What we can all learn from each other: A cross-disciplinary approach to backpacking skills

[Stephanie Jordan]

Companion forum thread to:

What we can all learn from each other: A cross-disciplinary approach to backpacking skills

[James Marco]

I agree, there is a lot we can learn from any discipline in the woods. Carpentry, engineering skills will let you easily build a small shelter. Or make a quick repair in an emergency by pinning stuff together (and melting the poly or nylon around the edges.) Holing your canoe can be repaired by boiling some pine sap and coating over a piece of sheet bark (or just slathering over a duct tape patch to make it last the day.)

Knowing what is good to eat and what is not can allow even a light weight hiker supplement the things he brings. From wild carrots to cattails, all can provide a meal. Birch bark can be made into tea with aspirin like properties. A green apple can supply many vitamins you might be missing on the trail. Get familiar with them in your hiking area.

Anyway, a good article, Thanks!

[Dave P]

Reading about the Evenki people made me realized how we substituted skills for gears, and I started trimming weight away from my pack because of that.

Reading about them also made me realized how traditionalists hold onto old gears out of nostalgia and not necessarily practicality because those people would not be reluctant to adopt new technology if offered. Innu and Cree of northern Ontario and Quebec behaved in a similar fashion too.

I used to think wool blankets have some function still thanks to the bushcraft community's insistence on following the old texts, until I read about the Kazakh nomads and how they have these sleeping bags slash bivoac made of leather to endure nights colder than the lower 48.

[Kristin Fiebelkorn]

This was a particularly excellent article! Not only does it offer insight/put into words some of the things I have already been doing (esp. in cross-applying prepper and survivalist concepts/solutions to backpacking), but it is a good reminder of the overlapping folks who spend time in the outdoors and their motivations…

Good one – thanks!!!

[tony landrum]

Enjoyed the article and totally agree, everyday you can learn from someone else!
Tony

[Russell Lawson]

glad to see some out of the box considerations. Although many of the people who prescribe to these other groups are in a box of their own. Coming from my no gear, taking my wool bed blanket and a poly tarp, early 20's I slipped into bushcraft not because I heard about it, but because I was subjected to journals filled with the ways of old pioneers when I was young. Great resources to observe the daily complaints and creative preperations to avoid those issues.

I do hope you weren't squirming in your seat to bad trying to make this subtle enough to not turn off those who appose all else but bpl. I think you did a great job and could help the other forums discover lightweight mindset, because I never understood the practicality of why anyone would pay for an old, 50lb military surplus load that brandish an ego on a large axe, they are misled and need to be woken up from their iconic gear worship. but hopefully they wouldn't just drill holes in the axe handle.

[Dave P]

" Coming from my no gear, taking my wool bed blanket and a poly tarp, early 20's I slipped into bushcraft not because I heard about it, but because I was subjected to journals filled with the ways of old pioneers when I was young"

That's why I like reading about modern nomads and aboriginals: many of them come from an environment which gave birth to our explorers, pioneers, cowboys and mountain men; but at the same time, we have to acknowledge us westerners voluntarily adopt the old gears and old methods by choice; they didn't for a variety of socio-economic and political reasons and not to mention many were and continue to be victims of racist and paternalist institutions. So, to me, it's quite eye-opening to see that numerous nomadic groups in the world are quick to embrace newer technology if they could get their hands on it.

But at the same time, those aboriginals and nomads are still using skills we don't have on a daily basis. So, they haven't abandoned the old ways at all.

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