What is ‘Bushcraft’?
- Thread starter Darryl of Sussex
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Go off the grid with a purpose to learn something on every camping trip. Plan for it.
Your movement and camping restrictions are stultifying when compared with mine.
Must be much like attempting to book a tent pitch campsite in a national or provincial park here.
What that would do to me would be a cause for greater versatility, flexibility, to abide by differing constraints.
+/- camp fires. +/- wood cutting. Even picking pine needles for tea. All the hassles of permissions.
Star-gazing is a good place to start. "In a cocked hat" might lead you into navigation, yes?
Buy an inexpensive "Star Compass" = several rotating plastic sheets to show the overhead
star field for every hour of every night. Make your next camping trip the pursuit of "dark sky."
Actually, I did learn just the other day that we do have a crown land camping restriction: 14 days and move on.
Your movement and camping restrictions are stultifying when compared with mine.
Must be much like attempting to book a tent pitch campsite in a national or provincial park here.
What that would do to me would be a cause for greater versatility, flexibility, to abide by differing constraints.
+/- camp fires. +/- wood cutting. Even picking pine needles for tea. All the hassles of permissions.
Star-gazing is a good place to start. "In a cocked hat" might lead you into navigation, yes?
Buy an inexpensive "Star Compass" = several rotating plastic sheets to show the overhead
star field for every hour of every night. Make your next camping trip the pursuit of "dark sky."
Actually, I did learn just the other day that we do have a crown land camping restriction: 14 days and move on.
That is something I would love to know.
Navigation according to the Stars.
I can do sun nav, magnetic nav, but can not even find the Family Jewels using the stars!
I have tried to learn to navigate following natural signs, but decided decades ago it was just an Old Man's Tale.
Navigation according to the Stars.
I can do sun nav, magnetic nav, but can not even find the Family Jewels using the stars!
I have tried to learn to navigate following natural signs, but decided decades ago it was just an Old Man's Tale.
Walts. Walter Mitty type characters like a bloke I used to know who reckoned he was ex services. M65 type jacket, military boots etc. He’d be gone for weeks on his “mission”, but I found out he was redecorating a flat in Southampton.
Take a look into spar crystal "sun-stones" that work even on overcast days.
Learn the stars. No big deal. Build a bunch of sundials with all sorts of gnomons.
Ascending, decending and so on. Great lessons in geometry, too.
My uncle was a WW II RAF Navigator.
They had sets of star charts for night bombing raids.
The complete set is still standing on some dusty shelf in my library.
Learn the stars. No big deal. Build a bunch of sundials with all sorts of gnomons.
Ascending, decending and so on. Great lessons in geometry, too.
My uncle was a WW II RAF Navigator.
They had sets of star charts for night bombing raids.
The complete set is still standing on some dusty shelf in my library.
Ahh yes. We’ve probably all met a few people who are that insecure that they have hidden their true selves behind a protective and interesting fantasy. I find ridicule to be the least productive way to help them to move on from whatever happened to them that caused it. Of course, this is not to be confused with personality disorders.
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now, it’s just a sprinkling for the May Queen.
Maybe he was the one that bombed my granddads factory.........
The night sky here is very much different from UK, even more different from the Scandi Arctic. We are fairly close to the Equator.
Even the Moon is more tilted. But then we do enjoy Rum here.....
Navigation, (map and magnetic compass) is one if the basics. Map reading too, connected.
And great fun, a good map can show you lots of interesting stuff!
The night sky here is very much different from UK, even more different from the Scandi Arctic. We are fairly close to the Equator.
Even the Moon is more tilted. But then we do enjoy Rum here.....
Navigation, (map and magnetic compass) is one if the basics. Map reading too, connected.
And great fun, a good map can show you lots of interesting stuff!
Hang onto your hats. Have you been reading about the global movements of the magnetic N pole?
Something like 50km per year after decades of apparent stability?
It could snap back into Canadian space but the MNP is on it's way into Russia at present.
Better learn how to reset the declination of your compass!
Something like 50km per year after decades of apparent stability?
It could snap back into Canadian space but the MNP is on it's way into Russia at present.
Better learn how to reset the declination of your compass!
I personally dislike the term 'Bush Craft".
IMO it should be called something in the line of" Wilderness Knowledge".
Why? Not much Bush in Europe. Craft? Crafting what?
The movement of the magnetic North Pole is irrelevant when trekking. The deviation is so small.
When I navigate using a map I can use my watch and the sun. Good enough, the map is the most important.
IMO it should be called something in the line of" Wilderness Knowledge".
Why? Not much Bush in Europe. Craft? Crafting what?
The movement of the magnetic North Pole is irrelevant when trekking. The deviation is so small.
When I navigate using a map I can use my watch and the sun. Good enough, the map is the most important.
I good map ( military quality) can tell you about old derelict buildings, tracks, tiny streams and so on.
Lots and lots of good info.
In one if the fjords outside the village where we have our house I found the base for a German 88mm gun, defensive emplacements, place where the troops slept. My next step is to locate where the cook house and dump where.
I did not look for WW2 archeology, but for a suitable place I could anchor and harvest some mussels.
Lots and lots of good info.
In one if the fjords outside the village where we have our house I found the base for a German 88mm gun, defensive emplacements, place where the troops slept. My next step is to locate where the cook house and dump where.
I did not look for WW2 archeology, but for a suitable place I could anchor and harvest some mussels.
That's "bush-craft," if there is any to be had = find the garbage dumps, middens, whatever you want to call them.
It's a mirror of their living. Modern tree cover hides a huge number of middens along coastal British Columbia.
Best to learn if you are allowed to explore them with a shovel. Instant paranoia here, like you're some professional tomb robbers.
They have been known to even confiscate cameras!!!!!
It's a mirror of their living. Modern tree cover hides a huge number of middens along coastal British Columbia.
Best to learn if you are allowed to explore them with a shovel. Instant paranoia here, like you're some professional tomb robbers.
They have been known to even confiscate cameras!!!!!
Definitely do not discuss any of this.
Did anyone notice the little girl roasting peanuts on a lattice bamboo construction over a fire (bamboo takes longer to burn) and a lack of matches and wonder how she managed to know that?
What about the handmade woven beds and screens?
How about wondering about how to maintain morale with games and music?
Or dealing with human waste?
Personal cleanliness?
Shelter?
Is this not partly what Bushcraft is about?
Some people cannot see the woods for the trees!
It is very unusual for people new to a subject to have a broader view than those who have been interested/involved for longer. Those links I posted, and some other reading you might do here, would give you a better view of the scope of the "wood".
Wondering how people know how to do things might be interesting, but it is usually a fruitless activity unless someone has recorded it, or you make it your special field of study. How did the Kalahari Bushmen first find the use for the grubs that feed on Comiphora bushes? Who figured out that you can change the properties of animal hide by rubbing brains over it, and smoking it? Where and when was the hand drill first used to make fire? There are endless questions like those, and while the answers may be out there, we are unlikely to approach the truth without focused and in depth study. Some are most likely to be unknowable.
I think your original question was along the lines of, "Is living in an Indian refugee shanty village = bushcraft because of the primitive conditions?" Sure, you are welcome to draw parallels, but don't be surprised if other people disagree. A lorry driver using a trucker's hitch to secure his load isn't practising bushcraft, using a map and compass to navigate central London isn't bushcraft (although Corbett applied his jungle honed skills to urban navigation), paddling a canoe isn't bushcraft, making an all wood longbow isn't bushcraft, if I use fatwood from Orvis to light my wood stove, that isn't bushcraft. However, all those skills and activities are considered by many to be related to or part of "bushcraft".
Another example. Is melting some old bits of poly rope or smashed up plastic = bushcraft? Is using hot-glue = bushcraft? Standing in my nice warm workshop, using hot glue to assemble some crafting or camping gear? What if the hot "glue" is made of that plastic scrap? If that is bushcraft, then the word has no specific meaning any more. If that is not bushcraft, does changing one's physical location make it bushcraft? Not bushcraft standing in my living room, my back garden, down the street, in the local woods...? What about on holiday? Does it become bushcraft if I have darker skin? So why would it be bushcraft it someone in Miri (Malaysia) uses melted Bic lighter bodies to glue on a parang handle? Just because they are geographically and ethnically closer to people who until recently used tree resin to do the same job? The person knowing what tree, how to collect, process and apply the sap, that would be bushcraft. Reading about it in a book and going and vandalising one of Kew's specimens...not so much, but arguably more than the melted plastic guy.
Of course, you might have been asking "Can bushcraft skills be applied to living in an Indian refugee shanty village?", in which case the answer is a simple "yes, of course". More complicated though since the best bushcraft skills in the world do not mean that you or your group will be able to cope with shanty town life all that much better. The Penan of Borneo are a good example. Living as jungle nomads their skills were legendary, however, the Malaysian government made a big push to get them all settled into permanent villages. Adjusting to village life has not been easy. Living by in the jungle they didn't have to worry about waste build up, everything was biodegradable and rotted to nothing, they moved on anyway. No real problem with managing water for washing, cooking, cleaning and waste. In a fixed village, exposed to the outside world, waste builds up, plastics and metals do not degrade, plants that are cut don't have months or years to regenerate New skills, non-bushcraft skills, are needed.
Le Loup
Settler
This is my personal opinion Darryl. Bushcraft used to be known as woodscraft, it was about choosing the right sustainable equipment & supplies to ensure your comfort & survival in the wild. The crafts & skills practiced were common knowledge & of a primitive common sense nature.
These days it is totally different, many bushcrafters make things at home to take bush, such as Vaseline cotton balls for instance. The equipment they use is mostly modern gadgets that are not sustainable & teach them no meaningful skills. Many no longer have these primitive skills, they are lost to but a few of us. They invent mindless skills to share with the community such as batoning a knife to split wood!!! I personally find it very difficult to fit into the bushcraft community & I find very few threads on boards that I am able to participate in. I was born in West Sussex England in an 18th century farm house out in the country. At an early age, when I found the countryside was fast disappearing under cement & tarmac, I emigrated to Australia. I have lived off grid over here for over 40 years, & for at least 20 of those years I lived without any electricity.
I stay connected with this forum because it gives me some connection to the old country, & very occasionally I am able to offer advice without upsetting anyone! It is not that I believe I am right & others are wrong, it is just that bushcraft has changed from what it used to be & I feel that I no longer fit in.
Regards, Keith.
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/
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As I said, “which flavour? You’re all right,”. It’s just a conversation. Another reason is that newcomers to whatever ‘bushcraft’ is, need to ask and answer such fundamental questions in order to explore and derive their own understandings as a foundation for life, otherwise what separates them from anyone who goes camping while dressed in MTP? Everything we humans do evolved from necessity.
All of this may seem a little too objective and wordy for some, but I find such observations very helpful because one day, I might find the need to construct a bed, stretcher, screen etc from woven leaves and remember that i’d seen it done. Different causes but similar needs.
Allow me to digress a little.
I was chatting about what it’s like to live in a Jungle on a purely ‘you have what you carry and make’ basis, with my father just the other day... in Wadhurst. Incidentally, what he did is what I have termed ‘bushcraft’ to this day, because even when they ran out of shotgun shells and other supplies while moving through Jungle terrain, they were able to create the possibilities to sustain life as needed indefinitely. My family lived for three generations, as a developed jungle community/ colony on land belonging to ancient ‘Indian’ tribes and yes, I have been there, have seen wild Tigers while not on safari in a National Park, got too close to an enormous King Cobra, met tribal villagers and have seen how their technologies evolved to be what they use... Most often for my family, it was necessary for them to live right out in the jungle for a week or two (often moving on foot, sometimes living up a tree), because of a Tiger or Panther which was killing cattle or villagers that needed to be dealt with and traditional superstitions prevent solving their issue. They learned handed-down bushcraft. I could go on ad finitum but this is not the place for that, my book will be! (Plug!) but I hope you can see my point.
End of digression.
The thing about all of this, for me, is that there are obvious basic commonalities which can be seen across tribal cultures, technologies that have developed globally (co-evolution of ideas) and basic human needs which needed fulfilling. The refugees who are living to survive, have learned from traditionally passed on reliable methods of survival. My father (who turns 90 this year), grandfathers etc learned their snake-dodging skills from those tribal villagers. I’m trying to learn from them, this online community and anyone else who cares to share. I’m hoping to pass it all on one day.... it’s the fundamentals which stand the test of time but isn’t it amazing that we live in a time and place when we can choose to not do any of that because of evolved ideas etc? Some commenters (who I admire greatly) are a testament to how balance can be applied so as to avoid taking things for granted. That is just some of the ways by which ‘Bushcraft’ can shape modern life into what I might argue is a more respectful way in which to live. That is also Bushcraft. It’s a huge subject but worth exploring all the same, if only to chat philosophically.
Right. More later as I need to get ready to go to the Sussex Bushcraft meetingthingy.
Best wishes and keep sharing,
Darryl
All of this may seem a little too objective and wordy for some, but I find such observations very helpful because one day, I might find the need to construct a bed, stretcher, screen etc from woven leaves and remember that i’d seen it done. Different causes but similar needs.
Allow me to digress a little.
I was chatting about what it’s like to live in a Jungle on a purely ‘you have what you carry and make’ basis, with my father just the other day... in Wadhurst. Incidentally, what he did is what I have termed ‘bushcraft’ to this day, because even when they ran out of shotgun shells and other supplies while moving through Jungle terrain, they were able to create the possibilities to sustain life as needed indefinitely. My family lived for three generations, as a developed jungle community/ colony on land belonging to ancient ‘Indian’ tribes and yes, I have been there, have seen wild Tigers while not on safari in a National Park, got too close to an enormous King Cobra, met tribal villagers and have seen how their technologies evolved to be what they use... Most often for my family, it was necessary for them to live right out in the jungle for a week or two (often moving on foot, sometimes living up a tree), because of a Tiger or Panther which was killing cattle or villagers that needed to be dealt with and traditional superstitions prevent solving their issue. They learned handed-down bushcraft. I could go on ad finitum but this is not the place for that, my book will be! (Plug!) but I hope you can see my point.
End of digression.
The thing about all of this, for me, is that there are obvious basic commonalities which can be seen across tribal cultures, technologies that have developed globally (co-evolution of ideas) and basic human needs which needed fulfilling. The refugees who are living to survive, have learned from traditionally passed on reliable methods of survival. My father (who turns 90 this year), grandfathers etc learned their snake-dodging skills from those tribal villagers. I’m trying to learn from them, this online community and anyone else who cares to share. I’m hoping to pass it all on one day.... it’s the fundamentals which stand the test of time but isn’t it amazing that we live in a time and place when we can choose to not do any of that because of evolved ideas etc? Some commenters (who I admire greatly) are a testament to how balance can be applied so as to avoid taking things for granted. That is just some of the ways by which ‘Bushcraft’ can shape modern life into what I might argue is a more respectful way in which to live. That is also Bushcraft. It’s a huge subject but worth exploring all the same, if only to chat philosophically.
Right. More later as I need to get ready to go to the Sussex Bushcraft meetingthingy.
Best wishes and keep sharing,
Darryl
Don't forget to purchsse a large knife from an exhibitor as it ain't Bushcraft without one!
K
This is a discussion that people get very personal about. On this forum there are a good mix of people starting out from scratch, people that have been brought up on the Ray Mears commercial spread, and people that having been doing ‘living in the wilderness’ long before Uncle Ray started his various business ventures.
In my humble opinion there is no such thing as ‘bushcraft’ as a term on its own other than, in the UK at least, as a badge upon which many commercial ventures rely. There are a whole load of skills one can learn that make life easier, less stressful, and less risky as well as provide essential methods, materials and commodities for travelling through ‘wilderness’ and living away from the comfort of modern life. It has become useful to call that group of skills ‘bushcraft’ but to be honest they were around a very long time before that term was ever adopted. It used to be called a variety of things including backwoods skills, woodcraft, wilderness skills, pioneering skills etc. and for indigenous peoples it was called ‘life’.
Have a look at Bernard Mason’s ‘Woodcraft and Camping’ written in 1937 to see that there is nothing new and that shelter building, firelighting, use of tools, making camp gadgets, making cordage, using bark for utensils, using horn, hide, and plants were all part of the skill set that an ‘outdoorsman’ was expected to know; and that’s a relatively new book – there are many written before. Indeed, most of these skills would have been practiced by pre-bronze and iron age man in the UK.
It annoys me a little that when people ask what I do in the woods, on the rivers and up the mountains they rarely understand unless I use the term ‘bushcraft’ – Oh, a wannabe Ray Mears? NO, I was doing this before Ray Mears!
So, for me, Bushcraft is an unfortunate term, made popular by commercialism, that encompasses a huge variety of skills for the outdoors (and that most definitely includes canoe paddling!!!!).
In my humble opinion there is no such thing as ‘bushcraft’ as a term on its own other than, in the UK at least, as a badge upon which many commercial ventures rely. There are a whole load of skills one can learn that make life easier, less stressful, and less risky as well as provide essential methods, materials and commodities for travelling through ‘wilderness’ and living away from the comfort of modern life. It has become useful to call that group of skills ‘bushcraft’ but to be honest they were around a very long time before that term was ever adopted. It used to be called a variety of things including backwoods skills, woodcraft, wilderness skills, pioneering skills etc. and for indigenous peoples it was called ‘life’.
Have a look at Bernard Mason’s ‘Woodcraft and Camping’ written in 1937 to see that there is nothing new and that shelter building, firelighting, use of tools, making camp gadgets, making cordage, using bark for utensils, using horn, hide, and plants were all part of the skill set that an ‘outdoorsman’ was expected to know; and that’s a relatively new book – there are many written before. Indeed, most of these skills would have been practiced by pre-bronze and iron age man in the UK.
It annoys me a little that when people ask what I do in the woods, on the rivers and up the mountains they rarely understand unless I use the term ‘bushcraft’ – Oh, a wannabe Ray Mears? NO, I was doing this before Ray Mears!
So, for me, Bushcraft is an unfortunate term, made popular by commercialism, that encompasses a huge variety of skills for the outdoors (and that most definitely includes canoe paddling!!!!).
My first meet up, I must have looked so utterly gormless when I said that I didn't know RM, and I didn't quite get the fixation with the big knives
They were very patient with me but they were all incredibly skilled people and they were all very different people, with different backgrounds, skills and knowledge, yet happy to share, to learn, to enjoy the company and the whole experience.
That was nearly twelve years ago now, and those people are still people I consider to be friends The lady in the hat's me.
We did everything from woodwork to fibre craft, leatherwork to foraging, firecraft to magic, that weekend and the cooking was very good indeed.
It's a broad church is 'Bushcraft'.
They were very patient with me
but they were all incredibly skilled people and they were all very different people, with different backgrounds, skills and knowledge, yet happy to share, to learn, to enjoy the company and the whole experience.That was nearly twelve years ago now, and those people are still people I consider to be friends
The lady in the hat's me.We did everything from woodwork to fibre craft, leatherwork to foraging, firecraft to magic, that weekend
and the cooking was very good indeed.It's a broad church is 'Bushcraft'.
