Bushclass Basic Completed

  It is hard to believe that March is upon us and it has been a strange winter for all of us here in southern Minnesota. The strangest of all of course is the small amount of snowfall we have had so far. I guess I can not complain to much, as it has made for some great outings and has allowed me to finish my BushclassUSA Basic certification. As I have shared with you all in a previous post back in February, it was a great success and a good finish with my final Outing #5. So with that, I celebrated with something that has been a tradition with me since my days in the Boy Scouts. I was able to finally put together my BushclassUSA patches on my day pack, and I must say they look pretty smart to me.

It took a little effort to get the velcro sewn onto the pocket, but now it will allow me to move my patches from one pack to another, depending on just what kind of an outing the day will bring.
   I have found patches to always be a good way to mark a particular event, expedition, adventure or training. I have collected several patches from many of Minnesota's State Parks, and a few from some National Parks and Monuments and also a few showing completion of certain skill sets.
   Although not so bushcrafty, patches are somewhat akin to the very earliest means of recording the passing of events and that was with cave paintings and petroglyphs. The symbols and drawings and carvings found in paleo-lithic times were markers of events and observations by the people of those times. They were important enough to record and remember and pass on, as part of the sharing of experience and to show growth and to add to the collective wealth of knowledge and wisdom that formed their communities.
   I like that my patches show a shared experience and when I meet other members of the bushcraft community at large, if I see the same patch, I will know we have traveled down similar paths to bring us to this place. I hope this will encourage you to find new adventures, and maybe even begin to collect some patches for yourself. Show others how you are getting out there and doing things, getting in some "dirt time" and learning the ways of bushcraft. I can think of no better way of sharing the experience with kids, then rewarding them with a patch for their experience. I think I need to get a few patches for my bush buddy and his day pack. Until then, Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #5 and "The Over Night"

   This past Friday and into Saturday morning, I completed my final Outing #5 for BushclassUSA and with that accomplishment I graduated. Having received my Bushclass Basic Certification, I am already looking forward to working on the Intermediate Bushclass lessons and creating even more videos and sharing more experiences with you here at Minnesota Bushcraft.
   As for my outing, it was a great adventure, using the debris shelter I had built earlier this year. I built a natural insulation bed in one part of the shelter, moved the fire pit to a better location to allow for more room and cooked a couple of meals, that turned out delicious. I learned even more about how the materials gathered for such a shelter played a large role in determining the geometry of the shelter and how much space was available. It could have been so much larger inside, had there been some longer, straighter rafter poles available. They might have been there, but I would have to have spent even more time in the woodland to find them.
   I hope you enjoy the video, as it was a lot of fun to put together and in the future I am going to try a few different video techniques and continue to polish my bushcraft story telling style. 

   A lot of questions have been asked of me over at BushcraftUSA about how much room I had available in the shelter and just how many people could fit inside and sleep there. So I put together a short animation on the layout of the shelter and where things are located.

   Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the videos. Please consider taking the BushclassUSA lessons and joining BushcraftUSA. It is a lot of fun, family friendly and will give you hours of things to do and learn.
Stay tuned for more adventures in bushcraft. Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #4

   This last Sunday I had a chance to get out and complete my Outing #4 for BushclassUSA. It was a great outing and I got a lot accomplished. It started around 11am and the temperature was about perfect for a day in February, about 23 degrees F. I gathered some materials for making natural chard tinder, collected some birch bark, setup my tarp shelter using a braided ridge line and a few basic knots. Then I improvised a pot hanger, heated some water for cocoa, made some bread on a stick, cooked some chicken on the Canteenshop Grill Top Stove and finally chard some punky paper birch wood and some mullen leaves. For fire starting I used an improvised steel and flint and chard cloth which I got an ember started in and then transfered the chard cloth to some dry cedar bark that was made into a tinder "nest". All in all a chance to practice a lot of skills and to enjoy the weather and the peace and the quiet. So without further ado, here is the video. I hope you enjoy the adventure.

   Thanks for watching and I really want to encourage you to checkout the BushclassUSA online course found at BushcraftUSA.com. It is really family friendly and will give you hours of enjoyment, getting out into the wilderness. Next up for me is to complete my Outing #5 and finally graduate the Basic Bush Class Certification. It will be an over-night outing, in the state of Minnesota, in February. It will be fun. Until then, Happy Exploring...

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #3

  The adventure continues as I just finished yet another outing for my online BushclassUSA Basic Certification. It did not start out to be an outing involving the foraging for natural tinders, but the more the day wore on, the more fun it got to be. In the end I found, tested and used some paper birch bark, eastern red cedar bark shavings, bull thistle down in the seed pod and some kind of flower silk that I thought would be a nice flash tinder and yet it did not react hardly at all. Finally, I found and tested some Horses Hoof Fungus or False Tinder Fungus, which took a spark from my firesteel and extended that spark to a good coal which I was able to carry home and it burned for 2 plus hours after first ignition. So here is the video and I hope you enjoy the days adventure.

   It has been a lot of fun to make and share these adventures and I am really looking forward to this summer and even more exploration and expeditions. Whether alone or with my bushcraft friends, it is always and adventure worth pursuing. I do like the "dirt time". Til next time... Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #2

   As this is a blog about sharing adventures in bushcraft, it has been a pleasure taking the online BushclassUSA classes and lessons sponsored by BushcraftUSA and then for most of the activities, being able to create videos of those adventures. This past Saturday turned out to be a perfect day for an outing and this time it was a solo trip. So all the video was shot by myself and for some of the distance perspective shots, I had to climb the hills twice. Now I know how Survivorman, Les Stroud feels when he is making his videos. I really do admire his style and I have tried to emulate some of his technique as it makes for great story telling. I hope one day to add some music for some portions of the videos, I just need to find the right tracks.
   This adventure had me sourcing water, lighting fire with flint and steel, foraging for natural tinders and enjoying brief animal encounters and following animal sign. I hope you enjoy the video.

   Thanks for watching and my hope is to bring even better adventures and even more bushcraft activities and challenges to share with you in the future. As always, I encourage you to get out there and try some things and to stop by and share your adventures. Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #1

    After spending several weekends in a row over the holidays, teaching myself what it would take to build a large debris shelter, I decided it was time to take a break. As part of my quest to complete my Basic BushclassUSA Certification, I need to complete five outings. One of them has to be an overnight. I would gladly do all of them as overnights if I could, but there is just never enough time, or the weather will not cooperate, or there are some other obligations. But I did get the chance to get in my first outing and I did it with my good friend and bush buddy, Christian. We had a really great time and I got a chance to try some interesting video techniques and we had a great adventure. So here is a video of our expedition. I hope my friends, that you enjoy it.

   Now I have just four more outings to go, and I think they are all going to be fun. The weather is getting warmer, and the snow is melting and there are lots of things to try. I encourage you all to get out and enjoy all of what nature has to offer this time of year. Happy Exploring...

The New Year 2012 And A Debris Shelter Expirement

   Welcome bushcraft friends to the new year. Over the Christmas and New Year's holidays I decided to spend a few days building a large debris shelter as an experiment. It was based on a design I saw in a video done by Ray Mears for a Country Tracks episode (number 10) on the BBC Television network. Here is a link if you would like to view it first hand for reference. Ray Mears Debris Shelter
   It took about four days over a couple weekends, working about 6 hours each day. It proved to be a good experience and taught me just how much energy and time and materials it would take to build such a shelter, especially by myself. Even Ray mentions that this is the kind of shelter that would be semi-permanent and would usually be done by 4 or 5 individuals in 4 to 5 hours. I can believe that. I was very fortunate to have access to a small piece of private land that would be in a wooded area on the edge of prairie and farm land. I will be sure to spend lots of time there and I am even planning on doing an overnight in the hooch, once I have done a few more improvements. I want to add a canvas door flap and enclose the opening on top a little more. Also I will be practicing very careful firecraft in this shelter as it is very apparent that I am in the midst of a large tinder bundle.
   So I hope you enjoy the video about my debris shelter construction and experiment.

   Thanks for watching, and I hope this has given you some ideas of how to construct a primitive debris shelter and given you a sense of how our aboriginal minnesotans might have done it on the woodlands and prairies of Minnesota and beyond. Happy Exploring.