Happy 1st unofficial day of summer to all of y’uns around the globe, whether here in the USA or not. I know you folks down there in Australia are in winter now. Happy day to you, too.
New Supporters: Thank you! I’ll try to keep things interesting here and offer exclusive content that I don’t share anywhere else, such as the video you’ll see here.
This was taken fifteen years ago before video quality and audio is what it is today. I’m in the mountains deep in the backcountry on a very wet excursion. My dog Bradbury is still a young pup in training here, and he has woken me up early before sunrise to go out, use the bathroom, and sniff around a bit. It’s a full moon night. I’ve gotten the fire stirred back up and crackling and I decide to try to capture the moment in a brief video - long before I ever had any ideas or plans to share my life as The Practical Woodsman.
These old videos were only originally ever intended as something for my own enjoyment, a way for me to sort of journal certain experiences. I’m happy to go through many of them now and be able to share them with you.
One other thing, Supporters: Be sure to take full advantage of your supporter status here by sharing your own posts, videos, and so forth. Not only will I really enjoy this, but so will all of our other members. If there are things you would like to share with an even smaller, more exclusive and discerning audience, notice that you can mark the content you upload as ‘Supporters Only’. It will then only be visible to other Supporters. If you’d like for it to be visible to all members in our group, you can do that as well.
Gettin’ outta the glorious rain in the glorious backcountry with my glorious dog
I found this video interesting as it relates to conversations we have about the true nature of things, what is really important and what is not, and how little importance some things have depending on the needs of the moment.
For example, this guy and his fellow soldiers, while being shot at would just dump their blankets - the blankets were totally unimportant to the immediate goal of staying alive. This meant later suffering, but at least they were alive.
I think about this sort of thing all the time when seeing guys building elaborate, beautiful shelters in the woods. When you’re hungry and lost, or simply traveling through the wilderness, nobody is going to care about building an elaborate shelter. You’re only going to care about conserving energy and using energy for only things that are absolutely necessary in any given moment.
This means sleeping under a rock outcrop, or a fallen tree, or just trying to get through the night under your sweater and some leaves you scrounge ...
