Cultural influences

[TheViking]

Jakunen:
DESERT - Big open space with lots of sand ... (no, not the beach)

Not sure but isn't every landscape that is bare and empty a 'desert'?? :?:

 

[Stuart]

growing up in Saudi Arabia it has to be the Bedu nomadic peoples of the desert

 

[Ahjno]

Not sure but isn't every landscape that is bare and empty a 'desert'?? :?:

I think you are right on that Andy :biggthump

But the general public / the normal man on the street will think of a (hot) big open space with lots of sand when you ask them about "desert" ... that's why I used the words "desert" & beach.
I should have been more accurate

 

[RovingArcher]

Of course I follow my Indian ancestors way, but when I'm looking at the skills and Earth connection of the First Nation Peoples, I feel that I'm looking at the skills and Earth connection of all Peoples of the Earth from somewhere in their past. I mean, the Indian people were and in some cases, still are a stone age civilization. Of course the environment would dictate how they lived and developed, but the basic skills needed to live within Nature would be the same.

 

[jakunen]

Jakunen:
DESERT - Big open space with lots of sand ... (no, not the beach)
DESSERT - Is what you have after dinner (diner is french).

You're British mate ... :rolmao: You should have known the difference

Hey come on I had a British grammar school education and everyone knows foreigners are better at English than us lot are.
Anyway, I spent most of my time in the 'Life' classes - How to appreciate fine Kentish Ales in the George - The Art of Fishing whilst Latin classes were sendign everyone to sleep...

 

[Hoodoo]

I was heavily influenced by the Germanic tribes. My uncle Emmit--we called him Boots--cause he always wore rubber boots, usually unbuckled. He was an old German bachelor farmer/handyman that lived close to the land and knew all the plants in the woods. I still remember the bushels of hickory nuts, acorns, walnuts, and butternuts he gathered every year. And no one could make head cheese like Emmit. Unfortunately in his later years as more and more small farms that he worked at when belly up, he sharpened up one of his butcher knives and cut his throat.

 

[TheViking]

I think you are right on that Andy :biggthump

But the general public / the normal man on the street will think of a (hot) big open space with lots of sand when you ask them about "desert" ... that's why I used the words "desert" & beach.

Yes.

 

[hootchi]

I look up the people of prehistoric britain, the hunter gatherers.

 

[Tantalus]

So is BCUK a cultural influence?

yeah i gotta say i think it really is

as for sticking to things the way they were in prehistoric times, we have to change with the countryside

at the top of the hill on my parents farm there are bronze age barrows. they are quite visible and remain untouched although visited from time to time by historians and students and other interested parties

the hill is now one of the most desolate spots i can think of and i asked one of the historians who came to visit, "why did people want to climb up this wind swept hillside to bury their dead?"

her answer was an eyeopener to me when she said in those times britain was considerably warmer, the hilltop was almost certainly the site of a bronze age settlement where cool breezes were a welcome thing

my point is that along with the climate a lot of plant and animal life has changed too, there are no longer huge forests with bear and boars, potatoes have been introduced and so has myxamatosis

and so the list goes on

but bushcrafting is about adapting to suit the environment we find ourselves in, finding a way to be comfortable in that environment and live with it not against it

Tant

 

[Moonraker]

but bushcrafting is about adapting to suit the environment we find ourselves in, finding a way to be comfortable in that environment and live with it not against it

Tant

So we all should put our feet up in front of the telly with a take-away pizza and feel the warmth from the central heating :?: I know what most medieval people would have done if they had had the choice ;-)

What most people here practice is nothing to do with 'true' survival, or 'adapting'; it is about exploring, discovering, re-discovering (often the pure joys of childhood freedoms) and finding some solitude in which to make some kind of sense of a senseless world. For me Henry David Thoreau the American author had it about right in his book 'Walden' written in the middle of the C19th when the old world was fast disappearing under the march of the new:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived.**I did not wish to live what was not life, living is
so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary.**I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all
that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to
know it by experience,...."

The important thing is not the who?, what?, or why? but the simple act of 'doing' and being...

 

[george]

So we all should put our feet up in front of the telly with a take-away pizza and feel the warmth from the central heating :?: I know what most medieval people would have done if they had had the choice ;-)

What most people here practice is nothing to do with 'true' survival, or 'adapting'; it is about exploring, discovering, re-discovering (often the pure joys of childhood freedoms) and finding some solitude in which to make some kind of sense of a senseless world. For me Henry David Thoreau the American author had it about right in his book 'Walden' written in the middle of the C19th when the old world was fast disappearing under the march of the new:



The important thing is not the who?, what?, or why? but the simple act of 'doing' and being...

Well said. Thoreau's a dude!

George

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

I remember a long ago day with my grandfather. Jack and I were in his old Studebaker truck that reeked of Prince Edward cigar smoke engaged in a invisible turf war with orange blossoms from the endless citrus orchards that were once Southern California. We were at a railroad crossing and Granddad exchanged salutes with the men riding the cars in a manner I had never seen. As the caboose passed by I saw a single figure standing in the noon haze. He could have stepped out of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Without any visible exchange he tossed his kit in the bed and climbed in. My grandfather leaned over and extracted a promise not to tell the family where we were going. I had visions of some Robert Louis Stevenson adventure. I was not disappointed. We drove to what must have been one of the last tramptowns in a sliver of surviving brushland. It was populated by fascinating men who had rode the rails during the great depression and never stopped. They were rough looking, but it was organised and I felt no fear. We had some stew from fireblackened cans and coffee thick as molasses. There was a slang I little understood except my grandfather knew it and several of the men. We finally left after shaking hands around and drove off. I never looked back and it's only been increasingly paved days since. The rails are prey to roaming gangs that rob and murder people foolish enough to seek the old romance and the real depression hoboes are almost all gone. But I remember that central fire and the sense of community seldom encountered since.

 

[Gary]

That's interesting Chris as it is a image we only see in movies, or th song king of the road, I guess.

And its not something you would automaticaly think of - like logging surveyors or even prospectors I suppose these guys back in the sourdough days needed bushcraft skills to get by too - although I dare say they doidnt think of them as such and just took em as a part of life.

 

[Rod]

Gary,

I have from a Scots/Irish ethinic background

Several years ago I read W.H.Murray's biography of Rob Roy. Murray himself was a noted climber and mountaineer, with many inspirational stories of his own. But I found his explanations of how Rob would drove cattle from Rannoch Moor to Carlisle: 250 miles throught the mountains, no maps, no compass, no GPS, no mobile phone, no waterproofs truely awesome. Rob would have used bushcraft as part of his everyday routine. I guess I'm trying to find more figures like him within our own history.

cheers

 

[Moonraker]

Chris, thanks for sharing that wonderful story.

There is a great site for Hobo words here:

Hobo Terminology

A few of some interesting ones relating to bushcraft:

American nomad - A hobo who has been across the nation many times.

Camp refrigerator - The old time tramps dug a hole when they first set up a camp, for refrigeration. Those holes used to keep food cool. When folks broke up camp, they not only cleaned up, they left a little something in the hole for the next tramp who came along.

Cover with the moon - To sleep in the open.

Hobo stew - A stew cooked in a large pot made of small pieces of meat, potatoes, onions, carrots or other vegetables and herbs found in the area. Also see Mulligan stew.

Hobo stove (1)- They are made out of discarded 5 gal. buckets that were used to carry railroad spikes. With a good knife and a pair of pliers, you make a row of openings around the bottom like a can opener would, and flip it upside down and cut out a small door. Then you can scratch out a little ditch and set this over it and build a fire inside. Gets hot enough to cook on and at night you can't see the fire over about 20 foot.

Hobo stove (2) - Camping near a junkyard is a good thing. The single most useful item in building a stove is a refrigerator. The crispers can be made into stoves, the racks can be used over the fire, and the refrigerator itself, if it's got a good seal, can be used to smoke fish.

Hobo tent - Most 'bo's got a tent or tarp. You can lose your equipment most any time out there, due either to misjudgement of a train, or of people you're around, so knowing how to make a tent or at least get a good ground cloth is good stuff to know.

As part of personal research I am currently doing in France I have studied the historic use of graffiti from the earliest recorded examples of man made signs to the C20th. As part of that I took a look at 'Hobo Signs' or the marks left on walls etc by hobos' as a form of symbolic language; indicating a house where food may be given or an easy house to rob etc. There is a nice page with examples here;

Hobo Signs

Most sources cite the usage of this type of graffiti message system to the Great Depression where many unemployed people took to the railroads just to survive. Apparently it is almost a forgotten language now although I read a few places where it is still used. In fact it's origins go a long way back.

The use of signs is widely used in different cultures including the Native American Indians (to indicate local plants or what game is available, leaving some local medicines for the next person etc)

 

[boaty]

Great hobo story!

The American micro-tonalist composer, Harry Partch, was a hobo for a while in the Depression and wrote a number of songs and tone poems about his experiences - the best collection is on CD 2 of the Harry Partch collection, produced by CRI - I had to get my copy from the States through. The accompanying booklet notes were written by my old mate Bob Gilmore

 

[Hoodoo]

I hopped freight trains quite a bit back in the mid 70s in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. It was a pretty common thing to do as a lot of the migrant fruit pickers got around that way and since Burlington Northern hauled the fruit to market, they usually looked the other way. In those days, you could still go up to the yard office and they would give you the timetable. Yup, there were a lot of rough men on those trains but I never really felt threatened. Never saw any of the gangs they now talk about today.

There is nothing quite like hopping a freight. I think Woody Guthrie said it: once you've ****** out the side of a boxcar, your life will never be the same.

 

[Moonraker]

There is a great film documentary made by Producer/Director, Sarah George following the lives of some modern day hobos on the American railroads:

'Catching Out' - 1996

There is a nice quote by one of the tramp couple called Baby Girl:

"You don't need the world. You need the basics, and the basics are food, air, shelter, and love."

There was another documentary made by a British woman I think where she lived the life travelling across the USA a few years ago now. I can't remember the name of the documentary which was on British TV ( Channel 4 maybe). It was an incredibly filmed piece and I kicked myself a number of times for losing my notes on it.

 

[Metala Cabinet]

I've always thought Thoreau was a bit of a fraud IMHO. His hermitage was only a short distance from his family home. He would regularly go into town to have dinner with friends and at weekends would go to the family home to get his laundry done or to eat what his mother and sisters had prepared for him. I'm not denigrating his philosophy but I'm a little disappointed with Thoreau the man.

On a lighter note follow this link to someone who has been compared to Thoreau and who really lived his life outdoors.

www.bridgewater.edu/philo/philo96/arbaugh-twitty.html

And he's British to boot!

 

[Moonraker]

I've always thought Thoreau was a bit of a fraud IMHO. His hermitage was only a short distance from his family home. He would regularly go into town to have dinner with friends and at weekends would go to the family home to get his laundry done or to eat what his mother and sisters had prepared for him. I'm not denigrating his philosophy but I'm a little disappointed with Thoreau the man.

On a lighter note follow this link to someone who has been compared to Thoreau and who really lived his life outdoors.

www.bridgewater.edu/philo/philo96/arbaugh-twitty.html

And he's British to boot!

I can't see how you can call him a fraud as he wrote all about that in his book! He never claimed it was the ultimate wilderness experience, more about escaping and questioning the conventional lifestyle of the time and trap of 'work'. More a contemplation on all that. In building his cabin he did more than most of us have done to that end.