The Witch of Forest Grove

My awesomely bearded friend Grant who I met at the shamanic conference came over today with a massive hunk of bear fat for me along with house-warming gifts of a bonzai tree and a salvia cutting for me to root. He gave me feathers, a talon and heart of owl, and claws of wolf and I gave him a good bundle of magical woods along with bottles of my salmonberry and ginger-lime meads. I taught him how to render fat and he showed me his style of drum-making with the two bear hides he brought. The hunk of bear fat is so huge that I didn’t get to show him the straining part before the sun sunk below the sea. It’s still on the stove melting and melting until tomorrow (my whole apartment now smells pungently of bear).  After pulling apart the huge hunk of fat we found a tail, the penis bone, and both balls inside – extra bonus like a prize in a cereal box! Well, a prize to a shaman and a witch with a fondness for dead things anyway…

Right now the rendering fat looks like a really gross bear stew of bits of skin, tendon, and hair. But it will be dark liquid gold after I strain it a few times and cook the water out of it. The local natives used it for medicinal salves and to protect their skin from the cold in winter. It’s also supposed to be good for oil lamps so I’m going to use a little of it for tallow candles with beeswax and the rest for a shapeshifting salve.

While the fat sat on the stove for hours, and we were fueled with copious amounts of tea, we set to work making drums with the black bear hides and maple frames I rubbed with beeswax; cutting, hole punching, weaving cord in and out of flesh, tightening, and crafting the handles. I really like his method. It is quicker and simpler than the other methods I’ve done and has a nice “finished” look. Instead of using rawhide lacing he uses waxed vegetable sinew. It’s easy to work with, doesn’t destroy your hands, and you can burn the ends so knots don’t slip out.

He made two larger drums and I made the two smaller ones. I am very interested to see what the hide looks like when it’s dried in a few days. I kept one of the smaller twelve-inch ones and haven’t decided whether to paint it or leave it natural. Grant kept the massive one, I can’t remember if it was sixteen or eighteen inches, but it is impressively big. Now I have lots of leftover bits of bear rawhide – maybe I’ll make rattles or other tools with it.

After we finished our crafting and had cleaned up, he went off to visit another friend, a bone collector, to look at her animal skulls and the lovely Holly, my awesome fellow witch, came over to visit me. We had tea by candlelight at my table discussing magic, dreams, and life. It was a good day. Now to wash the bear out from under my nails, my skin, and who knows what else…