jackknife... good to see you, I've been wondering where you've been.....I guess you really just don't need as much knife as most people think...[/QUOTE
I usually just hang out here. Too much chest beating and toy posing on some of those "other" forums. The people here are more down to earth and the type to sit on the porch and have a drink with.
No, we really don't need as much knife as we think. Nor as much gun for that matter either. I thank the Lord above that I've had some good teachers in my formative years, and one time I broke from what I as tought, I had a co-worker that steered me back. Life is a continung lesson that we have to learn from. Sometimes its not learning something new, but learning to go back to something that worked for our fathers and grandfathers.
We live now in a time of urban and suburban life styles that is unmatched in human history. We've come a very long way in just a couple of generations. To find out what really works well in the woods or wilderness in general, we should look back to what our great-grandfathers were using on the farm, or out hunting. Our gear may have become hightech, but you still have the basic knowledge that is nessesary for getting it done. And if you have the right knowledge and skills, you don't need as much gear to make up for it.
I once watched my father make up a little fire on a snowy winter day so me and my sister Anne could toast marshmellows. We had gone on a family walk in the first snow of the season, and after a while dad picked a spot we would biuld a fire. He showed me a dead fall. A big old tree had come down long ago, and was aged well, with many old dead brittle limbs sticking out. Dad told me to break off any that I could that were as strait up as I could find. The moisture would run down the dead limb and not lay on it and soak in. We broke off many and soon had a nice pile of kindling set by. Dad rolled another log over and under it the snow had not penitrated, and there was a cashe of crushed dried leaves and small twigs. Dad gathered them up in his hat and cleared a space in the debris of the ground for the fire.
He carefully rubbed the dried tinder from under the log to a fine powder, and then took the tiny twigs and layed then up in a small pile on top of the tinder. Then he took out his peanut and carefully shaved off slivers from the broken limbs. He shaved them off into his hat and built up a good supply of fuzz sticks. Then he took out his old Zippo he used to light his pipe with and touched off the rubbed out tinder. One tiny piece at a time he fed the shaved dry wood into the flame, and soon he had a crackling little fire going. Soon he was feeding in the broken off pieces of dead limbs without even shaving off the damp outer bark. They hissed a bit, but dried and burned well. My sister and I had a ball toasting marsh mellows in the snowy woods.
That was all dad used, his little Case peanut and old Zippo, in cold snowy woods. It was all kowledge and technique, no big chopper weighing as much as a small firearm, or costing a good chunk of paycheck. Just what he had in his pockets.
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