About

Below is the “short” version, but you can hear the full story of my journey to galactic reenacting from my appearance on the Into a Larger World podcast!

So: how did this all start?
While I grew up surrounded by an extended reenacting circle, participating in events with my family for almost 30 years, I’ve been actively ‘doing’ (fictional) history since 2013, thanks to the unlikely combination of Mark A. Baker and Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson). Let me explain.

After spending 2011 as a full-time First-Person historic interpreter (1830s Indiana), and the summer of 2012 teaching at the BSA’s living history program (18th/19th-century Virginia), I was marinating in Baker’s Pilgrim’s Journey at the same time as the release of the first installment of Jackson’s bloated and misguided ‘Hobbit’ trilogy. I was far from impressed with his ridiculous padding of a beloved children’s novel, but I was very impressed with the lived-in details of WETA’s props and costumes (this was also true of his Lord of the Rings adaptation, of course, but I’d long ago internalized those interpretations, and this was fresh). I looked at WETA’s artifacts and thought, “Man, I’d love to get ahold of Bilbo’s linen and leather camping gear and actually use it to go camping!”, and then I read Mark Baker, who apparently had done exactly that, just in an 18th-century context! A bit of websearching led me to J.Book’s old hobbit-hiking blog, which led me to the Middle-earth Ranger Forum, where I found a scant handful of folks who were interested in more than just reading Tolkien, or cosplaying as Jackson’s interpretations of characters, but who wanted to actually get out and Do It!

Fast-forward to early 2016, when J. invited me to a facebook group he was putting together: one devoted to the idea of ‘historical re-creation’ in the Star Wars setting. Since I’d been a diehard fan for over 20 years, and I’d just spent the previous three years proving that this sort of thing was possible using Tolkien’s works as a primary source ‘text’, I gladly accepted the challenge, and this blog is the result. In the decade since then, I’ve also taken over moderation of Jake’s group, where I am happy to say we have an active and growing community.

Come join the conversation at the Star Wars Living History facebook group!