what does bushcraft mean to you?
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What does bushcraft mean to me? Not a great deal, truth to tell. There *is* a reason for this. I've spent my life in places where any sort of natural woodland has been in very short supply. ie windswept places like the west coast of Ireland, Derbyshire hill farms, the Peak District generally, North Wales, the Lake District hills... There are areas of commercially managed woodland but they feel ...kinda dead. Walk through the Kielder forest to get a flavour of what I mean.
Walking around with an axe or saw in my pack around 'my' outdoor environments would feel kinda strange. There are a few rare surviving bits of the ancient forest that covered UK & EU. I see remnant roots from the great forest eroding out of the peat in high places in N. Wales and the Peak district that could be hundreds or thousands of years old. Climate change, human activity and the introduction of sheep did for the Great Forest that they say would enable a squirrel to hop branch to branch from one side of the country to the other without ever having to touch ground. The world has changed.
Pioneering in western EU is dead. You can no longer travel for days on end in unknown territory. You no longer need to suffer weeks long epic struggles to get back to home when things go pear shaped, even if you're in the polar regions. A quick call on the ol' mobile phone or satellite phone will get you rescued & flown out in short order. In truth, it is difficult to be alone for long in UK unless you work at it.
I suppose that for some, bushcraft represents a sort of re-enactment of aspects of life in a favoured selection of bygone eras, for example Anglo Saxon England for wooden cups and tableware, Robin Hood's era (whenever *that* was) for life in the greenwood, any era you like for assorted ways to start fires, the American/ Boer pioneers for relatively recent history... the list goes on.
For others, bushcraft represents a golden opportunity to spend big money on a beautiful leather waist pouch to carry their survival kit lucky talisman, or various other big ticket pieces of Gucci outdoor gear. My survival kit -if you can call it that- is what I put in my pack. I put in what I'm likely to need. Mostly it doesn't fit into a 2oz tobacco tin: if it did, it'd be useless, more than likely.
Maybe for the enlightened, bushcraft represents a sense of 'otherness', a route to a world where time travels more slowly, where life isn't regulated by the quartz timepiece, where there is time to appreciate the moment. There are undoubted attractions in a world where problems aren't abstract and have real solutions, where an element of skill is required to live comfortably.
But what do I know? For me, trees are a rare luxury and solitude more so. Bushcraft, in the final analysis, is whatever you want it to be.
Walking around with an axe or saw in my pack around 'my' outdoor environments would feel kinda strange. There are a few rare surviving bits of the ancient forest that covered UK & EU. I see remnant roots from the great forest eroding out of the peat in high places in N. Wales and the Peak district that could be hundreds or thousands of years old. Climate change, human activity and the introduction of sheep did for the Great Forest that they say would enable a squirrel to hop branch to branch from one side of the country to the other without ever having to touch ground. The world has changed.
Pioneering in western EU is dead. You can no longer travel for days on end in unknown territory. You no longer need to suffer weeks long epic struggles to get back to home when things go pear shaped, even if you're in the polar regions. A quick call on the ol' mobile phone or satellite phone will get you rescued & flown out in short order. In truth, it is difficult to be alone for long in UK unless you work at it.
I suppose that for some, bushcraft represents a sort of re-enactment of aspects of life in a favoured selection of bygone eras, for example Anglo Saxon England for wooden cups and tableware, Robin Hood's era (whenever *that* was) for life in the greenwood, any era you like for assorted ways to start fires, the American/ Boer pioneers for relatively recent history... the list goes on.
For others, bushcraft represents a golden opportunity to spend big money on a beautiful leather waist pouch to carry their survival kit lucky talisman, or various other big ticket pieces of Gucci outdoor gear. My survival kit -if you can call it that- is what I put in my pack. I put in what I'm likely to need. Mostly it doesn't fit into a 2oz tobacco tin: if it did, it'd be useless, more than likely.
Maybe for the enlightened, bushcraft represents a sense of 'otherness', a route to a world where time travels more slowly, where life isn't regulated by the quartz timepiece, where there is time to appreciate the moment. There are undoubted attractions in a world where problems aren't abstract and have real solutions, where an element of skill is required to live comfortably.
But what do I know? For me, trees are a rare luxury and solitude more so. Bushcraft, in the final analysis, is whatever you want it to be.
Thats a very interesting counter view.
I have been to some very interesting places with no woods.
And to some incredibly remote places for antiquities...what would be the point of a world without humans?
I want to be better than my ancestors.
I like to camp...but in comfort.
Im really no good at crafts, (doesnt stop me trying.)
I have been to some very interesting places with no woods.
And to some incredibly remote places for antiquities...what would be the point of a world without humans?
I want to be better than my ancestors.
I like to camp...but in comfort.
Im really no good at crafts, (doesnt stop me trying.)
It teaches this - There is a huge gulf between what you need and what you want. And that you can be remarkably happy with just the bare necessities. Everything else is icing - and there is such a thing as too much icing BTW.
Bushcraft to me now means MONEY!
The amount of 'Bushcraft stuff' we now need to live in the bush is staggering!
Bushcraft is 100% in the mind and what you can do with that information. It shouldn't cost anything!
The amount of 'Bushcraft stuff' we now need to live in the bush is staggering!
Bushcraft is 100% in the mind and what you can do with that information. It shouldn't cost anything!
Not really a counter view, Tengu, just my perspective. I have an antique copper kettle which looks ok from one side but the other side is black.It belonged to my grandmother, who had a high hill farm in Derbyshire. It had absolutely no mains services, no electricity, no gas, no sewerage. Water came from an antique pump. Hot water came from that kettle, blackened from sitting on a trivet which rotated into the fire. Light came from oil lamps, later from Tilley lamps which also provided around 1kw of heat. Fancy cooking was done over a 2 pint Primus stove. She got about in pony and trap. In the winter of 1946 the snow went over the roof but she sat it out OK, she had the necessary skills. As a young child, it seemed normal, looking back it seems like something very close to mid 19th century living or even pioneer living. I honour her by not polishing that black away from her kettle and I honour both her and my Irish ancestors by cooking in a cast iron cauldron.
You can't easily buy cauldrons these days unless you buy them on line as potjie pots from UK based African shops. They come in sizes from too small to humongous and they are exactly the same cauldrons as were used by the Boer (and other) pioneers in Africa, exactly as used in UK & Ireland for hundreds of years. They need skill to use and maintain. Get it wrong and you have a horrible, rancid, rusting lump of cast iron. Get it right and you have a super efficient non stick cooking pot.
I've been fortunate to handle some extraordinary items from the past. The oldest were probably mesolithic hand axes. Looking only gives a superficial idea, handling can tell so much more. Hold them one way round and you'll get a lacerated thumb, rotate 180 degrees and more often than not the thumb encounters a comfortingly rounded surface where its maker left part of the original surface unworked to make the tool safe to use. That took thought and skill: mesolithic man was a thinker and a planner.
I've handled perfect clay pottery 5000 years old, as good to use today as when it was first made. Ceramics endure, sadly wooden tableware is exceedingly rare, being perishable so I've never had the privilege of handling that.Could we casually knock out a clay pot, I wonder?
I've had the extreme good fortune to examine from close up a 3500 years old fire making kit: bow, drill, base and stone hand bearing. It was really sophisticated. The hand bearing had a well polished dimple where the top of the rotating rod was located, saving wear and tear on the hand. The holes in the base where friction worked its magic were right at the edge so that sparks could be thrown straight out into the tinder. The most telling thing I noticed was that the rod had been deliberately shaped to have a wider diameter at the charred end. I speculate this was so that downward pressure on the bow would create an 'auto clutch' effect and increase the string's grip on the rod, reducing slippage and increasing efficiency. It was a tool which had seen hard, regular use which probably took centuries to evolve into that form.
I've been endlessly impressed by an antique Inuit crescent ulu knife which had been hammered out of a scavenged piece of meteoric iron. Still keen after much use, it was really beautifully made with decorated ivory cheeks painstakingly riveted on by a masterful craftsman. It was extraordinary that a hunter gatherer people living in such a hostile environment was still capable of making beautiful items when cruder functional tools would have done the job.
Maybe this is another aspect of bushcraft, the honouring of the ancients' skills and the preservation of the same. Hard won knowledge and skills deserve to be kept fresh by re-use for personal pleasure rather from dire necessity, yes?
I don't know if Time Team's Phil Harding regards himself as a bushcrafter but his flint knapping skills have to put him right up there as the bushcrafter practising the most ancient skills! I'm only saying.....
You can't easily buy cauldrons these days unless you buy them on line as potjie pots from UK based African shops. They come in sizes from too small to humongous and they are exactly the same cauldrons as were used by the Boer (and other) pioneers in Africa, exactly as used in UK & Ireland for hundreds of years. They need skill to use and maintain. Get it wrong and you have a horrible, rancid, rusting lump of cast iron. Get it right and you have a super efficient non stick cooking pot.
I've been fortunate to handle some extraordinary items from the past. The oldest were probably mesolithic hand axes. Looking only gives a superficial idea, handling can tell so much more. Hold them one way round and you'll get a lacerated thumb, rotate 180 degrees and more often than not the thumb encounters a comfortingly rounded surface where its maker left part of the original surface unworked to make the tool safe to use. That took thought and skill: mesolithic man was a thinker and a planner.
I've handled perfect clay pottery 5000 years old, as good to use today as when it was first made. Ceramics endure, sadly wooden tableware is exceedingly rare, being perishable so I've never had the privilege of handling that.Could we casually knock out a clay pot, I wonder?
I've had the extreme good fortune to examine from close up a 3500 years old fire making kit: bow, drill, base and stone hand bearing. It was really sophisticated. The hand bearing had a well polished dimple where the top of the rotating rod was located, saving wear and tear on the hand. The holes in the base where friction worked its magic were right at the edge so that sparks could be thrown straight out into the tinder. The most telling thing I noticed was that the rod had been deliberately shaped to have a wider diameter at the charred end. I speculate this was so that downward pressure on the bow would create an 'auto clutch' effect and increase the string's grip on the rod, reducing slippage and increasing efficiency. It was a tool which had seen hard, regular use which probably took centuries to evolve into that form.
I've been endlessly impressed by an antique Inuit crescent ulu knife which had been hammered out of a scavenged piece of meteoric iron. Still keen after much use, it was really beautifully made with decorated ivory cheeks painstakingly riveted on by a masterful craftsman. It was extraordinary that a hunter gatherer people living in such a hostile environment was still capable of making beautiful items when cruder functional tools would have done the job.
Maybe this is another aspect of bushcraft, the honouring of the ancients' skills and the preservation of the same. Hard won knowledge and skills deserve to be kept fresh by re-use for personal pleasure rather from dire necessity, yes?
I don't know if Time Team's Phil Harding regards himself as a bushcrafter but his flint knapping skills have to put him right up there as the bushcrafter practising the most ancient skills! I'm only saying.....
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Those modern cast iron potjes my be superficially similar to the early cast iron pots from the early 1700s but, trust me, they are actually very different. The early Abraham Darby pots were sectionally cast, the modern ones are not.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/64qC9ouhT5W7EaCOt2RNzw
We are lucky enough to still use an original one that I restored, as well as more modern examples, they are very different things
Cauldron 5 by British Red, on Flickr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/64qC9ouhT5W7EaCOt2RNzw
We are lucky enough to still use an original one that I restored, as well as more modern examples, they are very different things
Cauldron 5 by British Red, on Flickr
Hi British Red, Thanks for the comment: I envy you the antique pots, good job! My Lodge pots have no casting marks or 'seams' where flash has been ground off (maybe the frypan handle does), but some of my Best Duty ones do and in places the grinding was a bit perfunctory, adding a certain 'old world' charm and something to catch a stirring spoon. I have a 'Jumbo' brand plat potjie coming soon, it'll be interesting to compare the two brands. I'll keep you posted.
I do have one or two small, cheapo Chinese pots and I can't see evidence of flash on them. Surely they're not using the lost wax casting method, with one leg being the filling hole and the other two acting as vents? It doesn't seem compatible with the low price. Ideas?
I do have one or two small, cheapo Chinese pots and I can't see evidence of flash on them. Surely they're not using the lost wax casting method, with one leg being the filling hole and the other two acting as vents? It doesn't seem compatible with the low price. Ideas?
Fair point, they possibly are doing some sectional casting. Its a different animal though. The early sand cast ones are surprisingly delicate and the parts are fairly small and very thin
They are fun. I have recently been working a cast iron kettle. Seasoning the inside of a kettle spout is more than tricky
I'm not sure what process they use now, but the difference is pronounced. The old ones are relatively thin (and even uncorroded ones are as thin or thinner than modern saucepans.) they also often have seems horizontally as well as vertically.
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