Bushcraft kind of revolves around most of what I do, whether work or play. For work I make stuff from greenwood to sell and I carve treespirits for fun, but I sell them as well so it's also work.
I make lots of rustic and primitive stuff for living history, now that's a hobby, but from the hobby comes bookings to do training and demonstrations, so that's work.
Sometimes when I'm doing a demonstration day, I'll light a campfire with flint and steel and boil up a kettle for a cuppa. It's only when I hear a round of applause when the fire lights that I realise I have an audience that's probably never seen it before. I also make pan stands for camp fires from welded horseshoes. That started as a hobby but people buy them now so it's work. See what i mean? I can't really separate them anymore.
My guitar is a hobby. I used to sing for pints in the pubs back in the late sixties and early seventies but now I just play for fun.
I've been doing this stuff for so many years now it's all merged together. I'm fifty three years old and I started learning bushcraft skills when I was ten or eleven.although I didn't call it bushcraft then - it was wild camping/ rough dossing and being too poor to afford a tent or sleeping bag. I loved the outdoors however so I just figured out how to build natural shelters, make fire by friction, sleep with a blanket roll, and on cold nights how to stuff a folded and pinned blanket with dry grass for added insulation. I learned how to snare rabbits, poach and tickle trout and avoid the gamekeepers. I suppose you could call them hobbies, but to me they were just what being young and living life was all about. Back then I could walk to the end of my street with a blanket roll across my back and an old gas mask bag over my shoulder, stick my thumb out and get a lift to wherever in a few minutes. I never felt in danger and never got into trouble. Cant't do stuff like that these days, at least not in the same way. Health and safety would go crackers now if they saw some of the stuff I used to do. Try climbing with a hemp rope and no safety line. Abseiling off a V diff using the classic abseil, or an Italian hitch at best. Hell, we just did it because nothing beter or safer had been developed.
Sorry, had my nostalgic head on there for a moment.
Eric
