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.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the wind is the number one enemy of the woodsman.
Rain don't do that to you. You can work with rain and snow and all that. Wind, though — wind just makes everything so much more complicated. Even if you get the fire goin' real good, you can't enjoy it, 'cause the wind's takin' the heat right away.
Basically, you just got to hide out. Puts a hair in my biscuit every time.
— The Practical Woodsman
Sometimes the best thing a woodsman can do is quit walkin', plant his boots, and just look a spell.
There's a quiet that settles over the hollers when you're standin' up on a ridge like this — green layered on green, fold after fold, clean out to where the ridges go soft and blue. No hurry. No chatter. Just the land doin' what it's always done.
A man who can't sit still with a view like that ain't learned yet what he come out here for.
— The Practical Woodsman
Folks'll brush right past a vine on a tree trunk and never give it a second thought — till their hands are a-burnin' and their arms are a-swellin' up like dough left on the hearth.
Look here close: one's got leaves o' five, climbin' with them little sticky feet — that's yer Virginia creeper, harmless as a barn cat. Right beside it, leaves o' three, shiny and mean — that's poison ivy, and she'll remember you long after you've forgot her.
Learn the difference once, and you'll thank yourself every time you put a hand to a tree.
— The Practical Woodsman
