Hunter Gatherer Ethics; Environmental Miss-Education

The difference between moorland managed for shooting on the right of the fence and grazed and denuded of heather and anything but grass on the left. (Image by Richard Guy)

Misunderstanding about the environment and about the work that goes on in the countryside abounds, often championed by well meaning individuals with the welfare of animals and the conservation of the natural world at heart but without the practical experience or appreciation of the relevance of wildlife management to accept that sometimes humans need to manage the environment rather than just let nature do it's own thing.

Mark Avery, former director of research for the RSPB published Inglorious in 2015 criticising grouse shooting and supporting his call for a ban on driven grouse shooting. While he does cite some very credible literature and does make some very good arguments against large scale driven grouse shooting he completely overlooks the benefits of land managed by game keepers. 

I take a dim-view of 'celebrity environmentalists' like Chris Packham and Bill Oddie who should know better than to make some of the claims they do about grouse shooting and game keepers, although there are some in that industry who certainly do break laws and persecute wildlife the work of gamekeepers is still very important to the character of the British countryside. I do though have a little more sympathy with the kind of environmental 'miss-education' that can occur in schools.

'Environmental Education' is part of the curriculum in the form of topics such as climate change and sustainability and in a 2003 paper about environmental education in Australian National Parks *1 highlights the issue of teachers without the necessary understanding of the environment to deliver effective environmental education. The authors comment specifically that although teachers may have understood environmental issues from a social or cultural perspective they lacked a sound understanding of the ecological and management issues. 

I have a similar concern having experienced first-hand the effects of misguided people who were concerned about the environment, they had certainly taken a position about the environment and were attempting to influence society which are two of the highest goals of environmental education but their position and action were informed, not by sound fact and local ecological knowledge, but by media and schools where the preoccupation seems to be to presenting global ecological and conservation issues without the context of local issues and badly informed teachers who will preach, rather than teach, about a specific, possibly emotional interest they have in the environment. To put this in context over my years of working in the countryside I have had traps and snares stolen or vandalised, valuable livestock released and been yelled at and verbally abused for cutting down trees and have been reported to the police for carrying out perfectly legal, necessary and beneficial environmental management activities. 

Contrary to popular belief it is still legal to trap and snare many species of vermin and predatory mammals as well as some birds under the conditions of the General Licences as well as use snares which meet certain design criteria under the UK's laws. These traps fill a vital role in controlling species such as grey squirrel and mink but many dismiss them as illegal and cruel without any proper understanding of their role, function or the lengths which have been gone to to ensure modern traps are humane. 

I do not believe that it is the role of teachers and environmental educators to address the issues or specific difficulties I have faced due to ‘environmental mis-education’ but there should be a responsibility to provide local context for peoples experiences in the environment rather than them forming perceptions of nature and the environment from TV documentaries of exotic animals, deforestation, global warming and other, very important, but very distant and intangible environmental issues. 

Deforestation to make way for agriculture in Mexico By Jami Dwyer - https://www.flickr.com/photos/74281168@N00/173937750/, Public Domain, Link

If instead of using the easily accessible, celebrity endorsed, well marketed, neatly packaged but flawed examples of the negatives of wildlife and environmental management teachers were a bit more critical of the material they delivered and were willing and comfortable to step out of the school building onto a local farm, nature reserve, shooting estate, beach or hillside their students would see the day to day activities that go on out there and be able to relate to the climate and sustainability issues in their own community rather than form the opinion the cutting down trees is bad because deforestation in the Amazon is bad and that's all they have learned about at school. 

Coppice management in a UK ancient woodland, a whole different kettle of fish to deforestation although tarred with the same brush in many peoples minds because they simply don't understand the difference.

While I don't expect everyone to suddenly start hunting and foraging their own food after a brush with the environment of their local area I do think that it will be much easier to have those conversations about where food comes from and why shooting and fishing are a legitimate and beneficial way of putting food on the table once people understand how the environment of their local area is maintained and managed.

My son mackerel fishing off the Dorset Coast

It's not only about food though or the rights and wrongs of killing something to eat but about respect for the people who make a living out of agriculture and countryside management and an understanding of the UK's unique landscape and countryside. 

As bushcrafters you, and I say you because I am a deer stalker by trade and I train game keepers so to many I am one of the enemy when it comes to their opinions about wildlife and the environment. YOU have a unique opportunity to teach people about those things without being a direct part of an industry that many distrust and find distasteful and can do a great deal to educate people about their countryside. 

References

*1 Lugg, A. & Slattery, D., (2003). Use of National Parks for Outdoor Environmental Education: An       Australian Case Study. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 3(1), pp. 77-92.

To Bushcraft or not to Bushcraft? Expedition Skills

Following on from last weeks post reviewing the Karrimor Trig rucksack this week we are going to discuss the idea of using bushcraft skills on expeditions.

Samuel Hearne who we mentioned on the blog just the other week adopted bushcraft techniques out of necessity on his journeys because the most up to date modern equipment and techniques of the time were simply too heavy for long distance exploration and he accepted that he needed to rely on native skill and knowledge to feed himself and maintain his kit over long periods. Nowadays with very light weight equipment being readily available it may be possible to carry all the kit you need for longer periods but it's the law that is the main thing that prevents us from heading into the wilderness for long term bushcrafting or to use bushcraft skills on our expeditions.

       By Nessmuk (George Washington Sears) - http://www.oldbookart.com/, Public Domain, Link

At the time of writing his 1884 book Woodcraft and his articles for Field and Stream magazine the kind of camping George Washington 'Nessmuk' Sears's was advocating was considered light weight. Nowadays the heavy canvas, tool kit and cookware would be considered grossly heavy by almost anyone contemplating an expedition on foot.

At the time though his approach was not practised by recreational hunters and campers and even the frontiersmen and mountain men of the early 1800's would, out of choice, travelled in companies sharing heavier kit between them and relying on their survival skills in extremis rather than as a routine. 

Compared to the heavy canvasses and iron cookpots of Nessmuks era though we can carry a titanium cook pot and a small gas stove that weighs less combined than the small hatchet he would have carried to process his fuel wood. Out tents or nylon tarps weigh a tiny fraction of his canvas tarpaulins and while they might now not be suitable for using to drag firewood or stretcher a casualty as they are much thinner and not as abrasion resistant as an old fashioned canvas they are more waterproof and far, far lighter.

bivibag, thermarest, sleeping bag and fly sheet; a combined weight of about four kilos, probably half the weight of an old canvas tarpaulin. 

A modern light weight camping shelter. 

Because the kit we have available nowadays is so light weight we can afford to carry more food than we might perhaps once have had the capacity to carry so we might be able to travel a little further without re-supply or without having to resort to fishing or hunting. Nowadays carrying hunting and fishing kit would be considered by many to be additional unnecessary weight on expeditions, but that's not the main reason that bushcraft and modern light weight camping an expedition seem to have parted ways. 

In the UK land ownership has been such a contention issue over the centuries and laws so restrictive regarding access to and passage over land that many of the rights exercised by Nessmuk during his adventures are denied us now. We couldn't go on an expedition across the UK and expect to hunt, fish and trap our own food or to be able to have fires wherever we camped in the evenings. Because we can't do those things we then have to rely on the modern light weight camp stoves, freeze dried food, and other modern equipment. Because we are then tied to using a modern stove instead of a fire we don't need an axe and saw to process firewood or a firesteel or bow drill kit to light it. Ye we might be able to whittle beside the camp stove in the evening but it's not the same as a camp fire and whittling for whittling's sake might be good practice for real bushcraft skills but without a purpose to you're whittling it's not really bushcraft. 

It's a great shame that we don't have the right to practice bushcraft in the countryside here in the UK, a right that is protected in law in Scandinavian counties. Allemansrätten in Sweden allows people to access more or less the whole countryside as long as they follow some sensible rules. These rules might include bans on fires in high risk areas during the Summer or completely in specific nature reserves, bans on fishing in certain conservation areas and the need to abide by relevant firearms and hunting laws. But largely access to the countryside is unrestricted as long as you practice courtesy and don't approach near peoples dwellings. 

At a camping shelter in Tyresta National Park in Sweden, due to fire risks and the need to maintain this pristine piece of primeval ancient forest fire, other than in designated areas like this one, is banned and you may only use wood supplied at camping shelters like this one rather than being allowed to cut and gather your own wood. But this is the exception rather than the rule and outside of these protected areas there is even greater freedom to experience the outdoors. 

 While I do love this principle and regularly take advantage of it on my trips to Scandinavia I can't see it working in the UK. The much larger population, the fact that most of the land is intensively managed lowland agriculture rather than forest and upland does not suit free access and neither does the mentality of many people here in the UK. We certainly aren't as a nation as closely linked to the landscape as out Scandinavian friends and I worry, having worked in the countryside my entire career, that the general level of respect for nature and the countryside here is far too low for people to be trusted with full access to the countryside.

The number of times I've seen people flout signs saying not to disturb undergrowth or cut live trees, even a few years ago at the 2014 Bushcraft show I watched a man and his young son, systematically cutting down willow coppice stems to make way for their shelter despite signs asking people not to cut vegetation.  The amount of litter I find in the countryside, the poaching that goes on, the gates that get left open, the dogs that are allowed to freely roam and terrorise livestock I'm not sure our nations countryside could survive the kind of access that Allemansrätten gives the Swedes.

Bushcraft when practised properly does not impact the countryside negatively, a neatly coppiced hazel rod here and there, some harvested fruit, fungi or some legal caught fish or game, a fire carefully extinguished and the ashes scattered, shelters taken down after use do not disfigure or endanger the countryside. That is not the perception though and and any thought of cutting wood, having fires or harvesting wild food on a hike, camping trip or expedition is fairly likely to be met with disdain by modern light weight campers, especially because of the weight of the kit and equipment that allows you to do those things. Additionally the though that you would burn wood or cut a piece of living hazel to make a spoon, whistle or bow for your fire set will shock and horrify people who don't understand the nature of hardwood trees and the benefits of coppicing. Leaving no trace is a good moto of campers but actually if more people engaged with bushcraft instead of insulating themselves from nature with modern light weight kit maybe they would feel inclined to leave a positive trace in the environment.

Chris Loynes of the University of Cumbria gave a great talk about this idea of leaving more trace at the Nature Connections Conference in Derby in 2016 and published a blog post on the topic HERE.

With the availability of modern light weight kit camping and bushcraft have become two very separate things to most people and that is a shame in some respects.

We'd be really interested to know how you link your practice of bushcraft with other outdoor activities and would love to feature some guest blog posts on the BushcraftEducation blog with peoples thoughts and ideas. Please get in touch with us through social media or in the comments section on the right of the page. We look forward to hearing from you and perhaps to publishing a guest post from you soon.

The Catch 22 of Bushcraft In Schools

B25 Bomber by Frank Kovalchek from Anchorage, Alaska, USA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The only significance of the picture of the B-25 above is that it was the type of aircraft which the main character of Joseph Hellers classic novel 'Catch 22' Captain John Yossarian serves aboard as a bombardier. The popular phrase 'Catch 22' comes from this novel and defines a situation from which there is no escape due to contradictory rules.

That is how I feel about the idea of teaching bushcraft in schools; it absolutely should happen, I'm convinced that it would be in the best interest of young people to be taught bushcraft skills, particularly skills which increase their appreciation for and understanding of the natural world. BUT although I think it SHOULD happen I'm equally convinced that school would be a terrible place for that learning to occur.

Teaching about the natural world and environment is something which the curriculum is not very good at facilitating and something which schools are notoriously bad at. The situation was almost worsened during Michael Gove's disastrous stint as Secretary of State for Education when he almost succeeded in having topics such as climate change and sustainability dropped from England's national curriculum. For someone with that level of apparent disdain for the environment and sustainability to now fill the role of  Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is frankly disturbing.

Michael Gove by Paul Clarke [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Although I think learning bushcraft skills is a great way not only to learn about the environment but is also a fantastic way to develop resilience in children as well as benefit their physical and mental health. However; just because I think buschraft skills should be taught to children of school age doesn't mean that school would be a good place to do it. As a further education lecturer, forest schools leader and trainer of forest school leaders and having worked with schools delivering extra curricular environmental education, Duke of Edinburgh's Awards and various other things I don't think schools are really equipped to deliver bushcraft in a meaningful way. Also because schools are so driven by the National Curriculum and a desire to satisfy the whims of OFSTED and be ranked favourably amongst other schools in the area teachers and leadership teams in schools will struggle to justify adding something else to what the school delivers.

While many schools do now run very commendable outdoor education programmes the pursuit and delivery of outdoor and environmental education in schools has often been down to the whims of one or two particular teachers who might have a personal enthusiasm for the outdoors or environment. While this enthusiasm might be commendable in an individual it isn't always backed up by technical expertise or subject knowledge.

I have seen some excellent good practice amongst Forest School practitioners I have had the privilege of working with and teaching but this is unfortunately not consistent and is demonstrated by people who already have considerable outdoor experience or experience of other skills such as woodworking, bushcraft and who are experienced teachers already rather than by people who are coming to forest schools leadership because they have a little bit of enthusiasm for it and their school has nominated them to run forest schools. In those cases activities come out of books or from the internet and there is little innovation to their programmes and no challenge for the students. Also a lack of environmental knowledge on the part of forest school leaders seriously undermines it's constant comparisons to the more well established outdoor learning programmes from Scandinavia as most British Forest Schools simply can't deliver the quality of environmental learning that could be provided by a subject expert. That's not to say they have to as Forest Schools in the UK is largely focused on social and emotional development and principles such as free play rather than nature as the Scandinavian (particularly Swedish) equivalents are.

The progression towards being able to influence society on environmental issues as described by the Swedish Friluftfrämjandet and as delivered by their programmes including Skogsmulle which  influenced and is often compared to the UK's forest Schools

I have drawn attention to this issue in the past as it affects the outdoor education sector as a whole:  There is a well used claim by outdoor educators that outdoor education teaches an appreciation of the environment and delivers the objectives of environmental education and have been quite critical of this claim and highlighted a lack of evidence to support it. One of the reasons for my opposition to this general claim is that outdoor educators are not necessarily subject experts when it comes to the environment. Although the outdoor education industry recognises that outdoor educators need some level of environmental knowledge to be able to answer questions about the areas where they are leading groups but this knowledge is the not the same as the subject specialism and expertise required to teach environmental education.

This would be my fear if bushcraft was suddenly added to the national curriculum that a teacher with a bit of enthusiasm for bushcraft and a good collection of Ray Mears and Bear Grylls DVD's would suddenly become the schools 'bushcraft' teacher without the skills and expertise to back up their enthusiasm.

Based on the standard wages for forest school practitioners and teaching assistants I doubt very much that a school would be willing to pay a full teachers wage for a specialist bushcraft practitioner unless a serving teacher was willing to teach bushcraft in addition to their other duties and that's where the problem begins. Suddenly you have an inexperienced person teaching buschraft, which devalues bushcrafts contribution to learning and potentially creates health and safety issues if techniques arent taught properly.

You only have to watch a few youtube videos and do a quick search of the internet to see that poor technique and inexperience abounds amongst so called 'expert' bushcrafters; people who would teach someone to carve a feather stick like the one bellow and pass it off as good technique; 

By Jim Thomas (Jomegat) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

So that would be my fear for bushcraft if it was taught in schools that it would be done poorly by people who were inexperienced partly because of the education sectors historical reliance on people with an enthusiasm for the outdoors to deliver outdoor elements of their provision and partly because I know, having worked in education long enough, that there would be no proper funding for a bushcraft teachers role if one was suddenly required by the curriculum.

These two obstacles would mean that buschraft was taught poorly, possibly dangerously and without the subject knowledge to back up the learning or contextualise it in terms of it's application to other subjects.

Ultimately bushcraft won't ever be included in the curriculum anyway because it's outcomes aren't measurable enough or closely linked to priority subjects or progression to higher learning. I think it SHOULD be but it WONT, would be done BADLY if it WAS and CAN'T be because sadly it's benefits aren't recognised by education policy makers.

Why We Will Still Need Bushcraft Skills In Space

Last month I did something I almost never do and wrote about a movie here on the Bushcraft Education blog, hopefully it was more than just a rant about how rubbish The Revenant, a film claiming to depict the ordeal of Hugh Glass after his mauling by a bear in1823, was and how much more about survival we can learn from Riddley Scott and Matt Damon film The Martian. For the original post follow this LINK. I said in that post that even though The Martian is fictional it demonstrates a need for bushcraft and survival skills even in space, I thought I would follow it up with my thoughts on just why bushcraft skills will always be relevant. 

Geoff

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People who practice Bushcraft tend to spend a lot of time looking back to times when the manual skills we value so highly were an essential part of every day life, to the mountain men of North America who lived by their trapping and navigating skills, to the Mesolithic hunter gatherers who gleaned every necessity from the land, and the craftsmen of yesteryear who relied on their manual skills and basic tools rather than the convenience of modern power tools.

However bushcrafters and survival skills enthusiasts have plenty of reasons to look forward as well, and before all the sensible people reading this give up expecting the next sentence to mention the zombie apocalypse, just give me a minute more to make my case.

Zombies aren't real and those 'prepping' for a zombie apocalypse need to keep their stockpiles of  green tipped ammunition and toxic green knife handles as far away from me as possible.

A knowledge of bushcraft is timeless, even if many of the skills are now made largely redundant on a day to day basis by modern technology;

The flint and steel or bow drill has been replaced by the piezo electric lighter, the electric oven and gas central heating.

Tracking and trapping animals and birds for food and clothing has been replaced by cellophane wrapped, battery farmed livestock and internet shopping.

Collecting, eating and preserving seasonal vegetables and fruits has been replaced by ordering a side salad or buying expensive 'porcini' mushrooms at a delicatessen even though they grow plentifully just yards from your home.

A bumper harvest of 'porcini' also known as cep or penny bun, fairy ring chantarelle and a giant puff ball. Sold dry in tiny packets in supermarkets for an absolute fortune. 

What worries me is the only people that seem to value these skills are the few first nations peoples who preserve their traditional knowledge for cultural as much as practical reasons and the relatively few people who practice bushcraft as recreation. In the UK our schools are demanding more and more inclusion of technology in the curriculum with very little emphasis placed on manual skill development. We have young school children learning computer programming, ipads in every classroom, students at secondary schools requiring laptops and home computers for every piece of homework, homework being conducted on virtual learning environments rather than in exercise books while all the time there are fascinating opportunities out of reach of our children just on the other side of the classroom window.

In the school grounds of my childrens school I could gather quince, lime bast for making rope, cat tail pollen for baking in the spring and seed down for firelighting in the autumn, a huge range of wild greens; shepherds purse, garlic mustard, lime leaves, pineapple weed and bitter cress, I could tap birch trees and use the bark to make birch tar and I that could all be embedded in the science curriculum but it isn't. There is a bit of a catch 22 here in my mind and I'll address it fully in another post next month . Briefly though the problem of trying to teach bushcraft at schools is that there simply isn't anyone to teach it and the risk is that if it was taught it would be taught badly and would turn children of to it, just as children can be turned off to other fascinating subject by bad teachers or by a poor curriculum, geography, science, literature and history for example should all be fascinating and engaging subjects, I don't know how you would ever make maths interesting but someone's got to try I suppose, but often schools manage to make even the most interesting topics tedious and disengaging and the same could happen to bushcraft if it was done in a school setting.

The point of this post though is whatever the difficulties of taking advantage of the natural school surroundings or of teaching a bit about the natural world those difficulties should be conquered and the learning should go ahead, children should be taught about nature and the environment, traditional rural skills and knowledge and bushcraft is the perfect way to do that teaching, in fact it's why I started this blog in the first place. 

Quinces collected with the permission of my daughters school, we turned them into jelly and mixed some of them with some black nightshade berries to make a delicious chutney too. But the school didn't take advantage of them at all, in fact the teachers didn't even know what they were and were at a complete loss when Lillie took a jar of the finished jelly in for them to try. 

If we aren't careful one day when we really need the skills of a bushcrafter, the practical skills which relate to ecology, survival, navigation, resource identification and collection, identification and gathering of food which only come from consistent exposure to and work in nature and the outdoors, we will find that no one has those skills. When in a few years we are all driving electric cars, commuting on mag-lift trains operating all our household appliances with our phones or in a million years when the human race is boldly exploring the galaxy with our computer whizz kid great-great-great-great etc.. grandchildren living in human colonies on the other side of galaxy, travelling faster than we can ever dream who is going to grow our food, plan the rotation of timber production, manage pests, carry out habitat management and restoration, discover and classify new species etc.. When computer code can do all that then we can start relying on technology but until then we will need to maintain and develop our connection with nature. Even if one day our technology has advanced so far that we can explore space and new planets what value will there be in that if all we can do when we get there is write computer code and do maths. We will always need ecologists, environmental scientists, experts in agriculture, bushcrafters and others with practical nature based skills. And with little engagement in those areas in school maybe it will be the people who practice it for fun that will save the day.

Why The Martian is a better survival movie than The Revenant

The story of Hugh Glass is a true adventure story (PROBABLY, although it was widely reported the details of his survival have been embellished over time and were never corroborated by Glass himself). It is full of great feats of endurance and real survival and a retelling of it could have been a fantastic opportunity to look at the hardship of survival and the realities of how difficult it would have been to survive, horrifically wounded and without equipment, the harsh American frontier. 

In late August or early September 1823 Glass was in the employ of General William Ashley as a hired hunter accompanying a fur trapping expedition led by Ashley's business partner Andrew Henry up the Missouri River.  Scouting ahead of the main body of men Glass encountered a female grizzly bear with two cubs, bears are fierce in defence of their cubs and it charged him and mauled him severely. Hearing his cries the rest of the party killed the bear but thought that Glass was certainly going to die due to his horrific wounds including severe lacerations and a broken leg. Determined not to abandon him Henry ordered a litter built and the party carried Glass with them for several days but with their added burden they could not travel quickly enough and desperately needed to link up with another party to provide security against expected Indian attacks. Eventually a bonus of $80 was offered for two men to stay behind with Glass until he died and to bury him. Two men stayed, reportedly an experienced mountain man John Fitzgerald and a young Jim Bridger, later to become one of the most famous mountain men of all time, on his first expedition on the frontier. Rather than staying the two abandoned Glass when he was still alive five days after the main party left taking with them his rifle and equipment and reporting that he had died. 

When he realised what had happened Glass set out on his monumental journey to fort Kiowa, little more than a trading post on the Missouri, he could do no more than crawl to begin with and had nothing to eat but insects, a few plant roots and the occasional snake until he was able to steal part of a buffalo carcass from some wolves. Remaining camped for a time while he ate the buffalo meat and treated some of his festering wounds with maggots he recuperated a little and was able to continue his journey. He later was given a hide boat by some friendly Lakota Indians and was able to complete his journey to for Kiowa where he re-provisioned and began his search for those who abandoned him. 

When he eventually caught up with Bridger he forgave him for abandoning him, perhaps because of his youth, and then re-enlisted with General Ashley. On hearing that Fitzgerald was at Fort Atkinson he headed there. More adventures followed and for a time he was without his equipment again when he had to flee from some Rees Indians. Eventually arriving at Fort Atkinson he found Fitzgerald had joined the United States Army and as such the killing him would have meant the death penalty. The Captain in charge of the fort reunited Glass with his rifle which Fitzgerald still had but Glass wisely did not pursue revenge and left. In fact there is no evidence that Glass even had revenge in mind at all, although he did travel to Fort Atkinson that may have been purely to retrieve his rifle and as was demonstrated by his forgiveness towards Bridger he probably completely understood their decision to leave him given his condition.

The key aspects of this story to me are Glass's determination and will to survive coupled with his obvious skill as an outdoorsman, being able to navigate without map or compass the 250 mile journey to Fort Kiowa and eek out a living from foraged food on his six week journey is nothing short of superhuman, a quote by Glass when he again later lost his rifle and equipment on his way to Fort Atkinson sums this up for me;

"Although I had lost my rifle and all my plunder, I felt quite rich when I found my knife, flint and steel in my shot pouch. These little fixens make a man feel right peart when he is three or four hundred miles from anybody or any place."

For a man to be so happy and confident with so few supplies is a sign of a true outdoorsman. Being familiar with this story I was very excited for the release of The Revenant in 2015 and looked forward to the story of Glass, which I was already familiar with, being on the big scree. However I was sorely disappointed as all the film seemed to be was an opportunity for Leonardo Dicaprio to drool and groan his way to an Oscar. The overriding message of the film was not one of survival against the odds or of the hardships of the American frontier but one of revenge. It seems that there can be no other motivation in film nowadays. The remake of the magnificent seven (the original is one of my favourite films of all time) did it too inventing a backstory for Chris (I don't know or care what  Denzel Washington's character is called, in the original it was Chris), which led to him accepting to job of defending the village so he could have revenge on the badguy who had wronged him in the past. The Revenant did this too, but while I can forgive the director of the new Magnificent Seven film, it's fiction after all, I can't forgive the writers and director of The Revenant for tampering with historical fact. They invented a wife and son Glass never had and implicating Bridger and Fitzgerald in the murder of that son who never existed just to add to the revenge theme. Invented an encounter with Arikara Indians in which Glass killed several French trappers and rescued a chiefs daughter and inventing the murder of Andrew Henry (who in actual fact lived to retire from fur trading and take up lead mining dying at the age of 56 in 1832) at the hands of Fitzgerald and ultimately the death of Fitzgerald at the hands of Glass and the Arikaras.

Monument to Glass Grand River Museum, Lemmon, South Dakota. By John Lee Lopez - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

A film which could have been a truly inspiring account of survival and mind over matter turned instead into a story of revenge and violence unworthy of Glass and the other mountain men of the era. Instead a science fiction film, the last genre you would expect, embodies the hardy spirit of Glass and the mountain men much better than The Revenant does.

In the Martian Mark Watney, a NASA botanist and astronaut is stranded on Mars during a planned month long expedition when the team have to evacuate due to a massive sand storm which threatens to damage the rocket which should return them to their space craft. Missing and presumed dead after he is struck by debris he is left on Mars.

So in much the same condition as glass he is left in an alien landscape wounded and abandoned. Perhaps if the directors of The Revenant were in charge we'd have seen Watney undertake a mammoth effort to reap revenge against the crew who left him behind, or later against NASA who didn't reveal his survival to the rest of his crew for several months. But no we see in him the qualities that the real Hugh Glass must have had, of tenacity and of an application of knowledge which would ultimately lead to survival. This is why we will always need bushcraft skills, even when or if people do travel to Mars and beyond. The key skills of survival, being able to adapt, improvise and overcome, is fantastically demonstrated here as Watney makes water with the hydrogen from rocket engines, fertilises martian soil with human waste and grows potatoes inside his artificial habitat. He undertakes a massive journey in a rover vehicle heated to protect him from the freezing martian nights by a 'big box of plutonium' a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. He doesn't have to crawl, treat himself with maggots or fight wolves for discarded buffalo meat  but he does complete a journey against the odds, with incredible determination and perseverance. In fact all the qualities that Glass demonstrated in real life.

Yes I know that The Martian isn't a true story, but after all the changes neither is The Revenant, and I also accept that the true story of Glass is probably not fully known due to poor records and the Mountain Man penchant for telling 'tall tales' but the fact remains that he survived a horrific ordeal through determination and skill, something not depicted in The Revenant, instead it seems that Mark Watney was channelling Hugh Glass while I half expected Decaprio to come out with "I am Hugh Glass, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife and I will have my vengence" a'la General Maximus in Gladiator.

That's why The Martian is  better survival movie than The Revenant. 

Why It's OK to be bad at Bushcraft

Practising bushcraft can be wonderfully empowering for children and having a chance to use 'grown up' tools and make fires like a 'grownup' can give children a real sense of achievement and build confidence.  But we shouldn't expect children to be able to replicate the skills that we try and teach them straight away.

Friction fire, fine carving, tanning skins and trapping are all part of Bushcraft but children need to start somewhere and perhaps just playing with saw dust is a good place to start. 

Just taking part in bushcraft activities will be beneficial, and developmental and although I have

said in the past that bushcraft can be more than just fun, for children it doesn't have to be. It would be very easy to scare a child off bushcraft if we are too insistent that they produce results, work hard and do things the 'right way'. 

I have had cause for disappointment a few times of over the last few years by some opinions I've heard, particularly in a survey I carried out a while ago, that described programmes of nature engagement, such as Forest Schools, as 'namby pamby'. Perhaps because it's not 'hard core' enough, or because the skills taught aren't advanced enough, but where do you start with children?

A Sami Family in Norway in 1900; (public domain).
Even though the children pictured here would have had very different experiences from your average child in the UK today, even these children would not have been expected to carry out the tasks that adults performed. Like the Huron (Wyandot) mocasins pictured below, children wouldnt be expected to produce work like this strait away although they might begin to learn young and have been able to to play at these skills from an early age. 

By Daderot (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

 We need to understand that children can't do everything we adults can do and adjust our expectations and approach to teaching them accordingly. Even real hunter gatherer societies and First Nation peoples, who still practice primitive or traditional skills have to start somewhere with their children and that isn't by expecting them to bring down large or dangerous game before they are able, or expecting them produce exquisite craft items before they have the strength, skill or knowledge.

Think of the bushmen whose children start making bows at a very young age or the Yanomamo Indians of South America whose children make tiny bows with sharpened slivers of bamboo as 

arrows. They are not expected to feed the entire village, they are expected to play and learn, perhaps 

quicker than in a westernised society, but they are not expected to function as an adult straight away.

Yanomami Woman & Child

By Cmacauley [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

We need to be careful that we are teaching our children bushcraft and allowing them to experience nature and giving them chances to play at bushcraft and develop a healthy relationship with the natural environment. We should not be training them for an impending apocalypse, attack by zombies or SAS selection. 

I'm not criticising those whose practice of bushcraft has a 'survival' orientation at all what I'm suggesting is that when dealing with young children we should be 'playing' bushcraft rather than 'training' bushcraft, and children don't have to be good at bushcraft to be able to play at it.

Bushcraft doesn't just have to be about the acquisition of skills and the ability to survival in any situation, the Scandinavian philosophy of 'Friluftsliv' typifies this: While most Scandinavians have a much closer relationship with the outdoors than we do in the UK and are probably as a result of this much more practised in the skills of outdoor living than most people in the UK, the idea of the ‘Friluftsliv’ culture and philosophy is not one of technical skill, expertise or mastery, but one of a relationship with nature and positive experiences in natural environments. This is what we can provide for our children through bushcraft.

I feel particularly strongly about this at the moment because I think I have put my son Michael off bushcraft a bit recently by making it too much about getting things done rather than having fun. I work a lot out of doors and a lot of my opportunities to practice bushcraft with the children have been when they accompany me to Riddy Wood while I get some coppicing done, mill ash planks, burn charcoal, split firewood or build outdoor classrooms. So Michael, who is six, has spent a lot of time stacking, bagging and sorting firewood, making dead wood habitat piles and feeding the fire. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but when we spoke about going to the woods during half term the other day he wasn't as keen as he normally would be and said he didn’t want to stack wood, he wanted to play. So in a few weeks we are off to the woods together to build a 'yoda hut' and play. 

Bushcraft isn't all about skills it's about playing in the woods, being bad at things and getting better, 

learning and enjoying nature, and every child should have a chance at it.

Geoff

What is Bushcraft?

I want to announce the publication of the first of our new 'Bushcraft Basics' pages on the BushcraftEducation blog and share the content of the first page here.                     I originally started this blog to share ideas of how to use bushcraft in education to enhance learning for students and to share ideas of how teachers can engage learners with the countryside and the natural world through bushcraft activities.                       Over the next few months we will gradually publish more 'Bushcraft Basics' pages on topics such as fire, tools, shelter and water to name just a few and they will all be available here. This 'What is Bushcraft' page is already available. 

Cooking out in the woods is just a small
part of bushcraft.

Bushcraft is almost impossible to define in just a few words, it's such a broad topic and is open to so much individual interpretation. But I like to sum it up by saying;

"Bushcraft is a collection of skills which make subsisting in the natural environment without modern conveniences possible and sustainable"

Ray Mears offers a brief definition in his 2002 book 'Bushcraft' and says that it's a topic which includes botany, zoology, hand crafts and outdoor leadership but trying to give a list of 'bushcraft skills' just as difficult as trying to offer a simple definition and can be very controversial. 

For example I don't think anyone would argue that gathering food from the wild should be considered part of bushcraft but a couple of years ago I carried out a simple survey to determine the level of interest from bushcrafters in the UK in using firearms as part of their bushcraft practice, bearing in mind that to take a deer from the wild to eat it, use it's skin for making clothing, sinews for cordage, bones for tools (all part of bushcraft?) your only legal option in the UK is to use a rifle of the appropriate calibre (we write a lot about deer on this blog, if you're interested check out some past posts here). I was really surprised to find that a lot of people who responded to my questionnaire, not a huge number in the grand scheme of things but a large enough proportion to cause me some confusion, felt that firearms had no place in bushcraft. Now I can understand that using firearms is not to everyone's taste or within everyone's comfort zone but to declare that their use is not part of bushcraft seems a bit odd. Especially as everyone would agree that gathering wild food is 'bushcraft.

  

Now I'm not trying to say that your practice of bushcraft is incomplete if you don't use firearms, what I'm trying to illustrate is that 'bushcraft' is different things to different people and I cant really do any more than offer you some examples of skills I regularly use which I believe are part of 'bushcraft', And because bushcraft is largely practised now as a recreational past time rather than relied on for day to day survival and subsistence it can be exactly what you want it to be. 

I will offer some examples of skills I use regularly which I would consider part of my practice of bushcraft, they include;

Fire Craft

Knife and tool use and hand crafts

Trapping

Tracking

Hunting

Wild Food

These are just a few examples of skills that I associate with bushcraft but beyond that the beauty of recreational bushcraft is that you can make it exactly what you want it to be and take it to as advanced a level as you are comfortable with. Yes there are many professions which apply bushcraft skills to their work and we have run a whole series of posts on these skills which we are constantly adding to and you can find here but...

..if 'backgarden bushcrafting'; Building dens, lighting fires and doing simple work with knives and tools with with your children is as far as you want to go you are still a 'bushcrafter', if you want to go on long distance expeditions with modern, light weight equipment but use your bushcraft skills to prolong your expedition that's fine too, if you want to live off the land with nothing but a flint knife and some buckskin clothes you are still a 'bushcrafter' if that's what you want to call yourself.  

Stop Reading This Blog NOW!!

As Richard and I both have backgrounds in the so called 'land-based' sector, he in conservation and ecology, and I in game and wildlife management we often use words, and you will have seen them on this blog, like habitat and environment. Depending on a plant or animal species habitat preferences it may be given a specific name, Riparian species for example;

Riparian species inhabit, surprise, surprise, the riparian zone; that is an area where land and river or streams meet. Those species might include 'hydrophilic' water loving species such as Alder and Willow for the trees, wading birds, beaver, amphibians and just as they have their particular niche even within their general habitat so do I. 

This picture was taken from just outside the Warren Street Underground station in London and  this is not my natural habitat, I have never been keen on cities, or towns and built up areas like this do make me very uncomfortable if I have to be there for any length of time. I live a 'bushcentric' life being outdoors, in the 'bush' to use the Australian term is my niche habitat. Yes I live in a house and drive a car and have a mobile phone and my job often involves paper work, but I am outside every day, I teach outside, I forage for food outside, I feed my pheasants, stalk deer, coppice, split firewood and burn charcoal, all outside.

This is my Natural Habitat;

Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand, I spen two nights camped at the bottom of this beautiful mountain listening to the nocturnal activities of Kiwi's (the bird, not the fruit or the people!). 

The view from the top of Mt. Sabestapol in New Zealands Southern Alps. the largest mountain in this picture is Mt Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. On my way to the top I saw this amazing bird;

This is a Kea, once shot as a pest by sheep farmers due to it's inquisitive nature and habit of eating carrion and pestering lambs, I watched this bird for a long time from no more than ten or fifteen feet away while resting on the way to the Mueller Hut on the Sealy Range in New Zealand, it was craning it's neck at all sorts of strange angles to try and drink out of a small crevice in this rock.  

A panoramic view looking back up at the mountain I had just descended near Trento in Northern Italy. 

  

Riddy Wood in spring as the first of the bluebells start to flower.  

These pictures sum up what my natural habitat is, as long as I'm outside amongst nature I am happy and I'm sure most of those of you who read this blog and practice bushcraft and other outdoor activities feel the same way. I live a 'bushcentric' life, you should try it too don't live your outdoor life through nature documentaries, you tube clips, books or the internet, that means you should stop reading this blog NOW, and go outdoors. You don't have to travel across the globe to have a life that is close to nature or 'bushcentric' you won't see any bird more beautiful anywhere in the world than our kingfisher, nor a predator more efficient than the stoat or weasel, the fungi taste as good here as in Eastern Europe, the deer leave tracks to follow here just the same as the elk do in yellowstone park. 

Wherever you live there are experiences to be had that will bring you closer to nature, take advantage of them. 

Geoff

Applied Bushcraft: Mental GIS

Today the ‘applied’ element of this post is a bit… abstract? I am attempting to illustrate what has been a pretty clear concept in my mind… but my mind can be a cluttered place so I’m not sure how successful this will be.

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The human brain is an incredible tool: consider the rapid advances in technology we have seen in recent decades and indeed over the last few millennia at a slower pace. All that innovation and ingenuity has originated in the head of just one person or a team of people synthesising their ideas - it is, in the true sense of the word, awesome to consider just what we (as in humans) are capable of and have achieved! Many innovations aim to increase mankind’s natural abilities by reducing the effort required to complete tasks, increase our output or efficiency or limit the risk of human error through increased memory (data storage) or a level of mechanical consistency simply not replicable by human-kind.

It is one such (admittedly incredible powerful and useful) innovation which I have been thinking about for some time in relation to the practice of ‘bushcraft’ activities. GIS (or Geographic Information Systems in non-abbreviated form) are complex computer systems which allow data to be linked with spatial information (i.e. a map) and cross referenced with other data to examine, analyse, display and report patterns or potentials. They are widely used by a range of companies from petro-chemical companies, through utility companies and commercial agriculture and forestry operations, to nature conservation charities and a wide variety of scientific research… the list is quite literally endless. In essence almost every professional need for information tied to a location (again, a map) will be met by a GIS of some sort.

An example of a GIS output - I produced this as part of an assignment while
studying for an MSc in Ecology & Conservation. It was based upon a
hypothetical farm trying to determine habitat suitability for Yellowhammers
(Emberiza citrinella).  Based on 6 habitat variables, all measured and spatially
aligned to the base map, a formulae automatically complied all the variables
for a given boundary and calculated the probability of Yellowhammers setting
 up territory in or along that boundary which is what  this output illustrates. The
GIS further allowed improvements to be calculated for different habitat
management  options, in a real world situation potentially guiding or
determining habitat management plans and allowing often restricted funds
for conservation to be effectively prioritised. 

BUT!!... to me these systems are based on how we as humans view the world around us - inspired by mankind’s instinctive and inbuilt ability to blend spatial data with knowledge to use their environment for their own benefit and survival. Allow me to explain my thinking, I hope it makes sense. I promise there is a bushcraft theme if you stick with it. In order to understand my train of thought you need to understand that GIS’s typically work on a layer system with all added data forming a ‘layer’ along with similar data overlaid and aligned to a base layer - a map. This data can then be analysed, cross referenced or compared to data in other layers to show trends or conflicts or whatever else may present itself, which could not be done in isolation.

Every one of us, whether we have considered it or not, has a mental map of areas they use regularly - a base layer if you will.

This will be overlayed (again, subconsciously) with a variety of information ranging from mundane trivia such as the location of the local shops, your child's school (or of course your school if you are one of our younger readers) or your parents home to complex and intricate knowledge based on individuals own specialisms and experiences. We will be aware of where we can access food (shops), find shelter (home), acquire necessary resources to achieve necessary tasks (garden centre / builders merchants / office supplier / bank etc) and much much more.

We could add detail to this hypothetical ‘mental map’ or, now that we have some layers of spatially aligned data, a ‘mental GIS’ ad infinitum based on different people’s use of and knowledge of their environment: but this obviously needs a bushcraft theme and so I shall endeavour to make my ramblings relevant.

Back in the days where humans survived hand-to-mouth as hunter gatherers this ‘mental mapping’ would have enabled them to re-locate (I will expand on why this emphasis on relocation is significant shortly) reliable or safe sources of food or water, or good places to shelter during inclement weather. Simply knowing where something is though is only half the story - some additional ‘layers’ of information are required to make the best possible use of this information.

Knowing where an Apple tree is does you no good if you go to pick apples in March, why? Because they are not ripe, in fact they may not even have flowered yet! Knowing which river Salmon use to spawn does you no good if you go in January, because they are still out at sea. Going to a wetland area to collect duck eggs in October will be equally unfruitful because they will all have hatched and fledged months before. And on and on.

Once a source of food, but only if you get there at the right time of year - a seabird
colony on Anglesey. Now a nature reserve - but you still have to get there at the
right time of year to see the spectacle. Arrive in January and you'll be lonely!
(Photo taken by author).

With almost all plant food sources being seasonal to at least some extent, a deep understanding of seasonal changes and prime harvest period would have been critical to a successful harvest and ultimately survival. Survival does not come from a single crop though; survival depends upon a steady supply. Late summer and autumn are easy times to find wild plant food in the shape of nuts, berries, fruits, seed heads and so on - even the most uninitiated would struggle not to find something to eat at this time of year. But what about in February? or March? Yes the green shoots are starting to make themselves seen by March certainly, but what of something to eat!? That is when a knowledge of what food could be stored comes in useful, because you will need to set aside enough of it to get you through the period of dearth.

Remembering the right place to go becomes a more impressive feat when it has to be linked with the knowledge to look for the right plant and at the right time of year. Without these additional ‘layers’ of knowledge (seasonal changes, nourishment value, storage suitability, botanical identification) survival would have become difficult if not impossible.

Much the same could be said for meat harvesting, except of course the animals are not rooted to the spot so remembering a location becomes a far more general affair. Further layers of knowledge are required to streamline the hunting process - tracking, animal behaviour and habits. Where is the herd of deer likely to shelter / feed / give birth given the conditions? Where will the highest concentration of waterbird nests* be based on the vegetation conditions or water levels at the time? What time of year will they nest? Where is a good place to set a snare for ground game? In the middle of a field? Or in one of many runways through dense brush?

Spot the deer above. Presented with this view where would you look first for the deer? It
would depend on the time of year, as it happens they most often lie up during the day
under the trees to the left in the middle distance, and if you look really carefully you can
see a few on their way out to feed in the open in the shadow.
(Photo taken by author on Cannock Chase)

You get the idea that I am trying to illustrate I hope. That simply remembering a location in and of itself is (or rather would have been) insufficient to hunter gatherers, and therefore largely to us in our practice of bushcraft (well, foraging and hunting at least).

Before I wrap this up, and at the risk of going on for far too long, we have the issue of initially locating these resources. This can of course happen by chance, and there is nothing wrong with that, it just takes time. By adding additional layers of knowledge, or deepening the layers of knowledge we have already mentioned, the finding process becomes more efficient, which to a hunter gatherer would have been everything! On a sarcastically basic level, what I mean is if you are searching for a fish, you know not to look in a tree, or if hoping for apples, you wouldn’t start by digging. At a more realistic level this means knowing which sort of habitats are likely to hold certain plants or animals. This means that rather than walking aimlessly through the landscape you can head purposefully towards an end goal. That could be a wetland area for sedge seeds, a particular deep, shady meander on a river for resting fish (which you are going to find in the middle reaches of a river's course, not right up in the head waters nor on the coastal plain where it is turning into an estuary) and on the examples could go indefinitely.

I hope this concept has come across as clearly as I visualised it… but I suspect not. As in a digitised GIS the more layers of data added (or knowledge we acquire) the more precise and varied the range of useful information which can be gleaned from the system. Our modern day bushcraft application (I got it in!!) for this concept of layered knowledge is largely the same as it would have been for our ancestors, albeit in a environment altered beyond the recognition of Mesolithic man. Of course our relevant knowledge and experience isn’t neatly compartmentalised as I have described for the sake of this analogy. It is very dynamic, with new knowledge being added through current experiences and practice, and other knowledge fading with time through lack of application. However I believe the point stands - perhaps the best tool we can carry into the field with us is in fact a computer system - the GIS we all carry in our heads.

Richard

* NB - I have referred to knowledge regarding the nesting season of waterbirds with the intention of collecting eggs as a food source. I wish to make it clear that this needs to be taken in the context written, i.e. a food source of mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities. The collection of wild birds eggs for any purpose is now quite rightly prohibited by law (Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 - Section 1) in the UK and these comments do not in anyway infer that it is or should be permissible.