What're your reasons?

[Winston Dover]

As a scout I have enjoyed being out in the country since i was a child, but my interest in Bushcraft has only developed in later years. I see it as a chance to learn a traditional skill and to pass it on to the Scouts in my care.

I have been teching people to Juggle for years and was once told that if you teach someone a skill then you ensure your immortality. In otehr words they teach someone esle and so on, and so you live on through there skills.

With Bushcraft I can ensure my immortality and the survival of traditional skills. Who knows, one of my Scouts might just be the next Mors or Ray Mears.

My aim this year is to master the art of the hand or bow drill.

 

[Klenchblaize]

You either warm to it (the woods & meadows) or you don’t. Many of those given of a so-called superior intellect often suggest our need to take to the woods is borne of a desire to escape the realities of modern life rather than expend the energy and guile required to succesfuly integrate. I’ve even heard it suggested that we lesser mortals are simply not mentally developed to the point of having shed the base instincts of the primeval hunter-gatherer. Which, upon reflection, I’m rather proud to think may be the case!

Whatever the state of my grey mater I do not feel at all cheated or concerned by the reality that I’m “NEVER HAPPIER THAN WHEN IN WILD PLACES AND ALONE”. Sorry for shouting but isn’t something so joyous deserving of our praise?

Cheers

 

[ilovemybed]

Grandad skills. I plan to be a cheeky, cantankerous and downright subversive old git who's always teaching the young'uns things to make their parents lives more difficult

 

[Bisamratte]

I find going into the woods more exciting and interesting than going to a big city, its just the way i am

 

[weekender]

I have always loved being outdoors its the peace and the time to reflect on things and from that and walking the dog i wanted/am wanting to discover and understand more about my surroundings, this and also like ilovemybed says these are skills that i want to pass along because i do believe that not wanting to get political this countrys heritage and traditions are getting washed aside, though this is NOT my only reasons for enjoying the outdoors. To be learning skills that are ages old but new to me, there is something deeply satisfying in that.

weekender

 

[garbo]

I come to bushcraft as part of a much bigger picture
I got started 30 years ago, it was not fashionable then (no Ray Mears) and was called somthing else (I've had a drink and can't remember what it was now)
the only books were like fm 21- 76 so I suppose it was survivalism but it realy is about a love of a "good life". Being a wild animal ,eating for free, surviving, but you already know this because you are reading this post, a natural filter, if you dont understand bushcraft you would not have got this far

 

[CLEM]

I like to be outdoors and amoungst the trees and wild places and have done ever since I can remember,I feel it does me the world of good.

 

[garbo]

I wonder why the first letters spell something else Great Out Doors

 

[Tor helge]

I always done "bushcraft". Everybody did it when I was a kid. It`s a cultural thing I think.
Hunting, fishing and foraging was part of our everyday life. Not that we lived by hunting. But fishing and farming was important to people up here (and still is, but for fewer people). Nowadays this have changed but there is still a bit left in most norwegians.
A friend of mine from Tunis wondered a bit why we always ran into the woods making fires when he first came to the country. But he also enjoys it now .

 

[ilan]

Think despite living in london all my life i have just gravitated to those quiet places to escape, especialy if it involved water as well so my ideal heven was a beach, night fishing with a billy on a drift wood fire and a bivi tent or a day out in a canoe on a thames back water watching water voles ect . The Scouts furthered my outdoor skills and gave access to some wonderfull places . Today i enjoy passing on some of those skills to a new generation through the scouts .

 

[Ditch Monkey]

dich monkey are you still living in the woods?

I'm house sitting / feeding pets for a couple of weeks and then going back to it.

The longer I spend there the more I realise why I'm doing it; on some deep level it just seems right. Life makes more sense when sat under a tree than it does when sat at a desk.

 

[Zodiak]

I saw Swallows and Amazons on TV when I was about 6 and that did it for me, I loved the idea of sleeping in tents and poddling around in boats all day. Add to that joining Cubs at 8 and I was hooked

 

[pierre girard]

....I also tend to think that what shocked me most was that such a beautiful way of life was often, for lack of a better word, stomped upon. I know that it didn't always go that way... but I guess through the eyes of a child, I saw it much more black and white: we were killing them and kicking them off their own land. I suppose that now I'm older and more mature, I understand that it was nowhere near that simple, and a good deal of white people did get on with the Native Americans... Although still, at the risk of sounding naive, I really wish we all could have been more polite about the whole deal... ach, off topic.. oh well

I've done a great deal of reading on this subject, over the years, and while there is no way to address it adequetly in this post - I do find a lot of the early white colonial european commentary on it shows a lack of empathy with Native Americans. Eupropeans, English especially, just could not understand why NA were not more thankful for the "blessings" of civilization they sought to impart.

Many of the earliest white English settlers had mixed purpose, hoping at the same time to spread Christianity - while gaining land for themselves (my Englsih ancestors included). Scotts/Irish in the US, for the most part, were more honest. They just wanted the land and viewed as enemies anyone who stood in their way. They were also among the best at villifying the Native Americans as savages without culture. This attitude may have had something to do with their sojourn as outsiders in Ireland - some hardening of the heart toward natives.

The French, in their colonization of Quebec, had a rather different experience - in part because of their small numbers and different colonial aims. Some part of the French community eventually identified with Native Americans, finding their way of life superior to the colonial alternative and the number of French surnames on reservations and reserves to this day bears that out. These paticular French wanted no change in NA life style and culture - and one has to wonder what Canada would look like today had France not surrendered Canada in preference to the sugar islands.

One might point out that there are many Scots highlander names among reserves as well, derived from the fur trade era, but the situation is different as the Scots took "country" wives, to be abandoned upon return to civilization. The Scots, as usual, were there mainly for the money.

These generalizations are necessarily vague, given the amount of space available.

 

[M@rk]

It’s hard to say how I got into bushcraft its more like bushcraft got into me. I’ve always love the green places when I was young mum dad and my grandparents took me camping nearly every weekend where I used to spend the time wondering around the countryside. In my early teens I got into bird watching and later backpacking. As I entered my thirties I realised it wasn’t just birds I loved and that being in the countryside was a nice side affect it was that whole of nature I was interested in. I started going around the woods sticking my nose every nook and cranny looking into trees mammals and fungi in fact any thing I could find, staying there for as long as I could. One day I saw Mr Mears on telly and I liked what he did but I wouldn’t at the time thought I was doing the same thing then one day looking around on the internet I found this place and reading what people were saying it seemed like I had found a place full of kindred spirits and they called what they were doing bushcraft. Now I say I’m into bushcraft but really I’m in to nature and nature is in me people seem to call that bushcraft.
Peeps for a great place :You_Rock_

 

[Womble]

Well, I was a relatively inexperienced Scout leader (the actual Scout leader had simply up and left one day, leaving me in charge), looking desperately for something I could use to build a programme onto. Then on a leader camp someone showed me a copy of Bushcraft, by Ray Mears - the coffee table one - and I was hooked.

I had something special and different to show the scouts, a new set of skills to learn and a new outlook to contemplate.

 

[The Joker]

My farther got me interested in the outdoors when I was a young lad, but it was the Army that really kicked it off for me after doing loads of survival stuff.

Bushcraft is more than a hobby to me its become part of my life which work unfortunately keeps interrupting ....lol

 

[Womble_Lancs]

I got into 'Bushcraft' from being in the Brownies/Girl Guides/Ranger Guides/Venture Scouts. I've always loved being out in the woods and out in the 'wilds'. My favourite part of the Duke of Ed scheme was the expedition section.

My grandma got me my first knife when I was about 8 years old, and bought me a SAK copy when I was about 10 and I read Brian Hildreth's 'How to Survive' from cover to cover - I still have it but it is rather battered now.

I stopped doing the outdoors thing for quite a while whilst I was married because my hubby wasn't really interested, and my time was filled with work and other stuff. Now I've found myself a bloke who is interested in the outdoors and loves to go a-wandering, so I'm getting back to my roots, I suppose.

 

[Spikey DaPikey]

i just enjoy it

 

[Nathan Sturgess]

Scouts started it all off for me, being able to light a fire and build a shelter is quite a big thing for a 10 year old lad.

 

[stovie]

It's when and where all the pointlessness of modern living means nothing.