Integrating Bushcraft With Modern Outdoor Life

I subscribe to Paul Kirtley's blog, and enjoy it. I think bushcraft as a useful skill set to know, and its sometimes useful when backpacking. You never know when you are going to need to know a useful knot, make something with a knife, know if a berry is edible, know how to make or sharpen a knife, etc. His flavor of outdoorsmanship is not backpacking and not ultralight, but is a complimentary set of skills, just like mountaineering skills, canoeing skills, fishing skills, field botany, skiing, are all complimentary outdoor skills. My goal used to be to have the skills to navigate any terrain in any weather.

Well, yes, his style of outdoorsmanship is not ultralight, and it's very obvious from the type of expeditions he takes. It's like what Skurka said, you either decide to be a hiker or a camper and he leans more toward the latter.

But his lecture did get me thinking about how a Mora is about 50 g or a full-tang knife is about 100 to 150 g; and a Silky saw is about 280 g. Most of the travels I do take place during autumn or winter where the margin of error is much wider than summer, so it got me thinking about how valuable those two tools are during the most critical time of the year.

I watched the first 10 or 15 minutes of that but gave it up when all he'd really said at that point was basically, "I actually use this stuff sometimes." I'm glad to hear that, but I didn't have time for the details. Am I missing something worth going back for?

As a young Boy Sprout in the '50s buschraft skills were the main camping skills taught to us.

I learned about 5 knots and how to do several types of lashings to build outdoor structures.

First Class Scouts learned valuable fire-building skills and I even won a fire-building/water boiling contest at summer camp.

Axemanship was also taught, along with how too sharpen axes and hatchets. (I know,amazing, but we had no accidents in a troop of 30 boys.)

Also we learned to cook and eat local (Ohio) wild plants like bracken fern, skunk cabbage and cattail roots.

So I was fortunate to have learned those skills early. A few summers as a tall ship sailor taught me several other handy knots and even more as a Nordic and alpine ski patroller.

** Any good backpacking course should teach the following "bushcraft" skills:
>firebuilding
>map and compass skills (to a mastery level of competence)
>emergency shelter building (summer and winter)
>basic knots and bends

A basic 1st aid course should also be required.

My most useful knots I learned for climbing. Tying rope or webbing together, making belay anchors, prussik knots, etc.

Things aren't that different now. In our Boy Scout Troop we still teach knots, lashings, fire-building, ax/hatchet/bowsaw/knife use & sharpening, map & compass, first aid, shelter building.

I suspect we don't teach and drill to the same depth you did in the 50s though. With some of these boys it's in one ear and out the other.

"I watched the first 10 or 15 minutes of that but gave it up when all he'd really said at that point was basically, "I actually use this stuff sometimes." I'm glad to hear that, but I didn't have time for the details. Am I missing something worth going back for?"

My main takeaway is that bushcraft community is often focused on refining skills and imppressing others, but often never really using them in real life. But again, he approached the hobby as a hiker first more than anything else.