Where do we come from - What are our backgrounds?

[Tony]

I was pondering all the different types of people that do bushcraft, I came into it through a childhood freedom to roam about, a sense of adventure, making dens and shelters, camping out etc as a kid. I remember once camping out, I didn't own a sleeping bag etc, it was so cold, the whole night wad just shifting about shivering, a great learning experience. I also enjoyed military surplus stuff, kit in general and edged tools ( my first career was carpentry and cabinet making).
Then I went on a Woodlore fundamental course, me and my friend figured the we'd go, it would be fun in the woods and we'd not actually learn that much as we knew loads already, our eyes were open and I was a little hooked on Bushcraft from then on, that experience was the birth of Bushcraft UK.

So, I had a little background, some freedom, some hands on experiences, sometimes awful experiences, a course and then I arrived at 'Bushcraft'

How about you?

 

[MikeeMiracle]

The person who started me on this journey, and this is controversial with some, was Bear Grylls. I loved watching his Born Survivor series so I got interested in survival which then led onto wild camping and Bushcraft and I have never looked back.

 

[Erbswurst]

In my case it's a family heritage.
My great grandfather served in Deutsch-Ostafrika under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. And afterwards every of my ancestors from father's side did spend as much as possible time in the outdoors.
We got also connected to boy scout and Wandervogel movement.

 

[Decacraft]

Spent the school holidays on the local hills being a typical boy.

Building dens, carving sticks and reading the sas handbook. A few friends and sunlight was all that was needed.

Always loved being outdoors, so was a progression from there.
Or it was being thrifty at a young age and doing something that didn't cost too much as there wasn't enough £ to do some expensive hobbies like some other school friends so just used to set off for the day (back when it was out at sunlight and home for sunset for supper).

I'm happier outside than in, no matter the conditions.

Oh and the Army surplus stores used to be in most towns so it was always good to have a browse and spend pocket money in them.

 

[Decacraft]

The person who started me on this journey, and this is controversial with some, was Bear Grylls. I loved watching his Born Survivor series so I got interested in survival which then led onto wild camping and Bushcraft and I have never looked back.

Bear did bring a lot of interest to it.
Although I'd rather Ray's approach where its comfortable and crafty.

 

[Toddy]

I didn't know that all the things I did were 'bushcraft' until I surfed into the forum one day.
I found an incredible wealth of information, and interesting, encouraging and very able people.

I grew up playing as Tony did, but my Dad built boats, and we camped, very rustically compared to today's glamping and lightweight kit. He'd lived wild on Rannoch Moor for a few years as he recovered from Rheumatic Fever in the 30's (pre NHS, pre welfare state) and his skillset was incredibly wide. Mum's family had every bit as diverse knowledge, a lot of country skills on both sides that just had never been forgotten. Children who grow up in such families who actively still use such skills, pick things up almost by osmosis.
I was an archaeologist, my focus was on traditional fibre and textile crafts and the resources necessary for them; from timbers to cordages, dyes to tools. Again, it all tied into the forum interests.

 

[Kav]

Another archaeologist here. I was told I’d retire with one million in the bank. How? Start off with two million.
I grew up in then semiruralSouthern California. Huge citrus orchards and oak riparian woodlands were my wild places and vacations in the giant redwoods.
I learned to ride horses with the famous movie horseman Yakima Canute, rode an upset elephant with neighbor Sabu, shot my first
Rifle under the instruction of my godfather Clark Gable.
Now most of my childhood is gated communities with insecure security guards and Justin Bieber legends in their own mind.
I spent two summers packing Japanese tourists down the Grand Canyon on mules ( mist never having interacted with anything but canaries and goldfish) and then summers excavating all over North America. That meant hiking in and camp life.
I was on a old lumber trail up north in the infamous ‘Emerald Triangle’ of NorCal and pot farms. I had a
Best grade English Mauser with double set triggers on me. The crew of Sonoma State College ‘earth mothers’- granny gowns, braided armpit hair and patchouli
Oil kept their distance.
We blundered right into a farm and set off an alarm. We retreated and were soon followed by a truck firing a Uzi. I put a round into the drivers tyre and they stopped. This idiot Native American monitor ( a representative of the local people)
Grabbed my rifle and pulled the long SET trigger and his shot went wild. Instead of the second tyre, he hit the still running fuel pump and the truck caught fire.
I retrieved my rifle and started dog trotting away from potgrowers, earth mothers and first people’s nimrod. Two girls started running and caught up a mile down. They suddenly LOVED my ‘Out of Africa’
Gun and how good Robert Redford
Was as Dennis ‘ funky-Hamilton.’
I’ve been hiking pretty much solo since!

 

[Paul_B]

A walking group got me into wildcamping. I'd been walking, cycling, camping (car) and kayaking as a kid. Plus orienteering. I still have the feeling I'm not a bushcrafter though, but I like this place so stick around. I don't know what bushcraft is and threads about that never clear that up for me. I just like the outdoors. If that's bushcraft so be it, if not so be it.

Occupation is a automotive sector manufacturing; quality, sales, costing and purchasing functions at varying levels. Not very bushcrafty occupation!

 

[leanrascal]

On one hand I always enjoyed the outdoors, regularly going hiking with my dad and brother, but we never really did any camping. Then a few years ago I got hooked on "Alone", and my wife said "If you did that you'd die within a day". Since then it's been a goal to prove her wrong and and have fun in the process, getting more and more comfortable being outdoors. I reckon I could survive 2 or 3 days now...

 

[Wander]

During the school Summer holidays we'd go on the farms where my mum was a fruit picker. We made camps, spent the day roaming the farm, playing on old tractors, explored, and enjoyed being in the countryside.
As a teen I also got into role-playing games (any other RuneQuesters out there? I'm talking RQ2 and RQ3). This led on to live-action role-playing (yup!). Which naturally led on to re-enactments (last time I went to Battle Abbey - which was many years ago - they showed a video of a re-enactment of the battle of Hastings - I was one of the Norman knights galloping up to the camera).
And all of these things meant camping out in the local woods and stuff like that.
Now, though, I seldom camp out. Truth be told, that was never my favourite part of it all. Now I enjoy going out for a walk on the hills, watching the wildlife, watching the landscape. Finding a good spot to take it all in, sit back, and escape. No, not escape, because they suggests moving away from something. No, what I am doing is embracing something - a completely different mindset.

 

[Laurentius]

Grew up in a small suburb on the outskirts of town that was virtually in the country, was free to roam about, exploring around, climbing trees, making dens, lighting fires, foraging. Dad was a practical sort, good with his hands, mum had grown up in similar circumstances so I guess it just comes naturally, nothing conscious about "doing bushcraft"

 

[dean4442]

Country boy, grew up with a dad who worked on farms and taught me how to fish and shoot which meant learning about nature a bit. Always loved roaming the woods and fields even when I in turn started working on farms, that just gave me more chances to sit a while and enjoy being out and about.
Now I'm a sparky but have two boys to try and teach about the woods and hope they get the bug.

 

[Ystranc]

I grew up on the North West coast and as a total mis fit I preferred the beach, pine woods and dunes to the company of my peers. From about 12 years old onwards I have been outdoorsy. The last 15 years have been spent running a small holding in mid Wales. At 53, I feel like I’m due another step change.

 

[saxonaxe]

Travelling with my family until I was nearly 10 years old. Dad worked on farms and also earned money in the Fair Ground Boxing Rings. Mum picked flowers or fruit. Daffodils in the Spring in the West Country, Apples in Kent later in the year. We travelled the same circuit every year as Dad worked the same farms where we stopped. Mum was clever and made things to sell as well. My Brothers, Sister and me helped out or played in the woods fields and hedgerows. Mum died suddenly in 1953 and the Authorities had to be involved and they found out we (kids) had never been to school, so Me, younger Brother and Sister got captured and put into a Children's Home for being illiterate and untamed... Too late for my older Brother, he was 15 and went to work with an Aunt on the Fair Grounds.


Mum and my Uncle on the steps of his wagon, somewhere near Beaulieu in the New Forest. We used to stop there for the Pony Sales.
I still romp around in the woods a lot, but I'll never make a real Bush Crafter.

 

[Robson Valley]

I was parked on Grandpa's grain farm each summer as a little kid Fantastic landscaped places to explore. Next was the summer house at the lake with all the ravines and swamps to explore (very heavily used by First Nations) for stone hammers and arrowheads, clay for pots and lots of fishing. Outdoor firepit cooked a lot of food, more for novelty's sake. Every summer had at least 1 x 14 day family camping & boating trip to some remote northern lake. Boatload of supplies and off we would go.
University summer jobs were all outdoor Fisheries and Wildlife activity, from gill nets to echo sounding and cartography of the lake bottoms.

Field trips and winter climbing gave me a look at the outback in the years that I lived Down Under. I had the kit = let's go!
Since then, back in western Canada, access to real wilderness has been so easily done that I've settled for day trips and home to my big, warm, dry, wooden tent.

I did make the mistake of assuming that everybody did these things, growing up. Wrong. Met the majority of people who were really "city folks" and not at all interested to even go for an exploratory drive around the scenery on logging roads. The big cats, wolves, coyotes and the bears are enough to keep them in their offices.

 

[Tor helge]

I grew up in a rural area.
All the kids played outside, fishing, camping, and later hunting.

 

[g4ghb]

I grew up in a rural area too - lots of playing outside, Scouting and 'living' on the coast (my father was a diver so spent a lot of time on a beach) add to that a (un?)healthy obsession with Robin hood and that kinda 'hero' and it was an enevitability

 

[Malta Convoy]

Grew up in a somewhat rural area of southern California. Dad used to hike, fish, and hunt a lot, and took me along. I learned to love the mountains and the deserts and to respect nature from him. Boy Scouts of America expanded my bushcraft knowledge and skills, as did later service in the US military.

 

[Kadushu]

I grew up on a smallholding surrounded by farmland. I always preferred the freedom of solitude and 'making your own fun' as opposed to joining clubs. My dad didn't know a huge amount but was always practical and I loved the way he could make things with a penknife and a piece of string when I was a child - bows and arrows, wigwams, etc. There was a sense that the outdoors provided the opportunity for discovery and the materials for creating things. I loved reference and non fiction books over fiction so it was a natural step to take an SAS Survival Guide and try various things in it; or take a Collins Gem book and try to find the trees, Insects or whatever.

 

[Woody girl]

Born in the New forest when it was a lot wilder than today. Went on guide and brownie camps from when I was still in nappies at dudsbury, as my mother was a guider, so took me along.
Joined brownies, then after we moved to the hants/Surrey border,spent most of my childhood roaming the countryside with a packet of sarnies and a bottle of pop. Out all day in the forest, fishing, making camps, and had my own "camp" in the garden where I spent a lot of time with camp fires and learning to be a complete tomboy.
My first tent was at the age of nine, and I loved building dens in the woods.
Became a girl guide, and patrol camp leader.
Later, I got into motorbikes and went to rallies with minimal gear, loved roughing it, move on many years, and after trying to live a fairly conventional life for most of the 80's, decided that I needed to be much more of a wild thing, took jobs in anything outdoors, farming, forestry,archaeology, garden centre,... anything that was as far away from a factory or nightclub that I could find.bushcraft kind of crept up on me, I never knew my escapes from life were labelled bushcraft until Ray means came into view.
Unlike most of the ladies around me, I never wanted heels, handbags and make up.
Bushcraft wends it's way into everything I do. It's more a way of life than a "thing I do" to get away from stuff.
I'm 64 and still a tomboy.!