everyday life. We tended the garden morning and night, harvesting herbs for tea and a handful of medicinal plants for the family remedies we grew up using; when someone needed something, out came the mortar and pestle, and we made it. We fished, foraged the nearby woods, and learned that food, medicine, and useful knowledge did not begin at a store shelf, they began with knowing the land around you, paying attention, and being willing to use your own hands.
Jenni: I keep a garden, cook healthy meals with local ingredients on a budget, and can fruit and veggies at harvest time. I sew clothing and mend what's torn, repair broken things before buying new, and make remedies for my family and community from the plants outside. I can create beautiful things with paint, fire, fabric, and pen to share with loved ones. Lessons from my family have shaped my whole life.
Q: Why are skills like mending, cooking, preserving, gardening, repairing, and making things worth passing on?
Brandon: I think these skills are worth passing on because a society that forgets how to provide for itself becomes incredibly fragile. If nearly every human depends entirely on vast systems to grow and distribute our food, prepare our meals, repair what breaks, manufacture replacements, provide our medicine, and meet nearly every basic need, then we are placing an extraordinary amount of trust in civilization continuing to function exactly as it does today. If war, economic collapse, natural disaster, political upheaval, supply-chain failure, or some other major disruption ever seriously damaged those systems, we wouldn't simply be facing empty shelves, we could find ourselves trying to relearn, from the beginning, knowledge that humanity spent thousands of years developing and that only a few generations allowed to disappear. But I think there is an equally important danger even when those systems are functioning perfectly: dependence gives someone else tremendous influence over how we live. When the people controlling our food, products, information, and necessities are often motivated first by profit, efficiency, or market share, not necessarily our health, our families, or our long-term well-being, we surrender some of our ability to choose for ourselves. Keeping practical knowledge alive means retaining some measure of independence, judgment, and control over the course of our own lives.
Jenni: Most people are ordering in, hiring out, and leaning on others for the sake of convenience and ease. Our footprints grow larger and larger. Because I can make, mend, repair, and cook, I have choices. If I don't want a product full of harmful chemicals, I can make my own. I don't have to buy it. It gives me freedom and power.
Q: How can knowing how to care for, repair, grow, or make something change our relationship with what we own and consume?
Brandon: Knowing how to care for, repair, grow, or make something changes the way you value it. You begin to understand the workmanship, the function, the materials, the time, and the care that went into creating it, and that naturally makes you less willing to throw something away simply because it has become inconvenient or broken. There is confidence in knowing you can repair, adapt, or extend the life of what you already have instead of being financially tethered to replacing everything with something new. Growing food may be the clearest example for me. When you have been with a plant from seed to dinner table, watering it, watching it struggle through weather, harvesting it, and finally feeding your family with it, the food simply means more. It tastes better, you know what went into it, you waste less of it, and there is a quiet pride in having participated in the whole process. I believe that kind of relationship with the things around us can actually make us kinder human beings. Modern society trains us toward constant consumption and disposability, but on a global scale that mentality is wildly unsustainable; it disconnects us from the labor and natural resources behind what we buy while filling the planet with the remains of what we decided was no longer worth keeping.
Jenni: Our culture encourages people to buy and toss. Cheaply made products are the new normal, to be used a few times and thrown in a landfill to make room for the next new thing. This kind of consumerism is not sustainable or responsible. Learning to alter the size of a favorite dress, refinish a vintage table, repair a heavy lamp, and bake your own cookies may seem small in the grand scheme of things, but if everyone could buy less and make a little more we could change the world in big ways together.
Q: How do these traditions strengthen families and connect generations?
Brandon: Knowing how to care for, repair, grow, or make something creates opportunities to learn together and to pass knowledge from one generation to the next. These aren't just useful skills. They're ways of staying connected to the people who taught us.
Jenni: From Mama Barb Keith: "What I love most is when my kids call me and ask advice about a project or recipe. It keeps us all connected to each other. I call my mom when I make a pot of her veggie soup, have a question about the old farm, or when I have a difficult quilt block to piece. My daughter, Jenni, calls and asks about my recipes, new herbal remedy ideas and for advice about her garden. My granddaughter, Leah, calls to see what herbs could be added to a cookie recipe and with questions about her chickens. We all call each other, always asking and learning. It helps us remember and keeps the skills of our grandparents alive. It keeps us a very close family, and I love it!"
Q: What do you hope people bring back into their own homes after experiencing these skills?
Brandon: I hope people bring home more than a skill or two. I hope they leave with a deep desire to keep learning, to make things with their own hands, and to take some part of what they witnessed at Lost Skills Gathering and let it reshape the way they live. More than anything, I hope they carry home practical wisdom, greater confidence in their own capability, and a vision for a future that feels more human, one built less on passive consumption and more on participation, creativity, care, and knowing how to do meaningful things for ourselves and for one another. If the Gathering can turn curiosity into earnest desire, and desire into inspired action, then these skills truly begin living again. Preserving knowledge is paramount in an age of digital ease, outsourced memory, convenience, and instant gratification. We have more information at our fingertips than perhaps any generation before us, but access to information is not the same as possessing knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Some things must still be practiced, remembered, lived, and passed from one human being to another if we hope to carry them forward into future generations.
Jenni: I hope they bring home a new recipe they are excited to make for their family. I hope people come away with ideas that feel simple and doable, yet are life changing. I hope they go home and patch their favorite pair of blue jeans, measure their property to see if there's room for an animal, and pop a batch of mama's cookies in the oven.
Living With the Land
Q: What does it mean to really know the place where you live?
Brandon: To really know the place where you live is to become intimate with it. You begin to recognize its plants, its seasons, its waterways, its wildlife, its people, and the little rhythms that make your corner of the world distinct, and with that familiarity comes responsibility. When we feel connected to a place, we are far less likely to treat it as someone else's problem. We pick up the trash, plant things that belong there, create green spaces, support our neighbors, and put real effort into strengthening the community and landscape around us. I think there is something deeply important in realizing that while none of us can fix the whole world, we can care fiercely for the small part of it that has been placed within our reach.
Jenni: Husband Ken Parsons said, "Most people walk out in their yard and see the land as a whole. My wife and I see individuals. We know each tree as an individual and watch them grow. We know every bird, squirrel, raccoon, opossum, chipmunk, and deer that live here and visit us. We know the name of each plant and how they taste, how they grow and how they help. We are not separate from the land in which we live, we are part of it. We are all related, all connected. Many have lost that connection but it is still there, waiting for you to remember."
Q: What can plants, gardens, and the changing seasons teach us when we slow down enough to notice?
Brandon: Plants, gardens, and the turning of the seasons remind us that food was never meant to exist outside of place and time. Our modern food system works incredibly hard to make everything available everywhere, all year long, growing in massive quantities, transporting food enormous distances, processing and treating it for storage, and asking the planet to absorb the environmental cost. A summer melon in the middle of winter feels normal to us now, but historically, it is anything but. When we slow down and pay attention to what is actually growing around us, the seasons begin to teach us how to live in rhythm again. Spring brings bitter greens, nettles, violets, dandelions, and tender shoots; summer brings abundance and fruit; autumn brings roots, seeds, nuts, and foods meant for storing; winter naturally asks us to live from what we preserved and gathered before. There is an old intelligence in that pattern. I also think there is something deeply important about the fact that our local plants are living under many of the same environmental conditions we are. They grow in the same air, the same water, the same climate, and under many of the same stressors and burdens that shape life in a given place. In responding to those pressures, they develop their own strengths, chemistry, and defenses, and there is something meaningful in the idea that when we work with the plants of our own region, we are entering into relationship with the very landscape that is shaping us too. To me, eating locally and seasonally is a way of returning to what is cleaner, more rooted, and more in step with reality. Rather than expecting the whole planet to feed us everything at all times, we begin listening to what our own region is offering now. Plants teach us that there is a time for growth, a time for gathering, a time for storing, and a time for rest, and I think our bodies, our communities, and the Earth itself are healthier when we remember that we belong to those rhythms too.
Jenni: Mother nature holds the answer to every question if we are clever enough to ask and quiet enough to listen.
Q: Why are gardening, herbalism, and land-based skills about more than simply knowing how to grow or identify something?
Brandon: Gardening, herbalism, and land-based skills are about far more than knowing a plant's name or how to make something grow. They are about stewardship, reciprocity, and becoming a touchstone to the living world around us. For most of human history, we did not live as though nature were something separate from us, we lived within it, depended upon it, learned from it, and understood that our survival was bound to the health of the land. I believe these skills help us find our place in that relationship again. When we tend a garden, care for the soil, harvest food, or use a medicinal plant we helped nurture, we are not simply taking from the land; we are participating in it, giving care and receiving sustenance in return. We begin to remember that we are not separate from nature, we are nature. And in that process, something else happens: we become more intentional about what enters our homes and our bodies, less dependent on systems we cannot see or control, and more capable of preserving knowledge that might otherwise disappear. Every garden tended, every plant learned, every remedy made, every lesson passed to a child or neighbor becomes part of keeping that relationship alive for the generations that come after us.
Jenni: Planting a seed in the soil, nurturing the baby as it grows, and harvesting food and medicine from the plant changes the way you see food and medicine. It builds a connection and helps you feel attuned to your meals, your body, and the land in which you live.
Q: How does learning from the land help us become better caretakers of ourselves, our communities, and the places around us?
Brandon: Learning from the land teaches us to see the truth of a place. We begin noticing the beauty, the small details, the signs of growth and decline, and the quiet ways our own choices leave an imprint on the world around us. It can be humbling to realize how much damage neglect can do, but equally powerful to see how far a little tending, patience, love, and care can go toward restoring something. I think the same is true of community. A little kindness, attention, and willingness to show up for one another can completely change how connected people feel to the place they live and to the people beside them. We live in a time when so much of our news and politics profits from fear, outrage, and division, constantly telling us how different we are from the person next door. The land has a way of cutting through that noise. We all depend on the same soil, the same water, the same air, the same seasons, and the same living systems. When we truly understand that, it becomes much harder to pretend that we are separate from one another, or from the world that sustains us. The land reminds us, bluntly and beautifully, that we are connected, and that caring for our little corner of the world is also a way of caring for each other.
Jenni: When you are connected to the natural world around you, it changes everything. You become more mindful of the consequences of your own lifestyle choices when you know it directly affects the place you love. Chemicals can hurt my family and the little animals, plants, and insects that live here, so we do not use them. The phone and tablet are put down as there's always something ready to be fed, watered, harvested, planted, processed, and tended. It is work that families must do together, and work that never fails to gift you abundance. Abundance to share with people you love and to share with friends and neighbors, building relationships and keeping communities close to each other.
Q: What kind of relationship with nature do you hope people rediscover at the Gathering?
Brandon: I hope people rediscover a relationship with nature rooted in awe, inspiration, love, responsibility, stewardship, and reciprocity. I want them to see what happens when a place is loved and tended well, and just as importantly, to notice the contrast in places that have been neglected, forgotten, or treated as though they no longer matter. There is something deeply hopeful in realizing how much transformation can begin with a little attention and care. If people leave the Gathering seeing the living world around them as something worthy of relationship rather than simply scenery, then perhaps they will also begin asking what small piece of land, community, or life has been waiting for their hands, their presence, and their love.
Jenni: I hope people recognize the beauty of living simply when learning from the teachers at the Lost Skills Gathering. People that don't just teach connection to the land, they live it. I hope people leave excited to sink their hands in soil, to introduce themselves to the creations around them, then take up the work waiting to be done. I hope they spend the winter dreaming and planning, then spend spring planting, learning, and growing.
Learning From the Wild
Q: What changes when we stop seeing nature as scenery and begin learning how to read and participate in it?
Brandon: When we stop treating nature as scenery and begin participating in it, we start noticing everything, the tiny details, the intelligence, the relationships between animals, plants, fungi, insects, microbes, soil, stone, water, and weather. The whole landscape begins to feel alive. Everything is connected. Sometimes that realization arrives quietly, in some tiny thing you would have walked past a hundred times before; other times it hits like an electric shock of "oh wow," and suddenly the world feels much bigger, stranger, and more beautiful than you realized. So much of nature is also shaped by our own perception. If we enter the woods believing they are dark, empty, or frightening, that is often what we experience. But when we spend time there, learn how to move gently and respectfully, and begin understanding what actually lives around us, fear gives way to familiarity, and the woods become something entirely different: beautifully intricate and teeming with life, layered with relationships, and full of small wonders waiting for someone to notice them.
Jenni: Understanding the natural world changes the way you live, eat, heal, work, and play. Mother nature has never-ending lessons and wisdom waiting to be learned. For example, we all have sunny little dandelions growing around us. Society teaches they are weeds, plants to be pulled and poisoned. In reality, dandelions are a gift. You can eat every part of them, and they are especially tasty in the early springtime. They are full of vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and medicinal compounds that can help many things like struggling kidneys and sluggish liver function; issues many modern people experience. Free food and medicine, growing everywhere. That knowledge changes how you look at your yard. Maybe it stops you from using harmful weed killer to hurt them, and maybe you stop pulling dandelion and let them grow. The birds and bees will thank you, as will your body as you add dandelions to your tea, salad, soups, and sandwiches. This one small wisdom creates ripples of change, and opens the door to learn more. The more you learn, the more ripples of good you create.
Q: Why have skills like foraging, plant identification, observation, and seasonal awareness mattered for generations?
Brandon: Since the beginning, plants have filled the roles now occupied by our pharmacies, grocery stores, beauty counters, spas, and even some of our first forms of pain relief. They fed us, soothed us, strengthened us, clothed us, sheltered us, helped us make tools and dyes, and cared for us in times of need. For most of human history, knowing the plants around you was not an interesting hobby, it was part of being a competent human being. Foraging, plant identification, observation, and seasonal awareness taught people how to read the land: what was ready to eat, what could be stored, what might help in illness or injury, what weather was coming, where animals were moving, and how one season prepared you for the next. That kind of knowledge built resilience because it meant your survival was not entirely dependent on a distant supply chain or someone else knowing what to do. And there is something deeper than survival in it. What if, when you looked outside, you saw old friends instead of weeds that needed pulled? What if you knew their names, their seasons, their stories, their gifts, and their cautions? The landscape stops being anonymous and begins to feel like a community you belong to. When large systems falter, the land does not suddenly forget how to grow. The plants still return, the seasons still turn, and those who know how to recognize and work respectfully with what is around them retain a kind of knowledge that cannot be taken away by an empty shelf or broken system. Preserving that knowledge is not about rejecting the modern world; it is about making sure we do not become so modern that we forget how to live in the real one.
Jenni: Human beings are meant to live with the land. To eat what the season offers, including the medicinal plants growing all around us. Mother nature is wise and kind, giving us exactly what our bodies need at the time of year we need it. A person only needs to pay attention and accept her gifts with thanks. This knowledge has shaped our family for generations creating herbalists, farmers, apothecaries, country doctors, and patent medicine makers during the civil war. This wisdom has stood the test of time and it is still crucial to our family in this modern era.
Q: What is lost when most of our relationship with nature happens through screens, books, or videos instead of firsthand experience?
Brandon: When most of our relationship with nature happens through screens, everything essential is lost. You lose the real aroma, the texture, the temperature, the discomfort, the sound, the scale, the unpredictability, the full sensory experience of actually being there. A camera can show you an image, but it cannot give you the feeling of damp earth under your knees, the scent released from a crushed leaf, the sudden silence before a storm, or the way a place changes when you return to it again and again. Screens also tend to show us the beautiful, dramatic, highly curated moments. We watch something like Planet Earth through million-dollar cameras, edited for color, movement, and perfection, and it can be breathtaking, but it is still a version of nature selected for us. We miss the ordinary moments, the decay, the insects, the mud, the mistakes, the quiet transitions, and the visible scars of human impact on the larger ecosystem. Books, photographs, and films can absolutely inspire us and teach us, but they should be a doorway, not the destination. Nature cannot truly be known secondhand. At some point, we have to step outside, get our hands dirty, pay attention, and let the real world teach us things no screen ever can.
Jenni: There are thousands of books and videos on the subject of herbalism. They can be a helpful resource when learning and identifying plants. But, nothing beats a grandma plucking a leaf from a plant for you to see, smell, and taste. You cannot truly understand a plant until you see it grow, harvest its leaves, see it flower, and know it in every season. Even now, when I learn a new plant, find it in several books, look on the internet, and feel positive in my identification, I ask my elders to be sure.
Q: How does recognizing food, medicine, wildlife, or useful resources around us build confidence and awareness?
Brandon: When we begin recognizing the food, medicine, wildlife, and useful plants around us, the landscape stops being anonymous. Plants become friends rather than weeds. Recognition becomes familiarity, familiarity becomes relationship, and with enough time, attention, and experience, that relationship can grow into something that feels very much like love. Confidence grows the same way, not all at once, but through thousands of small encounters. You recognize the plant again. You remember when it flowers. You learn where it likes to grow, what visits it, how it changes through the seasons, what it offers, and what it asks of you in return. Each intentional experience deepens what you know and makes you more aware of just how much you still have left to learn. I also believe nature responds to our attention. When we begin truly seeing the living world, approaching it with humility, respect, authentic intention, and an open heart, it seems to show us more. Details begin revealing themselves that were always there but that we were not yet prepared to notice. In that way, learning from the wild becomes more than accumulating knowledge; it becomes an unfolding relationship, where the more deeply we pay attention, the more alive the world becomes.
Jenni: Because my family taught me so many old skills I have the confidence to know I can handle whatever life throws at me. In rough years I know I can put food on my table, treat colds, flu, and injuries without expensive medications, and help neighbors in times of struggle. In times of richness I know how to harvest, preserve, share, and squirrel away enough for whatever life throws our way.
Q: What do you hope someone experiences when they begin seeing familiar woods, fields, and roadsides differently?
Brandon: I hope people begin to realize that there are no weeds, only plants we have not started a relationship with yet. Even the places we dismiss as wastelands, vacant lots, roadsides, disturbed soil, and forgotten corners can be remarkably alive; many beloved medicinal plants are specialists of disturbed ground, helping stabilize soil, rebuild fertility, and thrive where conditions are less than ideal. More than anything, I hope familiar woods, fields, and roadsides begin to feel magical again, full of life, whimsy, mystery, and tiny details worth stopping to explore. When I was a child, I had to overcome my own fear of the woods. But once that fear loosened its grip, the whole world changed. I stopped looking through fear-tinted glasses and began seeing this astonishing, awe-inspiring community of life that had been there all along. That shift has stayed with me ever since. The woods are not somewhere "out there," separate from us, and neither is the wildness growing along the roadside. We belong to the same living world. We are nature, and, in some beautiful way, we are nature becoming conscious enough to look back into itself and wonder.
Jenni: I hope people gain the understanding that we live in the land of milk and honey, surrounded with food, medicine, and wisdom. I hope a mom plucks a leaf for them to smell and taste, and a dad points out a delicious mushroom. I hope people leave feeling part of the community that thrives here and can't wait to go see what has been growing at home all along, waiting to be noticed for the gifts they truly are.
Skills That Make Us More Capable
Q: What does self-sufficiency mean to you? Is it really about doing everything ourselves, or about becoming more capable and connected?
Brandon: For most of human history, people lived in communities where survival was shared. Responsibilities were distributed, knowledge moved between generations, and each person carried some part of the work that helped the whole group endure. Modern life has compressed so much of that responsibility into small family units, earning money, finding food, raising children, caring for elders, maintaining a home, and then we wonder why so many people feel exhausted while life seems to race past them. To me, self-sufficiency does not mean taking everything an entire community once carried and placing it on the shoulders of one person. It means becoming capable enough that we are not completely dependent on distant systems for every necessity of life. It means knowing something about where our food comes from and what is in it, reducing unnecessary exposure to harmful chemicals, preserving practical knowledge, and keeping hands-on skills alive rather than outsourcing every part of our existence. But it also means responsibility beyond ourselves. It means tending our home, caring for the land around us, knowing our neighbors, contributing something useful to our community, and recognizing that true resilience has always been collective. I don't think the goal is independence from one another. I think the goal is to need one another in healthier ways, bringing skills, knowledge, generosity, and capability to the table instead of simply sharing dependence on the same fragile systems.
Jenni: It is liberating to know my family is capable of every aspect of our own survival. We do not fear the future because we hold the foundation of practical skills from the past. Whatever comes, we will handle it together using the wisdom passed down to us.
Q: Why does knowing how to start a fire, prepare food, use tools, or provide for ourselves change the way we move through the world?
Brandon: Knowing how to provide for ourselves changes the way we meet adversity. When something goes wrong, whether it is instability in our personal lives, a natural disaster, an economic upheaval, or a larger breakdown in the systems we depend upon, we are less likely to be paralyzed by fear because we have some idea what to do next. Practical knowledge gives us footing when the ground beneath us suddenly feels uncertain. But capability matters just as much when life is going well. We live in a world of mass production, where much of our food, household goods, and body care products are made far away by companies whose first obligation is often to efficiency and profit, not necessarily to our health or the long-term effects of what they produce. The more we know how to make, grow, prepare, repair, and provide for ourselves, the less completely we are at the mercy of those systems. That kind of knowledge creates a quiet freedom. It does not mean rejecting modern life; it means knowing that when circumstances change, or when we simply decide that what is being offered to us is not good enough, we still have choices. We know how to respond instead of panic, how to adapt instead of surrender, and how to take a greater role in shaping the life we want to live.
Jenni: Skills that were once needed for survival have been forgotten as modern technology moves forward with more convenient and easy products for everyday life. Who needs a flint and steel kit to make a fire when you have a bic lighter in your junk drawer? It isn't just techniques that have been lost, but the understanding that came with them. When you learn to create flame with flint and steel you must also learn what wood will burn fast to catch the spark, and which trees have wood that burns slowly through a night. You must learn about tinder, how to properly care for your tools, and awareness of your surroundings for safety sake. Most of all, you must learn about fire. You must catch a spark using your hands, lean close and feed the flames with your own breath. Familiarity and respect takes the place of fear. A lesson in fire making is really a lesson in understanding fire itself, something every human being should know and understand.
Q: What kind of confidence comes from learning a practical skill firsthand?
Brandon: There is a kind of confidence that only comes from doing something with your own hands. You can read about a skill, watch someone else perform it, or understand it intellectually, but there is a different kind of knowing that comes from trying, failing, adjusting, and eventually getting it right. That process gives you evidence that you are capable. I think that matters deeply in a world that often encourages us to outsource our competence. Practical skills teach us that we do not have to begin as experts, and we do not have to be afraid of getting something wrong. We can learn, adapt, improve, and become useful. With every skill we gain, we build a little more trust in ourselves, and that kind of confidence tends to spill over into the rest of life.
Jenni: When you don't have knowledge of practical skills your choices are taken from you. If you can't cut your own meat, you are at the mercy of prepackaged meats at the grocery store. If you don't know how to cut your own firewood, you must pay money to buy it. If you don't know how to hang a clothesline, you are at the mercy of the local laundromat if your dryer fails. Practical skills aren't just about survival situations. Practical skills can be used in the home every day to save money, time, and resources.
Q: Why does learning directly from another person matter?
Brandon: Learning directly from another person gives us something a screen simply cannot. In person, we can watch the hands, hear the tone, ask the odd little question in the moment, see the hesitation before a decision, notice the tiny correction, and understand all the nuance that rarely makes it into a video or a set of instructions. That kind of human contact builds clarity and confidence because we are not just receiving information, we are being guided through experience. It also connects us with the passion and lived knowledge of the person teaching. Sometimes that means decades of practice; in the case of elders, it may mean an entire lifetime of trial, error, observation, and hard-earned wisdom. Learning from them can help us avoid the same mistakes they once made and move farther, faster, with greater understanding. And there is something almost impossible to measure about a great teacher's enthusiasm. Their passion can turn an ordinary lesson into a magical experience that stays with you for the rest of your life. Facts can be recorded, but passion, presence, and the feeling of being welcomed into someone else's knowledge are things best passed from one human being to another.
Jenni: A grandpa can show you what flint feels like and how to hold a piece of steel in your hands to get the perfect spark at every strike to make a fire. A book can't watch you and say, "no, not like that. Like this. Hold it like this." But Grandpa Alessi can. He has perfected the technique for decades and can't wait to teach everyone what he has learned from experience.
Q: How can learning even one practical skill change someone's understanding of what they're capable of?
Brandon: So much of formal education teaches us to follow directions, meet expectations, and arrive at the correct answer. What it often gives us far less practice in is wrestling with uncertainty, trying something that does not work, thinking creatively, changing course, solving a problem with what we have, and continuing long enough to become genuinely skilled at something. Learning even one practical skill can begin to undo that. You discover that mastery is not some mysterious quality other people were born with; it is built through curiosity, repetition, failure, patience, and persistence. You learn that getting something wrong is not the end of the process, it is part of the process. And once you prove that to yourself in one area, it changes the way you look at everything else. You stop asking, "Am I the kind of person who can do this?" and begin asking, "How do I learn to do this?" That is a profound shift. One small skill can awaken creativity, self-trust, problem-solving, and the realization that we are far more capable of shaping our own lives than we may have been taught to believe.
Jenni: Imagine creating a knife from a chunk of stone with your own two hands. Or creating fire from thin air. Or butchering your own meat, using every part of an animal and wasting nothing. There is strength and power in practical skills. They are an inheritance we should all be eager to reclaim.
Made, Remembered & Passed On
Q: Why are creative traditions just as important to preserve as practical skills?
Brandon: Creative traditions are just as important to preserve because beauty, expression, and imagination are not extras we add after the practical work is done, they are part of what makes us human. Modern schools and financial systems often reward efficiency, productivity, and practicality far more than creativity, but if even one generation stops making music, telling stories, painting, carving, weaving, designing, and creating simply for the sake of expression, something irreplaceable begins to disappear. Creativity also teaches us how to imagine beyond what already exists. It is closely tied to innovation, problem-solving, cultural identity, emotional expression, and our ability to make meaning from our lives. A practical skill may help us survive, but art, music, story, and beauty help remind us why survival matters in the first place. Every creative tradition carries the fingerprint of the people and places that shaped it. Preserving those traditions means preserving memory, personality, and ways of seeing the world that cannot always be captured in facts alone. If we lose creativity, we do not simply lose art, we lose part of our humanity.
Jenni: Many creative traditions stem from skills that were once needed for survival. People layered fabrics and stitched them together to create warm blankets. They spun plant fiber and wool to create yarn that was knitted and woven into cloth for clothing. Today people spin and weave to create both practical and artistic pieces. Fabrics are still layered and stitched for warmth, but in a thousand different patterns and color choices. What was once created as a necessity is now transformed to art, but the practical bones are still there.
Q: What can a story, song, handmade object, or piece of art carry that instructions sometimes can't?
Brandon: A story, song, handmade object, or piece of art can carry layers of meaning that instructions alone often cannot. They evoke emotion, carry history, teach through metaphor and memory, and take us on a journey that helps knowledge settle more deeply into us. When we are learning a skill, those things give the lesson definition, nuance, intention, and context. They help us remember not just what to do, but why it matters, where it came from, and how to approach it with care. That is how wisdom gets carried forward, not merely as a set of steps, but as an understanding of how to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.
Jenni: When I sit down with fabric, needle and thread, and place my thimble on my finger, I feel connected to every woman in my family. The thimble belonged to my great grandma, who wore it while stitching clothing for her family. She used it to teach my grandma, who then used the thimble to make alterations and to teach my mama how to sew and quilt. All these women used the thimble to create with all their love for their families. I wear it and can feel them all next to me as I create using the same stitches, make the same faces, and poke myself in spite of the beautiful family thimble. I sleep under a quilt my grandma made for my wedding day and it feels like a hug when I crawl in bed each night. My entire home is filled with art and crafts made for me by the people I love, and my husband sings the songs of our life together with his guitar. Art is essential to us in so many ways. There is no better way to say I love you, than with something homemade.
Q: What is the difference between preserving a tradition and keeping it alive?
Brandon: Preserving a tradition means making sure it is not forgotten. Keeping it alive means someone still cares enough to practice it, teach it, adapt it, and make space for it in the present. A skill can sit safely in a museum, a book, or an archive for a hundred years and still be functionally lost if no living person knows how to carry it forward. To keep a tradition alive, it has to remain part of human life. Someone has to put their hands to it, make mistakes with it, understand its deeper meaning, teach it to someone younger, and allow it to keep evolving without losing the wisdom at its core. Preservation protects memory; living tradition protects continuity.
Jenni: To preserve a tradition, you must discover it. You must make time to learn the steps, instructions and techniques. Practice, study, and ask questions. To keep a tradition alive, you must make it part of your everyday life. You must joyfully participate while your kids watch, or better yet, join in. You must make a tradition part of you and your family to keep it alive for your lifetime and the generations to come.
Q: How do makers, musicians, artists, and storytellers help connect generations?
Brandon: Makers, musicians, artists, and storytellers connect generations by giving younger people something living to inherit. A tradition survives when someone sees it, feels something stir inside them, and decides, "I want to learn that too." In that moment, the art or skill stops belonging only to the past and begins moving forward again. They also carry far more than technique. They carry memory, place, personality, values, humor, hardship, beauty, and the fingerprints of the people who came before them. When a young person learns a song, a craft, a story, or an artistic tradition directly from someone who has spent years or decades practicing it, they are receiving a piece of human history in a form that can still breathe, change, and become part of their own life. That is how traditions stay alive, not by locking them away for safekeeping, but by inspiring someone new to love them enough to carry them forward.
Jenni: Artists and craftspeople tell the story of our lives with their creations, often touching people in ways mere words cannot. Their skills are important to learn and not lose to modern technology, artificial intelligence, and fast convenient consumerism. Their skills are essential, as are musicians and story tellers. They keep our history alive and wisdom shared for everyone at every age and generation.
Q: What do you hope people discover about creativity and beauty at Lost Skills Gathering?
Brandon: I hope people discover a love for something they never expected to care about. Maybe they sit down beside a maker, hear a song, try a craft, or watch someone work with such passion that something quietly catches fire inside them. It does not have to completely change the course of a life to matter. Sometimes it is enough to awaken a new curiosity, give someone a creative outlet they did not know they needed, or reconnect them with a part of themselves that had gone dormant. Beauty and creativity have a way of opening doors inside us, and sometimes one small encounter is all it takes to begin.
Jenni: It is easy to see something beautiful and think, "I love that, but I couldn't do it. I am not an artist. That looks really difficult." I hope everyone tries something that scares them. Learning in person means starting at the beginning, watching the simple steps and trying it yourself. You'll have the chance to take notes, ask questions, and really learn. Once the technique is unlocked, anything is possible. I hope people go home with a dozen things to practice and perfect over time.
Q: Beyond a practical skill, what do you hope people carry forward from the people they meet?
Brandon: Beyond any practical skill, I hope people carry forward kindness, community, and a little more faith in one another. I hope meeting people from different backgrounds, generations, and walks of life helps break down some of the preconceived judgments and divisions we so easily inherit, and reminds us how much common ground still exists when we actually sit beside one another and share something real. More than anything, I hope people leave with hope for the future, not blind optimism, but the sense that there are still meaningful ways forward through the troubles of the modern world. We can choose to build stronger communities, care for one another more intentionally, preserve what is worth keeping, and shape a future that feels brighter, kinder, more connected, and more human.
Jenni: In this era, young families feel isolated and frustrated with the modern world. They are hungry to learn skills to make their lives healthier, more affordable, and better for the environment. Our elders and rural families also feel isolated and left out of the technology driven world. They are full of stories and know-how and are eager to teach and share their hard-earned wisdom. While The Lost Skills Gathering was created to bring the generations together and offer a place to teach and learn for a day, I hope everyone leaves with phone numbers and emails. I hope teachers get questions long after the day like, "how many eggs went in your noodle recipe?" "Who wrote the song about thunder and lightening you sang?" "How much land did you say we needed for a dairy cow?" "Would you like to see what I made?" I hope young families notice when an elder could use some help beyond the day, offer to spend time helping them, or pursue a subject that sparked a passion in them with extra lessons. I hope this day builds a bridge that is mutually helpful for the entire community.
