I’m a nomad living in Inari municipality and the last professional wilderness trapper in the EU. In spring and early summer I normally live for about four months in a self built off-grid cabin deep in the wilderness or close to workplaces for the services I offer. The rest of the year I sleep mostly outside. In summer and autumn I’m hunting for months, having everything I need in my backpack. My longest hunting trips last up to 30 days without resupply. In winter I do trapping and live in tents and snow shelters far away from civilization. My life is strongly depending on the seasons.
With six years I already started going out in the woods on my own. In my early adult phase it looked like I will make a career based on the values of modern society. I realized that it is not my life and started to do what I want. Since my childhood I learn the skills needed for a a self sustaining life. Nowadays I gathered and I am gathering the skills needed for a life in nature with minimal dependency on money. I care for most of my needs myself. I repair and sew clothes, hunt for meat, pick berries and mushrooms, bake my own bread and much more. My off-grid cabin is built completely by myself, from the standing tree to the final building I did the hole process. I only bought screws, a stove and HDPE foil.
My knowledge is not only of practical nature. Also theoretical knowledge is very important to make the right decisions and to understand. Everything I teach is always carefully thought, theoretical explainable and especially practically working.
Teaching
I love teaching and knowledge is an important value for me. I was always interested in everything and tried to understand. Already as a pupil I explained mathematics to the other class members and I got the best possible compliment for it: They told me I should do the lessons because then they understand.
Europes biggest natural woods – Inari
Inari is 1.700.000 ha huge and the municipality I live in. It is the main part of Europe’s biggest natural connected wood area which is mainly protected by larger direct human impact. Inari is very diverse in it’s nature, containing large wooden areas, swamps and fells. There are only very few roads (where the forest is harvested of course). The only way to really discover the beautiful nature is to dive into it by feet, ski or canoe. It is one of the few places in Europe where animals can live their hole life without seeing a human.
Nature
I love nature. But not because of any religious, spiritual or esoteric reasons. I’m an absolute pragmatic person and everything I do I do for a reason. My love to nature comes from two main points:
Complexity
Nothing the humans create, or any other abiotic system, comes close to the complexity of nature. When you look at the fascinating creations and processes of nature everything the human creates is just dull and simple, mostly even destructive and not efficient. We just bail out the planet to waste our nature for stupid things.
If you are thinking over things nothing can be more impressive then nature.
Source of life
Everything, just everything comes from self running natural processes. The humans just use the result to recombine things under a high loss nature. Without natural intact processes the human can’t life. Nature created our being and we should do everything to keep it in best condition, for us, for the following and what comes after.
Kynik
We live in endless richness. We are all so super rich. We have endless high calorie food, huge warm spaces and are mostly completely protected against elements. But it is not enough, it is never enough. There is always bigger, better, faster, greater …
Kynik comes from Kynismus/Kyniker (=cynicism/cynics) and describes a ancient philosophy. I do not agree with everything there and also what we know about cynicism is very limited as nothing is written down and we even don’t know exactly who belonged to it. And that’s why I chose it. For me the main points are:
- life simple
- be satisfied with your own existence and health
- drop dependencies
- protect nature.
As soon as our main needs for shelter, warmth and food are satisfied everything else is luxury. That’s why I chose kynik for this website. Because it is one word which describes my philosophy as close as possible. There are some other philosophic movements who have ideas overlapping like Stoicism, Asceticism, Anarcho-primitivism, Autonomy. But I’m not a big fan of being a member of something so I do not count myself to any of these.
I admit of course, that I’m myself far away of being a good role model for cynicism.
Read more about me in my blog https://kynik.fi/blog
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq_68QpuZIF1cWKN43j54qw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nomadic.trapper/