This question may not apply to everybody, particularly those who have grown up in a particuarlarly 'green' environment, or been involved in careers that have meant they've been directly involved with bushcraft type skills, but...
How did bushcraft/a bushcraft course change your life?
I know the person I was when I arrived at my fundemental course last July, wasn't the person who left, and I left with a great deal more than I came with in more ways than one. I left not just with skills I'd never had before, knowledge no one had ever taught me before, having completed tasks I never imagined completing, but I left with a new sense of possibility, both about the things I could do and who I could be, the places I could go and a lifestyle I could begin to strive for. And equally as important, I left having made new and lasting friends. Ever since that week the people I have come across having any connection to 'bushcraft' (and I use that term in a general sense) have been nothing but welcoming, willing to share their knowledge and their experiences as if they were friends of old. I can never go back now to the mental landscape I was living in before. It's not always easy, there are times when it feels like the hardest thing to keep on existing in a world that seems just a little off kilter, having lost touch with all that sustains it, but it's an enormous comfort to me to read posts on this site and realise that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Since that week I'm outside a lot more, walking a lot more, looking at the world around me like the living thing it is and learning to appreciate it as such. I'm even hoping to get myself a little allotment (I have no garden). I'm heading of to Sweden next year, plus another tracking course and hopefully the year after to the wilds of america. There's no going back now.
So, here's to a return to the earth, in whatever way that means.
How did bushcraft/a bushcraft course change your life?
I know the person I was when I arrived at my fundemental course last July, wasn't the person who left, and I left with a great deal more than I came with in more ways than one. I left not just with skills I'd never had before, knowledge no one had ever taught me before, having completed tasks I never imagined completing, but I left with a new sense of possibility, both about the things I could do and who I could be, the places I could go and a lifestyle I could begin to strive for. And equally as important, I left having made new and lasting friends. Ever since that week the people I have come across having any connection to 'bushcraft' (and I use that term in a general sense) have been nothing but welcoming, willing to share their knowledge and their experiences as if they were friends of old. I can never go back now to the mental landscape I was living in before. It's not always easy, there are times when it feels like the hardest thing to keep on existing in a world that seems just a little off kilter, having lost touch with all that sustains it, but it's an enormous comfort to me to read posts on this site and realise that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Since that week I'm outside a lot more, walking a lot more, looking at the world around me like the living thing it is and learning to appreciate it as such. I'm even hoping to get myself a little allotment (I have no garden). I'm heading of to Sweden next year, plus another tracking course and hopefully the year after to the wilds of america. There's no going back now.
So, here's to a return to the earth, in whatever way that means.
): 
