When I'm out in the backcountry, the most important thing of all things the woodsman must always have on his mind is water.
You can survive a long time without shelter. You can survive a long time without food. What you cannot survive a long time without is water.
For each night I plan to be out, I plan my camps as near to water as I can — down in the hollers, where two hills dip down and meet at the bottom. That's where the reliable water lies, more often than not. What that means, in the vast majority of cases, is I will not be staying at some spectacular vista on a high elevation. I'd rather have a quiet branch like this at my door than a pretty view and a dry canteen.
— The Practical Woodsman
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the wind is the number one enemy of the woodsman.
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.
— 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
This photo's from the trip where I first put one of them toy stoves to the test.
Have you ever seen videos of folks using these little portable wood stoves? They take them out into the woods and set her up inside of a tent and it just looks so beautiful and wonderful. Well, I just did that myself, and I want to let you know that we're all being lied to.
The reality is that these little portable wood stoves are not practical at all. And in fact, my conclusion is that they complicate an experience out in the woods more than anything else. Now, are there pros? Of course there are. The little wonderful things that they do do not offset the cons. Not by a country mile.
These backpacking wood stoves are gimmicks. It's like something that you buy to try out. It's a lot of fun. But it wears off immediately. You see all the negatives about it and so you never use it again. And I don't plan to ever take a real excursion into the back country with one of these ever again. Those stoves are ...
When the leaves are down, the woods show you their bones — every ridge, every fold of the land, clean and plain as a washed skillet.
Folks'll spend a lifetime gettin' ready for gettin' lost out here in some emergency. Truth is, the odds that'll ever happen to you for real is ridiculously small — like winnin' the lottery.
Most days ain't about the one-in-a-million. They're about puttin' one boot in front of the other on a path like this, and keepin' your head about you while the hollers go quiet.
— 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
