Old Camping Resources - Free Online Books

Now that my brain has been fired up and I am interested in reading again, I came across some cool camping resources on archive.org.

The following books are from the late 1800s and early 1900s. There are some fascinating images (see below) capturing interesting ways to build out items or in one case, how to hook up your dog to shoulder some of the load(!).

How To Live In The Woods





Hints for Camping and Walking. How To Camp Out.



Canoeing and Camping



The Book of Camping





Camp-Lore and Woodcraft



Alone in the Wilderness



Hope you got something interesting out of these!

Cheers,

Mungo

Jack London - "To Build a Fire"

So for some reason or another I have never read any of Jack London's stories. When my friend Arjuna found this out, he expressed great astonishment and chided me for this oversight. So I read 'To Build a Fire' late last night, and was very impressed and have decided to read every single Jack London story I can get my hands on...

Here is a summary of 'To Build a Fire' (from Wikipedia)

"This story is about a man on the Yukon Trail on a very cold day (-75°F, -60°C). His only traveling companion is a husky wolf-dog. The story describes the hardships the man is going through at starting a fire and trying to keep himself warm. The cold does not faze the man, a newcomer to the Yukon, who plans to meet his friends (who are referred to as boys) by six o'clock at an old junction. He walks along a creek trail, mindful of the dangerous, hidden springs, because getting wet feet on such a cold day is dangerous. The man continues on and, in an apparently safe spot, falls through the snow and gets wet up to his shins. He remembers an old-timer who had warned him that no man should travel in the Klondike alone when the temperature was less than fifty degrees below zero.

After having this accident, the man becomes scared and immediately starts a fire to dry his wet clothes. He foolishly starts the fire underneath a spruce tree, which is covered with snow, and keeps pulling twigs from it to feed the flames. The agitation eventually upsets the loaded boughs, which dump their weight of snow onto the fire and extinguish it. He then tries to start a new fire, aware that he is already going to lose a few toes from frostbite. He gathers twigs and grasses, then tries to light a match with his frozen, numbed fingers. He grabs all his matches and lights them all at once, then sets fire to a piece of bark. He starts the fire, but accidentally pokes it apart while trying to remove a piece of green moss. The man decides to kill the dog and to put his hands inside its warm body to restore his circulation. But due to the extreme cold, he cannot kill the dog because he is unable to pull out his knife, or even throttle the animal. He lets it go.

In a desperate attempt to keep himself warm, he starts to run, trying to let the exertion heat his body. However, he has no stamina, and soon he stops and sits down. He imagines his friends finding his dead body in the snow, then himself telling the old-timer that he was right: It was foolish to travel alone. A warmth covers him and he falls into a deep, deadly, relaxing sleep. The dog does not understand why the man is sitting in the snow and not making a fire to warm them. As night falls, the dog comes closer to him and smells death on the man. It trots away "in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers."

And here it is:

To Build a Fire

"DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice.

The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail—the main trail—that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon."

Read the rest of this in full and listen to it in audio format.

Also, have a free read of two other stories he wrote: The Call of the Wild and White Fang.

Who else has read this before? Let me know in your comments...

Cheers,

Mungo

Where Art Thou, Tarp? Goodbye Tent!

I went out into the backyard earlier this week on a quest to find my tarp. I have looked all over the house and in the shed and in my car and can't find my 10' x 10' silnylon guide tarp. I'm sure it is hiding somewhere that I haven't looked.


But when I stepped out into the backgarden, I surprised a Kite (or some kind of hawk) while it feasted upon a sparrow it had just caught.


It looked quite pleased with itself.


When I made a sudden movement, it flew away. I then poked around the shed, trying to find my tarp.


I've been thinking a lot about how I'll be using a tarp on my next camping trip, in lieu of using my 7 lb tent. I'll use a tarp as a groundsheet too, and seeing that I'm likely heading out in April or May, there won't be many bugs to worry about. The tarp will keep the rain and wind away from me, and a good wool blanket or two will keep me warm.




My last post - Tutorial: An Improved Tarp Tent Shelter Design for Bushcraft Camping and an earlier one, How to Make a Tarp Shelter - A Tutorial have information on how to put up a tarp in a couple of different configurations.

I figure that the latest version will be best for me - I am going to test it in my backyard using a cheap Canadian Tire tarpaulin just to get the configuration and measurements correct for the grommets etc...


SectionHiker.com reviews the Gossamer Gear Bug Canopy - perfect for setting up under a tarp in the event of mosquito or black flie swarms.

Have a look through some of the following tarp tent videos I found on YouTube and see if they give you any good ideas towards replacing your tent with a good tarp:

















Cheers,

Mungo

Tutorial: An Improved Tarp Tent Shelter Design for Bushcraft Camping

A couple of years ago I posted a simple way to make a shelter from a tarp using a single pole, and without having to tie it off to any trees or solid connection point above. This latter point is useful if you need to make a shelter on ground away from the woods, or for when you have limited cordage.


I read through (with difficulty) David Macpherson's Introduction to Tarp Shelters, but got flummoxed with all of the configurations shown. Then while browsing through BushcraftUK.com, I came across a thread about shelters that at first led me to Pablo's excellent blog posts about shelter, and then finally to NWWoodsman.com, which has a terrific article and video showing off how to set up this tarp tent (video shown at bottom of this post).


There are two improvements I see over my first tarp tent configuration. First of all, this is a closed shelter. The doors keep the warmth in and the wind out. Secondly, the ingenious simplicity of the pole configuration that holds the tarp up opens up and clears the entrance way, allowing for greater freedom entering and while within the shelter.


As I am unable to make it outside easily at the moment (our 8-week old baby commands our devoted attention), I have modelled this shelter.


I used a ceiling tile for the ground, kitchen cotton twine for rope, pins for tent stakes, a sheet of garbage bag plastic with the dimensions of 3 X 4 for the tarp, and 2 sticks cut from a piece of trim I found in the basement for the poles that by their very angle can remain free-standing and hold up the tarp.


All that is needed is some method to keep out mosquitoes (depending on local conditions and the season), and a groundsheet on to which I would place my camping mat and sleeping bag (or simply wool blankets).


Now I can transport 2 wool blankets, tarp, and a groundsheet all in a single roll - and without having to carry fibreglass poles, because I can cut a couple of poles using my axe from the woods.


This solution makes for a brilliant, weather-tight lightweight shelter for bushcraft camping.


Have a look at the Woodsman Tarp video, from Northwest Woodsman which provides some clear directions on how to set up this configuration of tarp:



Let me know about some of your experiences sleeping under a tarp as compared with a tent in the comments below.

Cheers,

Mungo

Bushcraft Hobo Wood Stove

While going for a walk in the woods, or a wander out in the bush - canoe camping, hiking or just plain picnicking - it is important to have with you some sort of stove. A campfire is ideal for when you are staying in place for a while, but a stove can be a quick, transportable, low-impact and temporary set up. Boiling water for food, for hygiene, for comfort and for a cup of tea is a important coping mechanism during a survival situation, and a worthwhile activity for when you are just plain out and about.


I read somewhere once that the first thing you should do if you are lost in the wilderness is to sit down and make a cup of tea. You see, making a cup of tea allows the survivor to engage in several useful and meaningful activities. To start with, sitting down prevents you from continuing to move through the woods without knowing where you are. This will increase the likelihood of being found. Next, gathering water is obviously important for survival, as is making a fire. But I think the most (non life-essential) aspect of making a cup of tea is that of focusing a lost survivor onto a simple, confidence-building set of tasks, and providing the comfort and relaxation that is needed in a crisis situation. Obviously without a tea bag, you can use anything from willow shoots to Ephedra to Spruce or pine needle tea.


I have used various fuels to power my stoves - most recently methyl hydrate (methyl alcohol), to white gas (naptha fuel), to propane, to wood. There are different reasons to use all of the fuels.


Propane: Reliable, but doesn't work well at sub-freezing temperatures. Very cold winter weather will cause the pressure within the heavy cylinders to drop, and result in a low gas output and subsequent low temperature flame. The upside to it is that for long camp stays, the cost is relatively low, so it is an economical fuel.


Naphtha: Great in cold temperatures, heat output is reliably constant. You don't have to worry about non-refillable containers as with propane. You do need specialized equipment to burn it, and you need to pump the cannister to maintain pressure. This isn't a big deal generally. It is quite smelly if it leaks in your knapsack though.


Methyl Alcohol: Universally available, it is easy to transport in a regular plastic bottle. You can burn it in a variety of stoves, some which can be made simply with a can of Coke. The flame isn't particularly hot, as compared to the other fuels however.


Wood: You can find this practically anywhere you camp. It is sooty and messy to burn, compared with the other refined fuels above. Not having to transport it is a plus.


Inspired by Wayland's wood hobo stove, by Pablo's Bushbuddy stove review, and by various forum threads, I decided to make my own hobo stove. Made primarily for wood, I can also place an alcohol stove in the container for a source of heat.


I started with a stainless steel cutlery drainer bought from IKEA for $4.00. Combined with a pair of steel tent stakes, bent slightly with pliers and trimmed short with tin-snips, I had the makings of my hobo stove.


Using a felt-tip pen, I drew a door on the stove where I would fuel it with small sticks, pine cones and organic matter. I used my new Dremel tool to cut out the door with a shower of sparks. I like my new Dremel tool.


The tent stakes are pushed through the top to act as a pot support. I put an empty can which can be used to boil water, or cook food into the stove. The stove itself fits nicely into my kettle, and the kettle slides nicely into my cooking pot.


All that remains is for me to cut the leg off of a pair of old pants, sew up on end, and run a cotton drawstring through holes around the top to make a bag that will keep the sooty pot from messing up my other gear while in transport.


And all you need to do after burning the wood is shake out the ashes once it has all cooled. I haven't used it yet, but expect to have a few test fires out in the backyard soon.


Cheers,

Mungo

The Warming Weather - The Sun and the Snow

The past few weeks have been really cold here in Toronto.


Monty has been relegated to running out for a pee, performing a rushed perimeter reconnaisance of the property, and running back inside... his paws get cold.


He likes to lay down on his day bed by the back window and watch the birds and the squirrels eat their food from the feeders. After a while he'll stick his head under Tigger his toy and have a sleep.


With our new baby James in the house, it has been a pretty busy schedule. In the few quiet moments, I have been staying inside and cooking stews and roasting hams in lieu of wandering the great outdoors.


But today the cold has broken, if only temporarily. It is a couple of degrees above freezing, and the sun is burning down bright and hot. Monty and I walked around the back garden - me blazing trails in the deep and softening snow, and him following haltingly but happily behind.


When I left him alone, he chose a nice spot in the snow to sit down and soak in the sun.

Hope you are enjoying the winter in the great outdoors, or at least dreaming of being in the outdoors...

Cheers,

Mungo

Bushcraft, Outdoors, Camping, Wilderness Links - To Be Read In Front Of A Fire

This wonderful cold weather is keeping most of us inside. We don't have a fireplace, but if we did, I would curl up with a laptop in front of the fire and read.

If you have a fireplace and a laptop, here are a few reading suggestions that you might find interesting:

Mocotaugan: The Story and Art of the Crooked Knife.

This artifact, often called a “crooked knife,” is anthropologically important, intriguing, and often beautiful. Yet the significance and merit of the knife is little known today outside of a small circle of anthropologists, collectors, curators, and native American craftsmen. Mocotaugan traces the history of the knife from its Stone Age origin to the present; and examines in unprecedented depth the art of that essential artifact. The publication and distribution of Mocotaugan is a non-profit effort to make the exceptional nature of this knife better known to as wide and diverse an audience as reasonably possible. To that end, the entire printed book is available for downloading in PDF form on this web site, on the condition that all use of text and images be properly credited.

From BushcraftLiving.com, a downloadable PDF pamphlet by Anthony S. Emery on the traditional craft of net making.

Learn how to make baskets out of natural cordage and materials at Basket-Making.com. Useful for if you are beginning to feel a little neurotic from work, etc...

Now that minus 30 degree weather is upon us, here is a timely article - The Big Chill: A quick guide on hypothermia and how to treat it.

Stop reading for a little bit and watch Michel Blomgren's 'Survivor' videos - amazing stuff.

Ashley of Natural Bushcraft UK has a terrific review of 4 simple and fundamental stoves for the outdoors. Browse through his site... very nice.

Jon Ridgeon has some well-photographed bushcraft tutorials - well worth reading and looking through. This guy does some very high quality bushcrafting.

Back to videos again. Dave Cantebury of Wilderness Outfitters Archery has a ton of great videos on this YouTube channel. A must see.

Northwest Journal has a set of great articles all about the fur trade, and the life of voyageurs in North America.

Wilderness Way Magazine has some back-issues partially available on the web - you will want to read each one of them.

A quick read of an article on Primitive Ways will teach you about "Indian Bow Making and the Secrets of Sinew Revealed". It will make you want to go to your local butchers and buy a pound of backstrap sinew to play with. Well, it has made me want to do so.

Hope you enjoy some of these resources.

Cheers,

Mungo

A Panoply of Downloadable Bushcraft E-Books

I am a member of the online forum BushcraftUK.com, a great place to learn, to share ideas, and to get to know other folks who are also interested in outdoors and bushcraft concepts and activities.

There is a Resources page which offers a set of downloadable PDF format e-books - well worth looking through. You are sure to find a few new ideas here and there.

Enjoy!

• Foxfire Book 1 (40.mb)
• Net Making. (0.9mb)
• Construction Plans for a Folding One-man Kayak. (0.15mb)
• In The Wake. (12mb)
• How to make old clothes et al. (0.5mb)
• How to make soap (0.15mb)
• Walden (0.8mb)
• Woodcraft and Camping(1.5mb)
• 14 Foot Canoe Plans (1.2mb)
• Bushcraft Notes (9.5mb)
• Tracking (.08mb)
• US Army Survival Manual (FM 21-76) (2.7mb)
• Nature Observation & Tracking (.03mb)
• US Army Map Reading and Land Navagation (Field Manual 21-26) (.07mb)
• Knots & Splices (1.3mb)
• The Art of Travel by Francis Galton 1855 (23mb)
• Aids to Survival - Western Australia (.7mb)
• US Military Survival, Evasion and Recovery (FM 21-76-1) (3mb)
• Peter McLaren Axe Manual (1930) (3mb)
• Solar box cooking (.3mb)
• Article about the Ethics of Gatherings (1mb)
• Canadian Scout manual (1.6mb)
• Pioneering knots and lashings (2mb)
• Essentials of archery (2mb)
• Hunting with a Bow and Arrow (2.2mb)
• Blacksmithing (4mb)
• Woodsmanship (1954) (5.2mb)
• Handbok OVERLEVNAD (7.5mb)
• Experiments on Knife Sharpening (8mb)
• Camp Life in the Woods and the tricks or Trapping and Trap Making (12.8mb)
• Prairie Traveler (1.9mb)

Cheers,

Mungo

A Winter Sit in the Woods and Online Resources

I like winter. But it occurred to me this morning that I like winter when I'm outside, a lot more than I like winter when I am inside. If I have a couple of hours this weekend (evening probably), I might go down to the valley for a sit in the woods and a cook up on a stove.



Decado is out in the snow keeping an eye on his winter shelters and wearing wool and snowshoes. He knows about the winter.

So do the folks at WinterCampers.com and WinterTrekking.com.

Finally, folks at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Network are a good bunch, and you'll find a ton of resources on the site - consider joining up!

Cheers,

Mungo

Good Curly Feather Sticks

I am at home, and close to the new baby, so I am not out in the woods making fire. And that's just fine. But if I were out there right now, I'd be noting that the weather is warming up slightly. It's still cold and all, but the thick snow is a good sign of moderate weather. Much of the dead branches laying about on the forest floor is covered in ice or in snow, or made damp from the nearby creek. If I had a minimum of available tinder (as happens sometimes - no birch trees nearby, the fluffy weeds have since blown away with the December winds etc...), I would rely on feather sticks to make a fire.


Basically, in places where you can't find dry tinder easily, shaving a stick of wood until you have fine feathery shavings will allow you to create the conditions for a fire to catch and grow. Mors Kochanski showed us how he was able to ignite a feather stick using a ferrocerium rod which we all thought was fairly impressive... You could use a flint and steel to make an ember, or a fire piston, or a good ol' fashioned match.


Making feather sticks tests your knife craft skills. Mors Kochanski writes in Northern Bushcraft that you must create the shavings on one plane of the stick. He isn't saying you need to be precise in keeping the curls all facing the exact same direction, but rather that you shouldn't be creating feathers all away around the circumference of the stick. Using my Mora, I use the curved part of the blade at the front, this helps curl the strips.

The video below shows how you can feather a stick of wood to make fire in damp weather.



Woodcraft Wanderings has a very detailed and informative article that illustrates the making of fire using feathersticks and many other types of tinder.

Ben of Ben's Backwoods fame has a good article on feather sticks. It demonstrates good technique, and finishes with the note "The key is observation, practice and a sharp knife. Be patient and keep trying."

I would agree.

Cheers,

Mungo