Hide Tanning

I believe that within each of us lives the memory “older ways” - when we were in more direct relationship with the rhythms of the earth . Through ancestral skills such as hunting, hide tanning, fire-making, and storytelling, I believe we can access levels of healing and a very old relationship to our animal body that has been forgotten.

It has been a life path of mine to learn the art, skill, and process of hide tanning. This work is an alchemy. It is an invitation to engage with both death and life at once. Hide tanning is simultaneously spiritual, healing, and tangible. Whether working with fish, deer, or sheepskin, we engage with flesh, bone, and mystery. The process also places us in relationship with lineage, the more-than-human world, and practical knowledge.

For those drawn to this old way, I offer 1:1 classes and group workshops.

This is how hide tanning reclaims our humanity:

Hides take our strength, our energy, our reserves. 

They make us work.

In the work, we give ourselves over to the process.

When we give ourselves over to the process, we lose our excessive individualism. We lose our branding. 

When we lose our branding, we come home to our humanity.

- Mara Cur, Fern & Roe