Remember those Bothwell Castle woods Chainsaw mentioned? Well I took my first steps there 
I live about ten minutes away from there now
There just always were woods and hedges, and burns and boats, and tents and fires about. We grew up with mothers' voices ringing in our ears, "Outside and play!" "Home by dark." and "Don't bring that into the house!" and "What *have* you been eating?", "That burn's dirty, you'll get typhoid, get you out of there!".....and pretty much otherwise we got left to our own devices. (waited to see what typhoid actually *was* sometimes too )
We built dens, stripped willows and thistles, lit fires, scrambled over bings, climbed trees and dug holes, watched birds build nests and caterpilars turn into cocoons and butterflies and frog spawn into tadpoles that grew legs and escaped, caught bees in jamjars and sometimes got stung, and got sunburned and soaking wet, skint knees and skelfs. Our games changed as the Seasons did, and our food did too.
Every wee boy had a pocket knife, little girls really did make mud pies most kids had access to an air rifle, fishing rods and nets, most of us had bows and arrows, and we shot at each other I've got a scar from where my creative wee brother's copper pipe, flattened and pointed arrowhead, stuck in my ribs, ......see childhood? it wasn't romanticised..... and we got skelped and yelled at, and no there wasn't therapy for every pseudo traumatic, unfair, event, it was just called Life, and I sometimes have a horrible feeling that we deprive our children of so much by our very carefulness.
But we did know right from wrong, we did know to say, "No", and mean it, to be helpful if asked, and that craiking for something meant you wouldn't get it; just on general principles, you understand.
I didn't know my pastimes were bushcraft until I tripped across this forum (got teased at the first Scottish meet up when I asked "Who is this Ray Mears then?" )
I grew up in a family where everyone and their friends made things, and that has continued with the friends I've made too. My Father built boats, my Mother and her sister and cousins just made *everything*, my Grandpa had three workshops and all my uncles had at least one, and my Grandmother knew *everything* and the gardens always grew for her
We used the natural resources around us, working through the Seasons because if you didn't the stuff wouldn't be there later on. From the first hawthorn leaves through elderflowers and strawberries and rasps and rhubarb and currants and rosehips and brambles, from *fresh* eggs to *new* potatoes and milk with cream that changed colour through the year from yellow to snow white.
Now I find the things people on the forum make are just as fascinating, and I've learned uses for everyday plants and materials I'd never have considered, and I keep learning more :You_Rock_ New ideas, different ways of making stuff, fresh uses for old favourites.
Remember those woods? .....they were the Castle Policies when I was little, and the keepers kept folks out unless you were known to them; ( my dad had gone to school with them) nowadays like the rest of Scotland we are all allowed to wander under the responsible right of access
I watched two wee boys a couple of weeks ago damning one of the little burns in those woods with mud and sticks, but the burn filled it up too quickly and washed their damn away....so they went to find bigger sticks
Somethings don't change that much
cheers,
Toddy
I live about ten minutes away from there now There just always were woods and hedges, and burns and boats, and tents and fires about. We grew up with mothers' voices ringing in our ears, "Outside and play!" "Home by dark." and "Don't bring that into the house!" and "What *have* you been eating?", "That burn's dirty, you'll get typhoid, get you out of there!".....and pretty much otherwise we got left to our own devices. (waited to see what typhoid actually *was* sometimes too
)We built dens, stripped willows and thistles, lit fires, scrambled over bings, climbed trees and dug holes, watched birds build nests and caterpilars turn into cocoons and butterflies and frog spawn into tadpoles that grew legs and escaped, caught bees in jamjars and sometimes got stung, and got sunburned and soaking wet, skint knees and skelfs. Our games changed as the Seasons did, and our food did too.
Every wee boy had a pocket knife, little girls really did make mud pies
most kids had access to an air rifle, fishing rods and nets, most of us had bows and arrows, and we shot at each other I've got a scar from where my creative wee brother's copper pipe, flattened and pointed arrowhead, stuck in my ribs, ......see childhood? it wasn't romanticised..... and we got skelped and yelled at, and no there wasn't therapy for every pseudo traumatic, unfair, event, it was just called Life, and I sometimes have a horrible feeling that we deprive our children of so much by our very carefulness. But we did know right from wrong, we did know to say, "No", and mean it, to be helpful if asked, and that craiking for something meant you wouldn't get it; just on general principles, you understand.
I didn't know my pastimes were bushcraft until I tripped across this forum (got teased at the first Scottish meet up when I asked "Who is this Ray Mears then?"
) I grew up in a family where everyone and their friends made things, and that has continued with the friends I've made too. My Father built boats, my Mother and her sister and cousins just made *everything*, my Grandpa had three workshops and all my uncles had at least one, and my Grandmother knew *everything* and the gardens always grew for her
We used the natural resources around us, working through the Seasons because if you didn't the stuff wouldn't be there later on. From the first hawthorn leaves through elderflowers and strawberries and rasps and rhubarb and currants and rosehips and brambles, from *fresh* eggs to *new* potatoes
and milk with cream that changed colour through the year from yellow to snow white. Now I find the things people on the forum make are just as fascinating, and I've learned uses for everyday plants and materials I'd never have considered, and I keep learning more :You_Rock_ New ideas, different ways of making stuff, fresh uses for old favourites.
Remember those woods? .....they were the Castle Policies when I was little, and the keepers kept folks out unless you were known to them; ( my dad had gone to school with them) nowadays like the rest of Scotland we are all allowed to wander under the responsible right of access
I watched two wee boys a couple of weeks ago damning one of the little burns in those woods with mud and sticks, but the burn filled it up too quickly and washed their damn away....so they went to find bigger sticks
Somethings don't change that much
cheers,
Toddy
