Trip Journals

I wrote up the following journal during a weeklong bushcraft course I taught during the summer of 1999.  Although it’s been on our site, it’s never been published here.  Going through it has been a lot of fun for me.  Hopefully you’ll feel the same after reading it.

——————————————————————–

The purpose of the Basic Wilderness Skills class is to take a person with limited experience in fending for themselves in the outdoors and introduce them to techniques that will lead them on the path toward self-sufficiency. This article will attempt to give the reader insight into some of what takes place by reviewing events from a recent class.

The first day began with a demonstration of the making of a fire by friction bow drill set and its use, followed by the students making a set of their own. Two of the students, who had previously worked with the bow-drill, were soon cranking out coals with their newly made sets. The third student, a woman who had no experience with the bow drill, took another day and a half to get her first fire, which is still rather fast. As an instructor, this was especially gratifying because she had spoken with me before the class about occasional bouts of low energy. It was a testament to her determination that she succeeded in making her first friction fire in such a short time.

On the second day of class we wandered around the farm, discussing the different types of natural shelters the landscape had given us to analyze. We spent several hours examining the various shelters built by the apprentices, and critiqued them according to the scientific principles of energy transfer. In the afternoon, we constructed both an insulated A-frame and a dome as a group despite the oppressive heat. Upon completion of the shelter projects, we took a walk in the woods to identify plants, tracks, and whatever else revealed itself to us. It was not the first such walk the class had taken, nor would it be the last, but it was definitely the most memorable. We meandered through the forest examining all sorts of interesting stuff, and soon came to the edge of a field. We walked out into the field a short distance, examining the differences between the woodland flora and that which grew in the open field. One of the students then pointed out a Screech owl sitting about forty feet above the ground on a branch. We all stopped and looked at it. It returned our gaze, and soon leapt into the air and flew off into the forest. When we looked more closely at the branch, we noticed that there was another owl still on the branch. We made our way back into the woods until we were almost directly under the owl, where we had a great view of it. While we stared at it, it stared at us. I wondered who was more curious, the owl or us?

After about fifteen minutes, the owl flew off in the opposite direction its partner had flown. We continued on our way, walking down a mossy slope to a small creek that ran through the forest. On the bank of the creek the recent activity of the area was there for us to see in the form of tracks in the wet earth. A mother raccoon had brought her three babies to the water’s edge, showing them how to gather food from the creek. The youngsters had followed closely behind their mother, and had been well behaved while mom showed them how to catch dinner. Although we only saw their tracks, we knew that it had happened this way because the three sets of tiny prints showed no signs of playing or running around; they came to the edge of the creek, stopped to watch, then followed their mother away when the lesson was over. In addition to the raccoon tracks, we saw where two different deer had come up to the creek, drank, then crossed and continued on their way.

We left the creek behind and traveled up the mossy slope. At the top we stopped in a small clearing. One of the students leaned against a dead White Pine tree. Then we all heard a “WHOOSH” and saw a blur of brown fly past us. The owl we were watching earlier had been sitting in this dead tree, but none of us had noticed it. It had left its perch, descended to gather speed, then flown off into the forest, flying just a few feet over the head of one of the students. That student held up his arm for the rest of us to see, with a smile breaking across his face. His arm was spotted with owl scat. The owl had defecated as it had flown over him, leaving its calling card on his arm. I thought to myself that there aren’t many places where something like this brings a smile to the face of the person who had been marked in such a manner.

The third day was slated for a morning tracking workshop. When I awoke to another day of intense heat, I decided to slightly alter the plans for the morning, choosing to move the tracking workshop to a nearby beach where we could utilize the ideal tracking medium of wet sand and enjoy the cool waters of the Gulf of Maine as well. After a discussion and demonstration of tracking basics, gait patterns, etc., we broke up into teams and played a tracking game. The game consisted of one team making tracks while the other teams turned their backs. Then the other teams had to determine what had happened by studying the tracks. We did such things as walking backwards, hopping on one foot, changing speeds, and more to try to confuse the other teams. Everyone enjoyed the playful atmosphere of the lesson, and it was especially nice to be in the cool ocean breeze. The remainder of the afternoon was spent working on cordage and fire.

The next morning we were up early and on the road, heading for the primitive camp located an hour north in the mountains. The hike in took us a bit over an hour and a half. We made numerous stops to point out plants, tracks, and other things of interest to the forest-dweller. After the hike up the side of the mountain, the stream felt wonderful as it cooled us from inside and out. We stowed our gear, then began gathering materials for a friction fire. I explained to the students that since we had been working on fire for the previous three days, I would only act in the capacity of a participant, not an instructor. Thus, I would do whatever they told me, including spinning the drill to the best of my ability, but they would have to tell me what to do; they would have to be the decision makers. We had passed some goldenrod stalks in a nearby clearing, which we went off to examine at the insistence of the students. They were a bit narrow in diameter, but they had some potential. As we were sitting in the small clearing, storm clouds were both building and blowing over the mountain. We felt the impending rain, and made our way back to the campsite. After setting up a tarp to shield us from the worst of the weather, I went about gathering leaf-litter for my bed as I had no blanket or sleeping bag. After I gathered significant pile, the students caught on and began to do likewise. It was not as critical for them, though, as two had brought sleeping bags and one brought a blanket. It wasn’t long before the rain clouds began drop their burden upon the land, soaking the forest floor and eliminating the possibility of gathering any more dry leaves. As we sat under the tarp, I talked about how the rain was great teacher, discussing again the methods of energy transfer and finishing with why it was advantageous for us to remain under cover and conserve our energy rather than go about in the rain, getting wet and eventually cold from wet clothes.. We spent the evening enjoying each other’s conpany, and playing a game in which we tried to identify wild edibles based on their verbal description.

Morning came early after a night of rain. We had all fared well, except for the young man who had slept with a blanket; he complained of being cold and not getting much sleep.  Since we hadn’t had a fire the night before, the students were motivated to have a fire this morning, both for warmth and to cook a bannock I had brought. We set out for a nearby stand of cedar trees in order to gather fireboards and whatever else the forest had to offer us. Along the way, we identified some burdock stalks that would make good hand drill stalks. We planned on stopping and getting them on the way back, which we later did.

When we reached the stand of cedar trees, we gathered a bunch of dead, dry, lower branches for fireboards. Scraping the outer layers told us that the rain the night before had only given them a superficial wetting,. While among the cedars, we spotted several large pieces of Inonotus Obliquus, the true tinder fungus that grows on birch trees. It is reputed to grow on Aspen trees as well, but I have never witnessed this first hand. We gathered the fungus, and soon came upon a small swampy area full of cattails. Feeling the pangs of hunger, we harvested several cattails and ate the female flower heads, which were enjoyed by all. We searched for a good hand drill stalk among the cattails, but couldn’t find one that felt like it wanted to make fire.

The walk back to camp took us past several large white birch trees. We decided that we’d come back to those trees for a lesson on birch bark basketry. When we arrived back at camp, the two who had gone with me on the morning expedition lay down for a bit, relaxing and practicing the survival rule of conservation of energy. While they enjoyed their survival siesta, the other student and I gathered material for a fire and had a lively discussion on cooking in the bush.

Before long, the two nappers were up and helping prepare for a fire. Someone  started spinning a recently gathered goldenrod hand drill on a cedar fireboard.

Soon we had a comfortable fire going. The students had utilized the proper method of building a fire with damp materials, concentrating on maximizing the surface area of a given volume of fuel, and keeping the fire supplied with a sufficient amount of fuel. I mixed up the ingredients for the bannock, and we relaxed while the bannock baked. When the bannock was done, we helped ourselves to large portions of it, quelling our hunger. I was reminded of the old adage that there is no sauce like hunger to make food taste great. After another hour spent in and around camp, we packed up and headed back to the truck.

On our way out, we stopped and harvested some birch bark to make baskets with later. I was careful to instruct the students the correct method for gathering the bark, in order to minimize injury to the tree.

When we arrived back at the farm, we went off for a while to gather the remaining materials needed to complete our birch bark baskets; a bendable green stick for the rim, and spruce root for lashing. In short order we all had our materials, and before long everyone had finished their baskets.

The last day of class started with a tracking scenario, where the students used tire tracks, footprints, and other clues to determine what had happened at a certain spot. Using this process of inductive reasoning they examined each of the clues, collectively forming a general picture of the situation. Eventually they were able, as a group, to follow the clues to the vehicle that made the tracks, accumulating large amounts of information about the driver in the process. They were fascinated by their own abilities, unaware that they could learn so much from a few small marks in the ground. After the tracking scenario, we finished up the birch bark baskets, made a rope winch and completed an exercise on knife sharpening. After a short closing talk, the class ended and the students went their separate ways. It had been a good week, full of learning, practicing, and fun. As anyone who teaches in any capacity will agree, I learned as much from the students as they learned from me.

Lining up a small stream in the headwaters of the Aroostook River.

It was a funny spring weather-wise.  At the end of the first week in May there was already very low water in all the rivers of northern Maine.  We had just enough water to paddle the St. John River.  By the time we had covered the 113 miles from Baker Lake to Dickey, the water had dropped significantly.  I’ve never seen Big Rapids, the last few miles of the trip, so low.  There was a whole ledge at the Big Black Rapids that I’ve never seen before since it’s always been covered by a foot of water.  As you can imagine, the low water made things more challenging.

Then there were the headwinds.  We had great weather for the trip, but there was a headwind that sometimes blew me back up the river.  On one day it was so strong that I couldn’t descend a rapid.  The wind kept me stationary.  My solution was to kneel in the bow of the boat and paddle downstream.  I was paddling an 18 foot boat solo, so it must have looked quite odd to see me descending a rapid in such a manner.  I’ve never had to do it before, and hopefully never will again.

But somehow we found enough water to have several great trips.  The low water just meant our second trip was a poling, not a paddling trip.  We changed our location and went on the headwater streams of the upper Aroostook River.  The day we put in the water was really low, but overnight rains gave us just enough water to navigate with a pole.

We finished the trip and the course with a burger at the Masardis Trading Post.  If you’re ever passing through Masardis, stop in for a bite.  Great food and great people.

Sunday, February 4th, 2001

Woke up on my bed of fir boughs surrounded by other sleeping bodies. There are seven of us lying in a circle inside the round white tent. The only part of the tent floor not covered with prone bodies is the area next to the door and the small rectangular woodstove. The stove sits on spruce log runners on the frozen ground two and a half feet below our bed level. We sleep on a ten-inch mattress of fir boughs that rest on two feet of packed snow. It is zero degrees outside now, but well above freezing in the tent. Ray, who was lying to my right, gets up and stokes the stove. The fire comes to life and the heat soon requires us to get out of our sleeping bags.

Tim fills the coffee pot with water and fresh grounds. Adam measures water and seven grain cereal into a two-gallon stainless steel pot and sets it on the stove near the coffee. Others are sitting up, pulling on long underwear, pants, and shirts. Big Tom asks Ray questions about teaching heightened awareness to students. Their conversation soon becomes a group discussion that continues on into breakfast. After breakfast I do the dishes in a large black pot filled with hot water and a little homemade soap. The discussion has evolved to an exchange of information about knot tying. To illustrate the knots we take turns tying various knots onto the fir center pole of our tent with lengths of quarter inch nylon cordage. This morning’s knots are the prusik, the tautline hitch, and the clove hitch. We ask Ray to show us the puckering stitch for sewing moccasins. As the leather is passed around and each of us sews a number of puckers, he describes the basic pattern he uses for summer moccasins. While Tim is sewing a pucker Adam shows me how the thumb is cut out and sewn in his large homemade leather mittens. Today is a slow day, and despite the beckoning sun outside, we linger in the warmth of the stove, demonstrating various skills, and discussing the ways native peoples in this area lived comfortably in the woods.

By noontime I feel the need to go out for a wander. I put on a couple of sweaters, lace up my mukluks, and push through the flap that serves as the tent door. I slide into my snowshoes, grab my axe from the limb it is hanging on, and start walking north up the trail. At first the going is easy because I’m walking on snow neatly packed down from previous forays. I approach a hole in the snow about eight inches in diameter and a foot deep. There is a shallow trench that ends a foot and a half from the hole. At the end of the trench there is a tunnel under the snow to the hole. This is where yesterday morning a partridge had burst up out of the snow as I approached, madly beating the air with frantic wings while letting out that little squeaking noise partridges make when startled, until it had landed safely in the plumage of a spruce thirty feet away. It had spent the night sleeping in it’s cozy snow burrow, and when I approached too closely, it answered the alarm clock of my footfalls, and shot out of bed with a burst that would make any morning person envious. I can see gentle brush marks on the edges of the hole where its wing tips brushed the surface of the snow as it took off.

To the left and downhill from the trail a stone’s throw away is the flat white surface of Crosby Pond. The drinking water we dip from a hole cut in the ice is the color of weak lemonade. Thousands of years of leaves falling into the pond and steeping like a giant vat of tea, have added the coloration. Perfectly good to drink, water containing leaf tannins has been found to have some medicinal properties, just like some of the medicinal teas purchased in health food stores.

The trees grow thicker on both sides of me as I continue on, and in a short time the frozen pond is no longer visible. I walk on immaculate whiteness, trees on each side of me decorated with their burdens of snow. The thinner trees aren’t able to take the extra weight. They bend over planting their tips into the snow forming delicate archways. I tap the lowest arches with the back of my axehead to knock off their loads. If I happened to bump one of these glazed arches while passing underneath, Mother Nature throws a shovel full of snow on my head and shoulders. Deer, rabbits, and mice all have crossed the trail this morning.

About a mile from camp I come into a grove of maples that have been heavily chewed by a porcupine. I had already decided not to snare or kill any animals this trip because we have plenty of food with us. Upon seeing the chewed trees my first thought was of seeking out mister porcupine for a meal, but then I remember that we have plenty of food. There is a rough black growth on the side of a scaly yellow birch. Chaga. True Tinder Fungus. It is used to make a coffee-like beverage. Medicinally it has a variety of uses including that of a cancer remedy. It is also an excellent source of tinder for fire-making. Big Tom, who is from Ohio and teaches primitive skills there, has been looking for some chaga to take home. The birch has a lot of snow on it, but I don’t see how to avoid the inevitable. The tree’s long curved arms reach out too far to each side.

Using the back of my axehead I deliver a firm blow to the dark growth and feel it give a little. Quickly I hunch my shoulders and tuck my neck. A light powdering falls on my head and shoulders. When the snow settles I hit the chaga again and it falls off of the tree in a leathery lump the size of two large fists. I hunch my shoulders and tuck my neck again just as a small blizzard drops from the tree and envelopes my head and shoulders. A handful of fluffy frozen water does manage to slip past my collar and slide down the back of my neck. Because I am well warmed from my walking, the snow on my neck feels refreshing rather than cold and chilling.

Up a hill through a fir and spruce forest I emerge onto a ridge in a small clearcut grown over with striped maple saplings that have been heavily browsed by moose. Several hundred yards below mile-long Crosby Pond stretches from the south to north ending at the foot of Louise Mountain. The air is clear and the sun is still high in the southern sky. Towards the near shore of the pond is a small forested island with a boulder about the size of a beaver lodge on the south end. I can see a trail in the snow where an otter came across the far side of the pond and circled the rock, investigating it. Otters are intensely curious. Sometimes they will kill and eat immature beavers and take over their lodge.

I turn from the pond and begin walking again. With every step I am lifting my foot, mukluk, snowshoe, and several pounds of snow up high out of the old track, and sinking deeply into the new. Although it is a heavy workout, I am in a good rhythm moving steadily. I am starting to work up a sweat, so I stop every once in a while to cool down. My ears meet a chorus of deliriously happy chirping and peeping. A flock of small birds go over the trees from south to north and I lose them behind the dark green of a stand of firs. Looking up through the bare branches of a gray poplar I see blue with a few scattered clouds still moving slowly from west to east. I hear the birds again and they come shuttling back into view and land in the highest branches of the poplar. They are close enough for me to recognize them as chickadees. I should have guessed it. Chickadees shine with the bright warmth and anticipation of spring on any sunny winter day. This group is intoxicated by the growing strength of the sun, each striving to sing louder, sweeter, and faster than his neighbor, creating a rising anthem of sheer exuberance. All fatigue is pushed from my body and replaced with the joyful spirit of winter’s strongest little birds.

Our recent trip to northern Quebec was fantastic.  We had amazing weather, good company, great food, and more than enough laughter for our 8-days in the bush.  I had the good fortune to have Ben McNutt, Lisa Fenton, Matt Upson and Steven Hanton from Woodsmoke, a bushcraft and wilderness survival school in the UK, on the trip.  We had some great talks about the business and shared comedic anecdotes from courses over the years.  It was pretty amazing that we’ve come to many of the same conclusions about this business even though we’re on different sides of the Atlantic and operate in different ways.

We made the drive up in two days, spending the night near Quebec City.  When we arrived at David Bosum’s camp, we had a great dinner of moose and bannock, then fell into a restful sleep.  We awoke to unseasonably warm temperatures and rain, so we decided to spend the day exploring Ouje Bougoumou and Chibougoumou instead of snowshoe in the rain.  The following morning dawned crisp and cold, and we snowshoed the seven miles to our base camp.   David had built the camp the week prior, and it consisted of wall tents with interior frames made from peeled poles.  We feasted that first night in camp on Anna’s doughnuts and moose.

Our week was filled with a variety of traditional subsistence activities.  We cut, hauled and split firewood.  We set an 80 meter gill net under the lake ice.  We set snares for snowshoe hare and traps for beaver, lynx, and marten (and caught and skinned some of each).  We ate a variety of wild foods, including moose, fish (pike and walleye), lynx, canada goose and snowshoe hare.  We learned about the bush medicines of the Cree, and listened to David and Anna’s stories about the Cree history and legends.  And we did it all in a bush camp with an incredibly high level of comfort while the daytime temperatures stayed below zero F (-17 C) for most of the trip.

Eventually it was time to go so we said our good-bye’s and headed south once again.  Just before we left, David gave me a pair of Cree snowshoes.  They’re shown in the photo above, along with the skins of lynx, marten and beaver.