The Airman’s Arctic Survival Guide by Belmore Browne
“Wars are fought outdoors.” – Belmore Browne (1880-1954), American artist, illustrator, explorer and experienced outdoorsman, advising top military brass on the importance of survival training for US airmen being sent on flights to the far north. During World War II and the Korean War, as Civilian Consultant for the Arctic Training School, Browne prepared courses based on his lectures and original poster-sized diagrams to teach military airmen the craft of survival. His instruction is presented here in a handsome collection. Previously inaccessible to the public, Browne’s 38 unique, original diagrams reflect a stimulating partnership of artistry and outdoor skills. His lectures and other writings discuss the challenges and opportunities for the ditched airman – and are germane for today’s Boy Scout or aspiring adventurer. Assembled from primary sources by the author’s granddaughter, this volume offers practical outdoor information, wilderness history and resilient philosophy. Hardcover; 38 full-page Diagrams, 25 additional sketches and artwork by Browne, 20 black & white photographs, 41,500 words; 10.5” x 13.75”; 155 pages; printed in USA. 2014 Browne Family Collection, LLC
My name is Gabriel J Warren Natural Whetstone Sharpening.com and the Wild Whetstones community project are the proud results of my work to provide a lifetime lasting sharpening stone experience. I coach tens of thousands of people world wide on how to get a lifetime lasting experience out of their sharpening approach.
I was listening to John Rhyders presentation at GBS 2022 online and like so many of the speeches has led me to avenues that I either hadn’t heard of before and hadn’t considered. Tracking has always fascinated me. I must own at-least 20 books on tracking , my main interest was man tracking rather than animals. I ended up finding the below course in the links below after looking up Cyber Tracking. For some reason South Africa always comes up when cross referencing searches for Australia.
I emailed the course instructors asking about the relevance in Australia?
“The intro course is relevant anywhere in the world. Even though the examples given are Southern African, it is more about giving you a process to learn than about specifics.”
Ive found one of my next courses. Looks like Ill be in this leg brace for some time. Online training is getting me through a lot of rehab and days of pain with this severed tendon.
Correspondence Courses for Trackers
From novice to expert, in the city or in the wild
“A mentor’s job is to create a pathway for their students to exceed them.”
– Lee & Kersey
Tracker Mentoring, a place to find comprehensive online and correspondence tracking courses, with a community of learners and expert mentors to guide you.
“Tracking isn’t particularly hard, it just takes time and practice. A mentor helps to speed up the process by giving you a solid foundation, and redirection when you need it. Let us help you to break it down, and build you up.” – Kersey Lawrence and Lee Gutteridge, CyberTracker Senior Trackers and Evaluators.
We practice teaching and learning in the CyberTracker style.
CyberTracker Tracker Certification is the international “Gold Standard” for certifying the skill level of trackers.
Why “Cyber”Tracker? The original concept was software that allowed non-literate San trackers to collect data, in-the-field. This allowed them to use their expertise in employed opportunities for wildlife and land management. The Tracker Certification System followed, as a means to verify the skill level of trackers.
“Foraging is one of the last wild acts of defiance against the concrete world. Humans versus humanoids. It’s a crack in the dam, a chink of light, wild food nourishes your very soul.” – Mo Wilde.
Another great presentation at the GBS. Someone that after being asked numerous times after teaching foraging courses.” Can you live off the land fulltime ,”made the pledge to actually try it. Another book to add to my reading list.
Monica Wilde is a forager, research herbalist, author and ethnobotanist. She lives in West Lothian, Scotland, in a self-built eco house on 4 organic acres, where she encourages medicinal and foraging species to thrive in a wild, teaching garden. She has been teaching foraging formally since 2005.
This special and magical book has changed the way I see the world’ Dan Saladino
‘Inspiration and delight sparkle from every page … This book [is] a revelation of joy to the general reader for whom wild food is another country’ John Wright, author of the River Cottage handbooks
A captivating and lyrical journey into our ancestral past, through what and how we eat.
Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth – a connection that we have become estranged from but which we all, deep down, hunger for.
This hunger is about much more than food. It is about accepting and understanding our place in a natural network that is both staggeringly complex and beautifully simple. THE WILDERNESS CURE is a diary of a wild experiment; a timely and inspiring memoir which explores a deeper relationship between humans and nature, and reminds us of the important lost lessons from our past.
Im getting a lot from the presentations at the GBS Global Bushcraft Symposium. Raven mentions a book I believe to be the one below on Apache significance of naming places. However several sources seem to be pushing me more and more towards the teachings of Jon Young. Ive found two mentoring businesses in Australia based around Holistic Tracking. Will be looking more into these during the week.
This presentation is an introduction to the core practices of intuitive tracking, which is complementary to technical tracking, but focuses more on the development of sensory awareness, curiosity, and deep nature connection. Intuitive tracking is a path to becoming more alive and in tune with the natural world. These practices will not only greatly enhance your tracking ability in the field, they will also improve your mental health and wellbeing.
Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache
by Keith H. Basso
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term “sense of place” often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. “Wisdom Sits in Places,” the first sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist, explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names–where they come from and what they mean to Apaches.
“This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place. And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words.”–N. Scott Momaday
“In “Wisdom Sits in Places” Keith Basso lifts a veil on the most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the world. In so doing he invests his scholarship with that rarest of scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration. Through his clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their land, and when we look away, we see our own world afresh.”–William deBuys
“A very exciting book–authoritative, fully informed, extremely thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read. Guiding us vividly among the landscapes and related story-tellings of the Western Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of language in the complex but compelling theme of a people’s attachment to place. An important book by an eminent scholar.”–Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
A question by Mason in Woodcraft (1939) to Seton regarding the teachings of a bowdrill compared to using matches.
Mason “Why in a world of matches would you teach bowdrill”? Seton “Youre thinking of the fire that is lighted down there. I am thinking of the flame that is kindled in here pointing to his heart”!
Listening to a speech by Paul Moseley “Situated Knowledges and Poetics of Dwelling”. Mentions the above quote by Seton.
“Bushcraft is often thought of as enabling travel to be further and lighter. This talk will explore how bushcraft might, rather than being thought of in the context of adventuring into another people`s land, be used to create a meaningful kinship with our own?
Paul will explore the potential role of contemporary bushcraft, weaving together themes of place, identity, community and culture”.
Ive purposely haven’t taken notes through the speeches at the GBS to take everything in and enjoy the experience. This is the first speech where Ill be replaying it several times and going back to take notes throughout the talk.
Many of the talks have put me on a path to researching areas that I would not have considered before listening to them. Im now adding Seton to my reading list. With the above quote how couldn’t I.
Basic Biography
Ernest Evan Thompson (AKA Ernest Thompson Seton, 1860-1946), born in South Shields, England, immigrated with his parents to a small farming community in Ontario, Canada before his sixth birthday. The ninth of eleven siblings, his middle name came from an ancestor, Evan Cameron, a 17th century Scottish wolf hunter and important clan leader. (Also spelled “Ewen.”)
He fell in love with wild nature from the time of his earliest memory and discovered a remarkable talent for art in his middle teen years. Combining the two, Seton briefly attended the Royal Academy of Arts in London, but achieved mastery of depicting animal forms from endless hours of life study. He became one of the most successful and highly regarded wildlife illustrators of his generation creating drawings, prints and paintings for his own books as well as for many other authors of his time. Roger Tory Peterson credited Seton’s bird illustrations for providing inspiration for his field guides: “It was on this idea that my Field Guide to the Birds, was based.
First published in 1939 under the title Woodcraft, Mason’s book includes instructions on how to make an Indian tepee, and Indian willow bed, a Chippewa kitchen or Dakota moccasins. Apart from Indian crafts, Mason provides instructions on making knives, striking camp, caching, fire and ax safety—virtually everything you need to know about camping. Also contains instruction on birch basketry, wooden dishes, log benches, wooden furniture, peace pipes, feather headdresses, gourd dippers and much more. In short, a wealth of lost traditional knowledges is preserved for future readers.
Im listening to Dr Lisa Fenton Bashing Heads Bushcraft Skills & Contexts speech from the 2019 GBS where she is talking about the history and starting points of the woodcraft movement. Here she mentioned the Legion of Frontiersmen. From looking into the name I found an Australian branch with a handbook with over 500 pages of information. Another piece of Australian Bushcraft History.
A History of the Legion of Frontiersmen in Australia
Bу С.A. Brоwn
The Beginning of the Legion in Australia
ln Australia the first stirrings оf the Legiоn оf Frоntiersmen began in Іate August оf 1905 when the Sundaу Times newspaper n Sуdneу published a press release from London HQ. An AustraІian corps оf the Legiоn оf Frоntiersmen, the artiсІe сІaimed, wоuІd be headquartered in, Lоndоn, but “raised in Australia as an Australian Association, under Australian Control, for Australian defence under the sanction of the State and Federal governтents or not at all”. “Іt is proposed in each State with the countenance of its government to organise a wing of the Legion, so that the colonу would still be identified with the deeds of its veterans in the field.”
The article соntinued, “Тo the Governтent of each State will come to the coтfortable knowledge that without the slightest trouble or expense to itself, it has, outside of its normal military forces, a bodу of so many armed men – fit to go anуwhere and do anуthing – alreadу organised and onlу waiting their call.”
These tуpes оf artiсІes, which were bІasted оut tо newspapers aсrоss the British Empire bу the Legion’s HQ in London, did the job and served to plant the seed of the Legion in the minds of many patriotic Australians.
A further newspaper article in March 1906 informed Australian readers that Mr RB Haldane, the Secretary of War in London, had “approved the formation of a legion of frontiersmen to assist in the defence of the Empire in case of emergency, and to provide small bodies of capable and daring pioneers, and carefully trained intelligence agents, local guides and scouts.”
This is something I have never had any interest in at all. That is until hearing a speech by Bruce Zawalsky at once again you guessed it the Global Bushcraft Symposium 2022. Ill be listening to speeches for the next four days.
There are several reasons why I never looked into the shelter system. I don’t carry plastic sheeting, lightweight space blankets (other than first aid kits) or breathable parachute material. There are no saplings where i have lived that are pinky finger thickness and long enough, maybe three finger thickness. I also thought these shelters were only for minus 20 degree weather. Ive yet to see snow.
My first question after watching the speech was. ” Why has no one ever sewn the three layers of material together to form one product”? Then you have the correct sizing and percentages of material to one another.
What got me interested is that a student of Bruce’s was from South Africa and he had set up the shelter there to try it out. Africa being a similar latitude to Australia.
Maybe the best I could do is make an A- framed version with thicker saplings, then I saw a modified version for the Eastern Woodlands and this set me off. I had to learn about a shelter system that was designed for extreme snow. I think the thermal dynamics is what interested me the most. How it works? That you can sleep without socks or gloves or a sleeping bag in extreme conditions.
I may have to add a painters drop sheet to my heavy duty Mylar blanket!
This speech was made at the 2019 GBS and was mentioned at the 2022 Global Bushcraft Symposium during the opening Keynote speech by David Delafield. I made a point of looking it up after he mentioned Lisa received a standing ovation.
Lisa’s excellent keynote speech from the2019 Global Bushcraft Symposium, provides us with an insightful look into the history of Bushcraft, and how place it into a modern context.
