Today’s random object was a toy deer hide from the Powhatan Indian or Frontier set. Four poles, a rectangle of pretend skin, and more ancient chemistry than most folks want to think about before breakfast.

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I thought this one would be a breeze. Flat frame, simple shadows, no drama. But by the time I hit the watercolor, we were neck deep in ammonia, lecithin, and the mysteries of prehistoric innovation.

Turns out people have been tanning hides for maybe 200,000 years. Not the same people, of course, but the same techniques for the same problems. You smoke a hide to waterproof it and repell insects, but how do you keep a hide from rotting, stiffening, or crumbling in the smokehouse? You scrape it, rub it with brains or fat, maybe bleach it with urine, and then you smoke it until it can survive a winter better than you can. The brain thing still gets me. You can see a hide getting peed on by accident. But who was the first one to say, “Let’s smear brains all over this and see what happens”? Desperation? Boredom? Weird culinary side quest? The best part is that all the sites talking about tanning hides just nonchalantly threw out the bit about “braining”. “Every animal has the right amount of brains to coat their whole skin”. That is not a nonchalant line. That is, indeed, quite chalant.

These aren’t just ancient facts, they’re still survival tools. In parts of Siberia, Canada, and Alaska, families still use these methods because store-bought coats just don’t cut it. Modern , synthetic materials are not as durable and insulating as traditionally tanned hides. Many areas are making it difficult for these folks to maintain their heretage by preventing them access to herds, locations and tools for traditional hunting, or simply for the sanitary conditions involved in tanning. While sanitation and conservation laws are intended to help, they often make life harder for folks who need the old ways to stay alive. Sometimes a stretched hide is more than a sketch. It’s a reminder that quiet, stinky, sticky, ugly things, can be the reason we’re still here.