Have you smelled the smoke in the fire you made lately?

It's fire making season again here, and I have spent many nights already this fall sleeping outdoors in front of a fire. I've pretty much worked all the bugs out of my recycled can and cartridge Tiki lamps... now that the bugs are gone.

This thread has inspired me to start dragging out all the tents and setting them up, repair/replace ropes, inventory poles and stakes, etc. Place will look like the circus is in town, but it'll be good to know my "mobile home" is in good shape.

 

great reminder...
you guys, keep causing my list of to-dos to grow!

 

I'm not a real fan of wood smoke. I cook over a stove while outside. OTOH, being able to make a fire under trying circumstances is certainly a survival requirement of the first stripe.

So, I have been working with my oldest grandson, now old enough to demonstrate he is responsible enough to carry/use a pocketknife and such. This presents the opportunity for a lesson - that that responsibility must be demonstrated over time to build trust, and trust can help build into greater relationships...

To make a fire requires some effort to gather materials - and not just anything will do. A lesson in choice and how choices made have a real impact on an outcome.

Tools are needed. So he has a pocket knife (SAK) and a 'fire kit' built into a small tin that can be easily carried. A lesson can be had on both the safe way to sharpen a knife and why working to keep your tools in shape is important. Lesson on different tinder and how they work offers a chance to see alternatives to reach a goal vs 'just one 'correct' way to do things.

Then starting the fire. Not with matches or lighter (tho I ensure he has both) but with flint and steel. You know - Old School, the hard way. And the way that might just save your life when all the technology goes poof...
Starting a fire offers a lesson in perseverance and a real life skill that has a reward that can be seen immediately, when fully mastered. The other lesson - hard or nearly impossible things can (or may) actually become easy (or at least easier) with practice. Practice is essential in so many other things in life as well.

Starting a fire. Such a simple thing. Mundane. And yet, so full of lessons for a young person.

 

I feel privileged to read this post. So many good things said so well.

Yard Dart, yer a Bard at heart.

 

At the Expo this weekend we grabbed a few of these. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KL4NKUW/?tag=survivalmonke-20 We hang them on our bags & such. I was very happy when both the boys could easily use the fire starter. They have absorbed most of the lessons that were taught.

Since this TOTM encourages bushcraft, I have decided that we should learn how to make a travios. We hike either together or the kid goes with his friends, I think it is something that needs to be learned. We have a few extra paracord bracelets, I want to use one and fashion something to drag a person from the woods on. I have a mental image as to how it would be done, though the wood/rails that I would like to use would be hard to locate. I guess use what you can find.

 

Bushcrafting is often in the eye of the beholder - or the one doing the lashing....


(see A Woodsrunner's Diary: March 2010 note this is an OZ based fellow)


As for me - I like the idea of using a Honda to pull my travios.

 

LeLoup is one of the names in living history, especially on the internet. Very nice guy, and his living history stuff in amazing.

 

I am big on creating scenarios. I would actually like to be out somewhere in the woods and say, lets make a travios that will hold one of us. I want it to be a drill. I think to build one that would hold a person vs. one to carry stuff would take more lashing and to find the poles that would hold a human.... Have you ever made one to hold a human?

 

Actually, I have. Lots of times in the Scouts (we'd race these actually). While as a working Medic for a small USAF Airborne unit attached to a larger Army outfit, we would go out into the Alaska woods (just us Zoomies) once a year after we on-boarded all the new guys that came in on rotation.

This was a great time for training (map and compass work, HF antennas for long haul comms etc) and to see if the newbies would 'make it' in the bush.

One of the exercises was to build a stretcher or travios to carry an injured person (and their gear) to the nearest open place that could serve as an LZ for a Chinook-sized chopper. If a 'hook could land, most anything else would have no problem.

This quickly became as issue set for finding suitable materials (paracord was never a problem) and after assembly came the horrific struggle of breaching the alders that ring most open spaces. Extra points for difficultly were awarded for stumbling into muskeg (swamps) or Russian Nettles. The transported 'victim' was often much the worse for wear at the end of things. If we were in the swamps, it didn't help that the dunking was more often than not - deliberate.... (fun stuff, eh?)

I real life we would make a human carry to the nearest spot a Stokes basket would fit and start screaming for the PJs on the radio.

So building the travois and making the carry was, in reality, a group exercise in team building (and getting even a few times for past pranks). All good fun with good training as well.

Please note it was the Plains Indians that used the travois, not PNW tribes....

Weight wise, in many cases we humped almost 1/2 our own body weight in gear leaving an LZ. One of the items I always added to my aid bag was a few tubes of BenGay lineament for all the aching backs and knees the first night. Never pretty for the old farts.

You have a very good idea, and working up to the full Travois carry would be best. The one pictured would be a good choice for heavy brush, the only thing I would do different is to notch the main beams so the cross-pieces would be less likely to to fail (rotate) and add a diagonal or X to stiffen the rack.

Lashings first, safely cutting branches and so on next, then a full build and finally, the capstone project would be to hump some gear a specific distance (like a a half mile or so).

Celebrate at the end with beers all around...oh, wait. How about some chocolate bars or other treat?

Let us know how it turns out,. OK?

 

Maybe @Motomom34 could come up with something so new as to be granted a patent....


This looks very much like the 'racing models" I mentioned earlier. Note the 3 to 1 power supply...



Office of Medical HistoryUS Army medical Department, Office of Medical History - Army Back when the jackasses in the Army didn't all wear uniforms.

good luck

 

I believe that a 12 foot travois is the suggested length for carrying a 300lb man by hand.

 

Heated with wood for 35yrs! Sitting in front of a fire right now after a nice bowl of home made bean soup. House smells wonderfully nice with garlic, sausage, beans and red winein the air. Cut, split, stacked 6 cord of wood for winter plus a year... Dog curled up in front of wood burner, belly to the heat. Only thing that would make it better would be a snow storm outside... Good feeling being ready for winter!
Winter projects are lined up to keep hands busy... Life is good!

 

The last couple of weeks have been a bit rough for me with everything outside of what wrapped up on Tuesday. The honeymoon is over at the new job and, while it hasn't fallen into the category of abusive relationship (and I don't think it will) it has definitely become more of a challenge. Deadlines that I had no input in are fast approaching. Hurdles are showing up left and right. People are missing commitments and balking at task requests. And I'm being put "in charge" of more and more people and things.

From a work standpoint, all of this is great. From a career standpoint, it doesn't hurt. From a family standpoint, I've been just a little bit less relaxed than before. From a health standpoint, I suck.

I'm eating whatever, whenever. I'm fairly worn out when I get home and haven't done anything outside in two weeks other than walk to and from the car and a couple of 5 minute saunters at work (we have a beautiful campus now).

Why do I mention all of this? Because it is exactly what @Yard Dart talked about. Getting too wrapped up in things that don't matter or don't matter as much as I am giving them credit for. Sitting on my butt (and standing a little too...nice raising desk) and then kicking back with a beer after work...and not much else. Missing out on the world and life going on around me.

So tonight I went outside and smelled the smoke from another fire as a start. We have, unfortunately, a number of wildfires burning about 100 miles away...and we can smell and see the smoke. Not the ideal situation but I'll take it as a catalyst.

And tomorrow I will be doing the warm-up for my "Half Marathon In The Woods", because I miss the time out in nature. Yes, it's on fairly groomed trails and in a "commercial" setting (for those of you wondering, it's the US National Whitewater Center - http://www.usnwc.org) but it's still my happy place when I need to get back to nature.

Sunday, unless I fail miserably tomorrow, I'll be hiking at least 13.1 miles. By myself (family can't keep up that distance and aren't ready for it). Phone tracking my progress and that's it. Pokemon Go will NOT be running.

It's getting colder, and that's fine with me. I actually like the days when I'm not sweating to beat the devil. And the weekend after Thanksgiving I'm planning to go "camping" with the family. Quotes because it will most likely be in a rustic cabin (I'm planning it so there will be NO electricity if I can help it) because not everyone in the family is as up on tents as I am. But there will be a fire, either in a fireplace, fire ring, or stove, come hell or high water.

I plan on using my @Bear special machete. I plan on filtering water to make sure the thing still works (actually...two of them). I plan on using a fire steel or my...@Bear flint and steel instead of matches, just to prove I still can. Because I need to get back to it. It makes me happy, and life is too short to not do the things that matter and make you happy (sociopaths excepted).

This next year will be a time for the family to start, once again, getting squared away. NOT buying a new car so we can spend that money elsewhere on debt and tools, of all kinds. Building up and fixing our raised garden beds and really getting into growing what we can. No, I can't support a family of 4 or 5 on 5 raised beds, that's stupid, but I can learn what does and doesn't work.

I also plan on starting to write again (I know, you've all heard it before) but with the wife's help, we have the start on a really good outline for the book that I've now started to post twice and done nothing with...gonna be good!

It's not all bushcraft, and that's kind of unfortunate in a way because I really do like that sort of thing, but I have to take baby steps to get back there. I do have to go to work, I do have to pay the bills, I do have to provide. But I don't have to do that to the exclusion of all else, and this was a wake-up call.

Thank you @Yard Dart.

 

Have a lovely weekend outside @DarkLight.

The kids saw a video on making fire bricks from shredded paper. I do not want to buy anything so we have been talking about how to make them with what we have. Paper Pulp Fire Bricks: Make Your Own | Lone Star Farmstead I have been shredding lots of paper at work and we have lots of Homer buckets but we need to fashion a strainer type thing. I do have an old screen.

 

Bio fuel briquettes, compress paper pulp and sawdust into fuel bricks. - All
If you have access to sawdust, you can up the burn...

 

The world will push you to early burn out , IF you let them.
I learned late in life NOT to be volunteering for things too quickly or revealing my knowledge for a particular process on the job.
People will load you down with no consideration to all your present tasks at hand.
And they don't want to learn either, so trying to teach, is like talking to the wind.

 

@Yard Dart that moss is incredible. What a find. That has so many purposes. You should have grabbed some and experimented with it. I am famous for dragging stuff home. I heard that dried moss is great for starting fires. I wonder how well that stuff on the tree stores. I do wonder if that is also the same moss that you can use to filter water?