I am new here and would not really call myself a bushcrafter. More of an outdoor guy.
I have been reading a few of the primitive living threads and that got me thinking about how I stack up after the better part of 40 years experience, the first part of my life following my grandfather through the woods and the later 2.5 decades more or less doing it for fun.
It was specifically THoaken's thread about living iron age style on a permanent or at least a semi permanent basis that got me thinking of an iron age scenario.
For the purposes of the challenge you are allowed an axe and a knife for gear and that is all.
All you need to do is collect water with them. If you think this primitive outdoor lark is all pretty easy, try my challenge.
So here it is...
WATER CHALLENGE
So you have caught the eye of the iron age princess Buttercup (unless you are female then roll with it and insert your own fantasy).
So you are snogging away in the roundhouse when you are caught by her dad Calgacus who beats you up and ties you to a tree. He explains that Buttercup was to be married off to the Roman General Odorous Maximus as part of some political peace treaty thing he is working on.
Since you have deflowered his Buttercup this means war so he plans to sacrifice you to his heathen gods to ask for good fortune in the upcoming conflict. He just has to go make some blue paint from some mustardy looking plants so you should be killed sometime early next week.
Two nights later Buttercups mom cuts you free from the tree and tells you that Buttercup is prisoner in one of the roundhouses and gives you a knife and an axe (they are pretty good ones because her family is rich). She tells you to rescue Buttercup and high tail it out of the village for the wild lands because she does not want to see her daughter married to General Odorous Maximus. Good luck and take care of Buttercup.
You rescue Buttercup and sneak out of the village. For two days you are pursued by the angry Calgacus but you give him the slip in the forest and make good your escape. Unfortunately after two days on the run Buttercup is exhausted and dehydrated. She is really sick and throwing up making a celebratory snogging less appealing. You know she needs water and fast so you head out into the woods to find a way to bring her water. She is hallucinating and cannot be moved. You think she may be possessed by demons but you really like her so you go to get water hoping that will help. Besides most women are possessed anyway right?
So there you have it. Take your axe and your knife, go out into the woods and bring back a liter of water to save Buttercup.
Basic assumptions;
1) Buttercup has an Iron Age gastrointestinal track so you do not need to filter the water.
2) Any axe and knife will do because Buttercup's mom gave you the best the iron age could offer on par with modern stuff.
3) Buttercup has not had water for two days but has been stressing herself more than usual with all the running and hiding she probably has less than four hours to live and will not make it past noon.
4) You could not move her any further and are at least 300 yards (or 3 football pitches) away from the nearest water source. Your container must get water that far at least.
5) This is an emergency. A pretty container is not necessary.
6) Your knife is a straight blade and not a fancy spoon knife.
Other than that, use what nature provides and save Buttercup. If you make a leather goat skin bag, document the goat to bag process in full with photos. Calgacus will not miss a single goat. Don't tell me what you would do or what you think you would do. Tell me what you actually did do. Post your examples in here with photos. Photos or it didn't happen.
ALSO; Please document your failures as they are just as relevant to the question. I almost failed myself by trying to get too fancy.
You can cheat if you want and we may never know but who learns anything from you trying to look good?
***
On my side of the pond I have to use Native American tech and Butternut is a Maliseet girl.
I had an idea of what I was going to do but no plan so I parked my car in a spot that was about 300 yards from a brook and left my nalgeen bottle on the hood. I was in an area of woods fairly average for this part of Canada not too far out of town.
I left on my quest at 1:30pm. At 1:35pm I came across junk left over as trash from an unethical modern camper that would have saved Buttercup in the first 5 minutes. Alas I was not allowed to use it.
By 1:45pm I had found something close to what I was looking for but not quite. I was about a kilometer away when I came across a younger birch tree but the bark was too new and the tree was not quite thick enough.
A few minutes later and a hundred yards deeper in I found a tree that was more to my liking. Thicker and older with bark better suited to making a water carrier.
Because of modern sensibilities I was careful not to take the inner bark (which would work better) and only took the outer layers to make my container.
With a nice piece of bark to work with I quickly rolled it into a cone before it dried out and started to crack.
I should have stopped at this point but I continued on to find some spruce roots. To find a spruce tree I needed to get to a different area in the woods so about a kilometer later I found what I was looking for. Realistically I could have found one closer but was enjoying the walk.
The plan was to sew up a cone after soaking the spruce roots and splitting them but it dawned on me as I walked that for that plan, I would need to split them, boil them, make a fire, and gum the cracks with spruce gum. That was going to take a lot of time. Maybe I could just roll it up and try to make due?
While walking I found a patch of tea berries that would help bring Buttercup back around. There were not too many but never look a gift horse in the mouth right? They are easy to digest and have some nutrition.
Later on as I reached the lake I came upon an example of why I hate these TV guys that encourage people to go out into the woods and try to play cave man in the first place. The woods were reasonably free of this before all the celebrity woodsmen came along.
Looks like they had a little fire problem?
Back to my quest I tried my cone without stitching and gumming at the lake but it leaked like a sieve. The whole cone would empty in less than 30 seconds. I figured I was going to chalk this one up as a failure but then as I walked further I decided to try to scrape the bark to clean up the seal edge a bit and make it easier to fold over the tip. With a bit of knife scraping I was able to make a better seal.
Walking back to where I parked my car I came to the brook a few hundred yards away and filled up my cone. It did not leak nearly as bad. I took off at a fast walk towards where Buttercup would be and when I got there emptied what was left of my cone into the nalgene bottle to see I had about 250ml.
Better than nothing. After four trips I was able to get my liter. My finish time was 3pm so about an hour and a half.
Had I been smarter I could have probably done it in 45 minutes but this was not about researching what to do and doing it perfectly. It was about going out with an axe and a knife with no real idea and seeing what I could come up with. An emergency situation where you face adversity and have to adapt and overcome an obstacle in order to succeed.
Buttercup lived.
So there you have it. A bit of fun on an afternoon walk. Now you go out and see what you can come up with and post it in here and lets see what works and what fails. No prize or awards, just that feeling you get when you do something harder than a google search.
Have fun.
I have been reading a few of the primitive living threads and that got me thinking about how I stack up after the better part of 40 years experience, the first part of my life following my grandfather through the woods and the later 2.5 decades more or less doing it for fun.
It was specifically THoaken's thread about living iron age style on a permanent or at least a semi permanent basis that got me thinking of an iron age scenario.
For the purposes of the challenge you are allowed an axe and a knife for gear and that is all.
All you need to do is collect water with them. If you think this primitive outdoor lark is all pretty easy, try my challenge.
So here it is...
WATER CHALLENGE
So you have caught the eye of the iron age princess Buttercup (unless you are female then roll with it and insert your own fantasy).
So you are snogging away in the roundhouse when you are caught by her dad Calgacus who beats you up and ties you to a tree. He explains that Buttercup was to be married off to the Roman General Odorous Maximus as part of some political peace treaty thing he is working on.
Since you have deflowered his Buttercup this means war so he plans to sacrifice you to his heathen gods to ask for good fortune in the upcoming conflict. He just has to go make some blue paint from some mustardy looking plants so you should be killed sometime early next week.
Two nights later Buttercups mom cuts you free from the tree and tells you that Buttercup is prisoner in one of the roundhouses and gives you a knife and an axe (they are pretty good ones because her family is rich). She tells you to rescue Buttercup and high tail it out of the village for the wild lands because she does not want to see her daughter married to General Odorous Maximus. Good luck and take care of Buttercup.
You rescue Buttercup and sneak out of the village. For two days you are pursued by the angry Calgacus but you give him the slip in the forest and make good your escape. Unfortunately after two days on the run Buttercup is exhausted and dehydrated. She is really sick and throwing up making a celebratory snogging less appealing. You know she needs water and fast so you head out into the woods to find a way to bring her water. She is hallucinating and cannot be moved. You think she may be possessed by demons but you really like her so you go to get water hoping that will help. Besides most women are possessed anyway right?
So there you have it. Take your axe and your knife, go out into the woods and bring back a liter of water to save Buttercup.
Basic assumptions;
1) Buttercup has an Iron Age gastrointestinal track so you do not need to filter the water.
2) Any axe and knife will do because Buttercup's mom gave you the best the iron age could offer on par with modern stuff.
3) Buttercup has not had water for two days but has been stressing herself more than usual with all the running and hiding she probably has less than four hours to live and will not make it past noon.
4) You could not move her any further and are at least 300 yards (or 3 football pitches) away from the nearest water source. Your container must get water that far at least.
5) This is an emergency. A pretty container is not necessary.
6) Your knife is a straight blade and not a fancy spoon knife.
Other than that, use what nature provides and save Buttercup. If you make a leather goat skin bag, document the goat to bag process in full with photos. Calgacus will not miss a single goat. Don't tell me what you would do or what you think you would do. Tell me what you actually did do. Post your examples in here with photos. Photos or it didn't happen.
ALSO; Please document your failures as they are just as relevant to the question. I almost failed myself by trying to get too fancy.
You can cheat if you want and we may never know but who learns anything from you trying to look good?
***
On my side of the pond I have to use Native American tech and Butternut is a Maliseet girl.
I had an idea of what I was going to do but no plan so I parked my car in a spot that was about 300 yards from a brook and left my nalgeen bottle on the hood. I was in an area of woods fairly average for this part of Canada not too far out of town.
I left on my quest at 1:30pm. At 1:35pm I came across junk left over as trash from an unethical modern camper that would have saved Buttercup in the first 5 minutes. Alas I was not allowed to use it.
By 1:45pm I had found something close to what I was looking for but not quite. I was about a kilometer away when I came across a younger birch tree but the bark was too new and the tree was not quite thick enough.
A few minutes later and a hundred yards deeper in I found a tree that was more to my liking. Thicker and older with bark better suited to making a water carrier.
Because of modern sensibilities I was careful not to take the inner bark (which would work better) and only took the outer layers to make my container.
With a nice piece of bark to work with I quickly rolled it into a cone before it dried out and started to crack.
I should have stopped at this point but I continued on to find some spruce roots. To find a spruce tree I needed to get to a different area in the woods so about a kilometer later I found what I was looking for. Realistically I could have found one closer but was enjoying the walk.
The plan was to sew up a cone after soaking the spruce roots and splitting them but it dawned on me as I walked that for that plan, I would need to split them, boil them, make a fire, and gum the cracks with spruce gum. That was going to take a lot of time. Maybe I could just roll it up and try to make due?
While walking I found a patch of tea berries that would help bring Buttercup back around. There were not too many but never look a gift horse in the mouth right? They are easy to digest and have some nutrition.
Later on as I reached the lake I came upon an example of why I hate these TV guys that encourage people to go out into the woods and try to play cave man in the first place. The woods were reasonably free of this before all the celebrity woodsmen came along.
Looks like they had a little fire problem?
Back to my quest I tried my cone without stitching and gumming at the lake but it leaked like a sieve. The whole cone would empty in less than 30 seconds. I figured I was going to chalk this one up as a failure but then as I walked further I decided to try to scrape the bark to clean up the seal edge a bit and make it easier to fold over the tip. With a bit of knife scraping I was able to make a better seal.
Walking back to where I parked my car I came to the brook a few hundred yards away and filled up my cone. It did not leak nearly as bad. I took off at a fast walk towards where Buttercup would be and when I got there emptied what was left of my cone into the nalgene bottle to see I had about 250ml.
Better than nothing. After four trips I was able to get my liter. My finish time was 3pm so about an hour and a half.
Had I been smarter I could have probably done it in 45 minutes but this was not about researching what to do and doing it perfectly. It was about going out with an axe and a knife with no real idea and seeing what I could come up with. An emergency situation where you face adversity and have to adapt and overcome an obstacle in order to succeed.
Buttercup lived.
So there you have it. A bit of fun on an afternoon walk. Now you go out and see what you can come up with and post it in here and lets see what works and what fails. No prize or awards, just that feeling you get when you do something harder than a google search.
Have fun.
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