On The Value Of Backyard Bushcraftin'

    There is just something that is always adventurous when it comes to spending time with my bush buddy Christian. He is all of nine going on twenty and keeps me thinking young. He challenges me and helps me to see that bushcraft and being in the woods is all about being a kid.
    We all know that kids don't have a lot of fun if they are uncomfortable or feel left out or are left alone with their own fears and doubts. So if being in the woods and having fun is like being a kid, and getting in some dirt time is also about being a kid, then it presumes that we are getting comfortable with the bush.
   That is why I do not underestimate the power of the back yard when it comes to bushcraft. It is a taste of the familiar, with a mix of the wild and it works as a place to practice and walk thru the rite of passage into the wilderness. It just takes some imagination and most kids have it in spades.
   A kid just gets really only one "first time" to sleep out under the stars, before he realizes that the next time he does, it won't be his first. It will just be another night, maybe special in its own right, but not like the first. So it was with that in mind, I decided to build a small fire pit in my backyard, line it with some rocks and sand and begin to setup a camp.
   I was going to ready the camp for Christian's first night out under the stars and to spend some time with me bushcrafting, cooking, whittling and in general just having some boyish fun. I knew he was going to like it.
   As I said, I started with making a fire pit, which looks something like this...

 
 I had gotten the fire going with my bow drill set, as I figured it is the first fire in the pit I would start it with something special. Here is the bow drill set I used, a little basswood on basswood...

Then I started on some water to heat up for a good cup of tea which seemed like a good idea...

I used my stainless steel "Little Jon" grill which was made by a good bushcraft friend of mind that knows his welding. Next I put together a pot hook and setup one half of a USGI canvas shelter or "pup" tent...

After making final arrangements to pick up my bush buddy, we went out for a hike along some local trails and then returned to the backyard to cook up some good food for supper. We made vegetable shish kabobs and chicken fillets...

The chicken was looking fine...

After a pleasant evening and eating and chatting and telling stories, we both settled into our open shelters for the night. The temperatures got down to about 53°F and there were very few mosquitoes.

My bush buddy tried to sleep in, but I got him roused and awake for breakfast. He seem to roll off of his mattress pad during the night and got a little cold, so I wrapped him up in my wool blanket...

 We soon had the fire revived and hot water on to boil so we could make some cocoa and hot oatmeal for breakfast. He decided he wanted Campbells Double Noodle soup instead, go figure, but the pot hook worked great with the 10cm Zebra Billy can...

 

   In the end, it was a great time and we grew closer together. I know this will be something we will do again and again and as he gains confidence, we will be able to make that transition to the woods and the wilds and who knows, someday he may just decide to make a solo trip of his own and begin to learn the things that I have learned and to feel the kinship with the landscape and to begin to feel at home with the wilderness wherever he may go. I want him to feel the things that I have felt and to someday, share those with his son. Then I know I will have done him right.

   As the saying goes...

    A USGI Shelter Half... $20

    A 10cm Zebra Billy can...  $30

    Spending a night out under the stars with my son... priceless.

Until next time, Happy Exploring.

Flint And Steel And Milkweed Ovum

   As it turned out, last Sunday was a beautiful and sunny day to get out and enjoy a hike on the snowy Sakatah "Singing Hills" State Trail. My bush buddy and I decided to head out for an afternoon of exploring and to practice a few bushcraft skills.
   He worked on identifying natural tinders such as milkweed seeds and cattail fluff and easily identified sumac for its red berries and wild rose hips for the tiny "apples" they presented, even in winter.
   We worked on direction finding and some tree identification as well. He spotted some willow trees along side the trail and remembered an earlier trip we had made out there and how we had made a willow whistle and a small toy raft and used goose feathers for a sail.
   He also used his firesteel to ignite the trangia alcohol stove and mixed up the hot chocolate for us both of us. I was very proud of him.
   We happened upon a small herd of about ten whitetail deer just as we were about to reach our destination and we both just stood there in awe, as they looked at us and we looked back at them. It was inspiring and a good moment to share together.
   I worked at getting fire with my flint and steel and using milkweed ovum instead of charred cloth. I had succeeded many times before with this combination, but I had never tried it in winter. It felt good to succeed with the milkweed ovum and felt even better to have gotten it done in the winter and the snow.
   After a quick and delicious brew of hot chocolate, made on a recipe my bush buddy had concocted, we packed it up and headed home. It was a great day for a son and his father to enjoy some time together.
   So here is the video of our afternoon adventure.

   Bushcraft is such a good thing to practice with your kids and the adventure never stops. Going out to explore with a child, opens your eyes to see the world in a better way. I hope you get the chances to do so as often as I do. I am a very lucky guy to have such a good friend in my bush buddy. Until next time, Happy Exploring.

On Minnesota Bushcraft's 2012 Adventure Highlights

   As it is the last day of the year, I thought it fitting to look back at a few of this years bushcraft adventures by sharing some of the highlights with some chosen videos.
   It has been for me a phenomenal year with so many adventures in bushcraft. It has also been a great year for personal growth and learning and for making a lot of good friends, many of whom I can now call brother or sister and feel the camaraderie that comes with sharing our love and passion for bushcraft.
   The start of 2012 saw me trying vigorously to finishing all of my lessons for BushclassUSA Basic certification and I finally finished that with the completion of my Outing #5 on February 18th. Here is the video of that outing, although it is a bit lengthy, it is one of my favorite adventures.

     My goal was to have the Bushclass Basic course completed before attending the Second Annual Hardwoodsman's Meet 2012 in the state of Missouri in April. It turned out to be the experience of a lifetime and I made some great friends and look forward now to many more meetups and adventures with them. It was fun to finally put some faces to some of the user names I had come to know and respect. Here it is again, a musical highlight video of that great gathering of brothers.

   With April, came my commitment to meeting up with some friends who were interested in learning bushcraft. On April 2nd, we would begin meeting every Saturday at 9AM in a local state park. Little did I know that even 9 months later, I would still be going to the park every Saturday, rain or shine and meeting someone or anyone who would care to come and share the adventure.
    I have met many BushcraftUSA members now, all from Minnesota, who have found my little piece of wilderness and they have come and enjoyed meeting up and sharing the time and practicing and learning the ways of bushcraft. We just get together and have fun and share the dirt time. Here is a video of one of the larger gatherings we had on a Saturday morning.

      I have also found a great companion and friend and fellow bushcrafter in my nine year-old bush buddy, my son Christian. He and I have actually spent the last two years together on various adventures and expeditions and he has grown with every turn. He will one day, make a very fine bushcrafter in his own right. He helps to remind me how to be a kid again and to keep the sense of wonder and imagination. Here is a video of one of his latest accomplisments, of which I am very proud of him. He made fire with his fire steel, using natural tinder, that was in itself a little moist, and he did it without my coaching. He figured it out on his own.

   With the hot summer months of July and August, I was able to play with many more new things. I continued to polish my firecraft skills, including many bow drill fires and working on one stick and split wood fires. I have also come to appreciate and enjoy my flint and steel kit a whole lot more than I ever did in the past and choose to use it more often then any other method, and especially trying to always use natural tinders. Here is a short video of using the power of the sun to ignite some false tinder fungus. This method has now become an elective for BushclassUSA and I will have to do it again real soon to submit a fresh video entry for the elective credit.

   I have found a good friend in a BushcraftUSA member who goes by the user name "Sticker" although I now know him as Terry. I met him and his wife, "CallmeKris", as a result of my commitment to the Saturday morning 9AM MeetUps. He and I are about the same age and share the same love for bushcraft. I think he gets out about as often as I do, and we have met now several times and most of those times, it is just the two of us, having fun with him working on completing a Bushclass lesson or two and with me just playing and practicing and having fun showing him stuff he can try. Here is a video of one of my favorite outings with Terry. I thought it was at first going to be just me, heading out for a solo trip, in the rain. But as I got out in the bush a little ways, I slowed to take some video and low and behold, Terry caught up to me and we had a great time, in the rain, just doing bushcraft.

   Which, as you can see by the snow in the last video, brings me to the last couple months of the year 2012.
   I know that I have grown, and I have found deeper meaning for myself in the art of bushcraft. I know that I have been able to improve on my story telling about my adventures both alone and with others and recently I have been refining my video style and adding music and getting more creative about the way I see things and the ways that I want to tell it.
   So here finally is a video of a solo trip that I am very proud of, with a lot of effort given to trying to emulate my bushcraft story telling hero, Les Stroud. I like his style and will continue to study his videos and then work to refine my own brand of story telling.

   Of course, there is the last and final bushcraft trip of the year and I went out with a new christmas toy I gifted myself, a 1" Scotch-eye Auger. It was fun to be able to use a tool to make another tool.

   The year 2012 has been a great one for Bushcraft and looking forward to 2013 it looks like it will be even better, with even more adventures in store. I look forward to sharing it all with you and look forward to hearing from many of you as you follow along or maybe perhaps even join us here in south central Minnesota. So until next year, Happy Exploring.

On Having A Minnesota Bushcraft Anniversary

   First of all, I would like to thank all my family and friends who stop in to visit my Minnesota Bushcraft blog. This past year has been full of adventures, and in looking back, I can see that I have grown thru the practice of bushcraft as well as many of my friends.
   This site has grown and moved thru many changes as well. Looking back to the beginning, I can see where I struggled to find my audience, where I faltered at using my format and that I was just plain timid about putting anything of good content into my posts.
   But that has all changed and the new challenge of adding video and pictures and including my friends in some of the adventures has made this a much better place.
   As of this moment, Minnesota Bushcraft has received 4,062 visits over the past year. That I would never have imagined. Though I can only see 16 subscribers, I know there are many of my friends at BushcraftUSA that stop in to read my meanderings and to see the latest goings on from my place here in southern Minnesota.
   Since joining BushcraftUSA (also about a year ago), I have completed the Basic BushclassUSA Certification thru the online BushclassUSA courses and have had the privilege to lead some of my friends into the BushclassUSA classes and they too have completed a few lessons, which has given much fodder for sharing their adventures here at Minnesota Bushcraft.
   This past year's Minnesota Bushcraft highlights include the coverage of the BushcraftUSA sponsored 2012 Hardwoodsman's Meet Up in April held in the great state of Missouri. The completion of my BushclassUSA course with an overnight on the fifth outing, in 20° F weather in a debris shelter. The many lessons and outings for BushclassUSA, which helped to fill many of my postings. And of course, the chances to share what some of my friends are now doing with bushcraft which even includes my post about "Bushcraft is Not Just for Boys."
   A special thanks has to go out to my bush buddy and constant wilderness companion Christian, for all of his energy and excitement and enthusiasm. He never refuses to go out in the wild with me and would give up TV and all the video games and sometimes even his other friends, just to get out and explore the wilderness and to learn all that he can. I hope someday he is a bushcraft master and can teach me a thing or two. For a kid of just eight years of age, he sure has learned a lot about bushcraft in the last year.
   Lastly, I would like to thank my Dad, for giving me the chance to learn from him all those many years ago. First as a scout and then secondly as a leader and mostly as his son just learning bushcraft, even when we didn't know to call it that back then.
   This next year I know will be filled with even more adventures, and I am hoping you will continue to share in them with me. Please feel free to comment, and to let me know what you are doing with bushcraft, especially if you are living in Minnesota. We have it wild here and Minnesota is a great place to practice bushcraft. It has in it's very heart and in it's history the very soul of bushcraft.
   Until next time, Happy Exploring.

On Making Bushcraft Toys...

   It has been a busy month, and I realize that I had not posted anything yet this month. It is not that I have had any lack of bushcraft adventure, it's just that I have had so little time to record and post any of the things that I have been doing lately.
   Just so the whole month hasn't gone by without a single post, I put together this short video of a recent adventure with my bush buddy Christian.

   It was a beautiful day to be out, spending time with my bushcraft buddy and together practicing some bushcraft skills. We worked on natural tinders, wild edibles, bow drill practice, natural cordage, water purification, navigation, wildlife identification, tree identification and alternative fire lighting methods with using a magnifying lens and a reflector improvised from a coke can, which did not work (yet).
   After all that, we decided to use some of the cordage we had made out of some milkweed to build a small raft. After we set it to float, we realized it was only going to find it's way by the currents alone. It was then the my bush buddy suggested we use goose feathers for a sail. So while he set to work to gather the feathers, I made up some willow bark cordage and we lashed up another raft and mounted the feathers for a make shift sail. So here is the video of our results. What a fun time. All materials found on site. Now we are both wondering what other people will think. A fun day.

   So that is a quick report and I do have a couple more adventures to report on, just as soon as I can get some pictures and video together. Until then, Happy Exploring.

Bush Buddy and Biscuits

Time sure flies when you are having fun and it sure has been fun lately, doing all kinds of bushcraft stuff. I have especially appreciated the time I have spent lately with my bush buddy Christian. Christian is my all around good kid and cubscout. He is seven going on eight and has a keen eye, enjoys all kinds of nature, likes hiking, exploring, learning things and will make a fine bushcrafter someday. He has gotten real good at starting fire with both man-made and natural tinders. He has learned to identify these things in the wild and collects them with a vigor. His backpack "tinder pocket" is full of birch bark, thistle down, milkweed fluff, cattail and some dryer lint and jute cord, just in case. He has practiced with his fire steel so much, he has worn a curve into it. I guess I need to teach him to rotate it occasionally. But is he ready for more?