Wilderness skills = hobby

psy-ops

psy-ops

Joined
Sep 27, 1999
Messages
3,164
Alot of posts lately have been dissing on large choppers, building shelters and starting a fire without a zippo. I just want to say, wilderness skills is my hobby. I enjoy using my knives to make stuff out of nature. It gets me outside and interacting with our natural world. While many Americans are making the clothing industry add new sizes and sitting in front of the TV waiting for the next celebrity to relapse, I am outside making cool things experimenting with materials and yes learning about trees, plants, stars etc.

I love the new term, "Bushcraft." I was just camping last weekend (I will post some pictures on a different thread) And I had a chance to think about the term bushcraft. It has a larger meaning than just survival or wilderness skills, it rings hobby! What I love about it is it is more of a practical hobby which brings so many critics who come to debate practicality of certain activitities in terms of usage, but they miss the bigger point. That point is that many Americans are not outside with just a knife making stuff. The ones that do venture away from the television do so with high powered tools and machines which takes the muscle and peace out of being outdoors.

Bushcraft to me is a way of interacting with nature using my body and mind. It is exercise, it is spiritual and also mentally challenging. Sure there are some skills that are 'less' practical than others but fun should not be underrated. Before you criticize my usage of the word hobby, think about what you partake in for leisure. There is a hell of a lot worse things for the environment than cutting a few small trees down or starting a fire without matches.
 
Good post. That's a very nice way of saying some things that have been bothering me for a while. Not all of what we discuss here needs to be dissected into terms of absolute necessity or dire circumstances. Perfection of 'kit', development of skillsets, discussing experiences with others are all part of this hobby. The circumstance may occur where we will need to use our skills as more than just a pleasantry, but that's not why we do it.

If a person wants to bring six axes and three saws and four pocket knives into the woods, more power to him, no matter if it's for fun or because he feels he needs them. If a small knife works for me and a big knife works for you, neat-o: at least we both have something that works for us as individuals.

A lot of threads have taken wrong turns because people decide they need to talk down to someone else, to explain in their infinite wisdom and experience "how the world really works". We could remain much more civil by remembering that each person writing has a rational mind, and has come to their choices by their own reason.
 
Great post. It's easy to get hung up on knives we choose and new gear to get, or what the "best" this or that is, but it's all about getting out there and playing. Learning primitive skills was an extension of my love of camping and backpacking. For me there's nothing like getting out for a dayhike on the weekend to recover from a crappy week at work.
 
The hobby is to learn to be a part of nature, to live with it, not attack and conquer it. Chris
 
runningboar said:
The hobby is to learn to be a part of nature, to live with it, not attack and conquer it. Chris
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Agreed 100%, unfortunately the majority of people in this world do not see nature in this way at all. Many do not have any respect for it whatsoever, which is very illogical when you really think about it. Most see it as a place to conquer, change, and or destroy to one degree or another, which I have never understood. What exactly is bad about nature that needs to be changed? I cant think of anything that really needed changing, but maybe the time will come when all of us will understand this, but I tend to doubt that.

Besides living with it, and or in it, is plain and simply put, a heck of a lot more fun anyways.
 
It's a sport where the better you get, the less equipment you need, which seems opposite of most sport where the more you get into it, the more you buy. Never the less the knife thing does get highly addictive,
 
Good post. I get sick of all the arguing and and gear dissing that goes on here. We all enjoy the outdoors and essentially have very similar intrests so what does it matter if one bloke uses a 10" bowie and another uses a 3" folder. I usually take out more cutting tools than I really need, but hey, I like them and like using them.
 
great thread!!!!!! I can't agree more...I love to get to know thgins about nature too, learnign about plants, and makign thgins, like shelters, and eatign wild foods...Its just fun! and it doesn't hurt to know if you get lost these thgins can perhaps save your life!!! Thats just a bonus!
 
psy-ops said:
I love the new term, "Bushcraft." I was just camping last weekend (I will post some pictures on a different thread) And I had a chance to think about the term bushcraft. It has a larger meaning than just survival or wilderness skills, it rings hobby! What I love about it is it is more of a practical hobby which brings so many critics who come to debate practicality of certain activitities in terms of usage, but they miss the bigger point. That point is that many Americans are not outside with just a knife making stuff. The ones that do venture away from the television do so with high powered tools and machines which takes the muscle and peace out of being outdoors.
Click to expand...

I've thought for a while now that the term bushcraft, which has gained prevalence in the Uk particularly in the last 4 or so years is probably a more apt title for what I see on this forum than "Survival". Survival by definition can't really be a hobby.
I think bushcraft takes the hobby more towards an art, rather than "good enough", stop-gap meaures which survival implies.


psy-ops said:
There is a hell of a lot worse things for the environment than cutting a few small trees down or starting a fire without matches.
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I agree. However, I always try to minimise my impact in the bush, and only cut dead wood.
 
beef said:
I agree. However, I always try to minimise my impact in the bush, and only cut dead wood.
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I am sure not one of us goes into a national forest and clear cuts a forest to make a one person shelter. I think criticizing this is absurd. If you want to talk of impacting nature than lets have a discussion on that. I build my shelters on my land and try to use mostly dead stuff as well. Some people try to equate cutting some fresh pine boughs is equivalent to deforestation of an Amazonian rainforest.

I don't believe the members of BFW&S are making any kind of impact that is being shuved on them.

Large choppers is not even in the same category of impact as chainsaws, 4 wheelers, motorboats, suvs, RV, parking lots, developments, cattle grazing etc.
 
psy-ops said:
I wrote that because first, I am sure not one of us goes into a national forest and clear cuts a forest to make a one person shelter. I think criticizing this is absurd. If you want to talk of impacting nature than lets have a discussion on that. I build my shelters on my land and try to use mostly dead stuff as well. Some people try to equate cutting some fresh pine boughs is equivalent to deforestation of an Amazonian rainforest.
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Before you start throwing words like absurd around remember that this is a world wide message board. As I have said over and over, where I live and where you live might have a totally different set of standards and situations. Where you live, cutting a few pine boughs or even a few trees may be no big deal, the amount of forest compared to the amount of people using it allows nature to recover. In the more populated areas of the Eastern US especially popular outdoor recreation destinations it may be a very big deal indeed.

IMO regardless of where you live or how remote, you should always do everything in your power, within reason of course, to minimize your impact. You visit the woods, you don't live there and in most cases you don't own it, it is public land and belongs to everyone.

Besides hacked off trees and litter, one of my biggest pet peeves is going to one of my favorite spots and finding piles of fresh human crap with wadded up toilet paper thrown on the ground. Maybe I should start taking pictures of some of this stuff if the people on this forum don't beleive it is a serious issue. Chris
 
Runningboar,

Yes, we should all minimize our impact. I don't even own a chainsaw, atv or rv.
Yes, I go to car camping spots and have seen what you are talking about. I tolerate it until my son grows a bit and we are going where few have the ability to go. There is less of the mainstream slash and burn camping techniques.

I hear your point but it seems like you are accusing people of trying to "conquer" nature when we are just practicing some skills on private land.
 
Psy-ops,
If what I am saying does not apply to you then ignore it, it is not directed at any one person.

I see the things I am talking about much, much too frequently, I find beer cans 8 miles from the trail head on my favorite wild trout stream along with piles of poop barely out of the camping area, this is not just car camping areas. I camp frequently in Uwharrie National Forest, my favorite camping spot is only accessible by canoe. The last time I went there it took me and my son a solid hour and a half to clean up the site before I would camp there. Wadded up fishing line, bait containers, broken bottles, beer cans, propane bottles, even an old rusted out charcoal grill, and again a short way from where I like to set up my tent, piles of human waste with toilet paper that I had to shovel up and dispose of.

Dude, maybe it is not you, but somebody is doing it and as I have said practicing building shelters that will never be needed with live trees is across the line in my book YMMV. Chris

EDIT: BTW I have never said anything about private land, if you own it you are free to do what ever you please, which is as it should be, I have only talked about public land. In one of your posts you talked about National Forest, that is what I am talking about, that land and those trees do not belong to you.
 
Survival is a hobby of mine. I'm collecting skills that are useful regardless of the stability of our modern societies. Its my favorite collection.


runningboar said:
The hobby is to learn to be a part of nature, to live with it, not attack and conquer it. Chris
Click to expand...


You guys have to remember that here on the east coast, property is either private, and not accessed, or public land. If we all went out on it and cut down a cedar tree to build a shelter, we'd have no cedar trees.

Primitive people understood that they'd have to figure out a balance with their land. They never tried to conquer it.

I know thats not what you meant psy-ops. I don't see any of the guys here as pro-de-wildernessing the world. Its just hard to imagine the traffic in the forrests, and national parks here. There is not a time when you're alone, ever. And when you walk through the parks you can see the evidence of the assmonkeys that have no class, and no respect either.
 
I think the kind of living we enjoy and use as a hobby is wilderness living more than wilderness survival. However becoming more familar with the wilderness certainly gives one a much better chance of surviving if it comes to that. Bushcraft is a great hobby and its different things or different folks. Use the outdoors but think of your grandkids and take good care of it.

I find that there is usually plenty of dead wood and seldom cut down a tree but thats my area and it may be different in yours.
 
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