Category: Other (Page 18 of 24)

“I wake up in the morning, open my eyes and breathe… I’m alive.”

I saw the above quote some where and I have been thinking of it often. This has been the first time in 20 years I have not owned an animal. My cats and dogs were family and followed me every where, totally devoted to me and I to them. If the cat and dog weren’t looking for me, I was looking for them. If not for them I would never had made it out of hospital or out of a wheelchair for that matter. My dogs got me up and walking after many surgery’s, because I had to take care of them.

Its taking longer than I anticipated to adjust to not having them around. I’m trying to keep constantly busy from first thing in the morning until I’m exhausted of a night in order to sleep. Trying to concentrate on rehab. I have a long way to go if I ever want to get into the field again. I have a good ten kilo to put back on.

I’m doing my leg exercises everyday, rehab at the physio twice a week and start back at the gym for upper-body next week. I barely have the energy or the concentration to study or to write posts. I’m getting behind on three different courses. Ive spent the last 20 years waking at six am and now I sleep till eight.

I need to get my shit together. I’m loosing my discipline and drive. Life doesn’t feel the same at this moment in time, without my constant shadows.

“I wake up in the morning, open my eyes and breathe… I’m alive.”

Saturday the 3rd will be the 8th Birthday of as we say, my second double bilateral lung transplant. I had spent 12 years of my life carrying around an oxygen bottle, over a combined 90 days in ICU, 2 years dragging my leg around after a 90 liter blood transfusion into my groin blew up and they had to cut out the lump the size of a German sausage, sew it back up with a vac drain. I could have fit my fist in the hole. Spent a lot of the time doing rehab and getting back into martial arts and have tried to make as much use of my time as I could. All I had to do is out live my animals. My two cats and two dogs and I made sure I pushed myself to a level I never thought possible to make sure that happened and that my animals were taken care of. All of them were pretty much my shadows. My tortoiseshell passed away in 2020 and Tashy my brindle staffy a few weeks ago. I feel lost with out them. The calmness they brought to my life is leaving me. Tashys ashes are returned to me tomorrow so she can finally join my tortoiseshell. They were inseparable and will be scattered with my ashes in turn. Ill be sitting by the fire pit with Tash in her favorite chair around the fire drinking a few beers with her one last time. Time is fleeting , make the most of it.

“The Purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

My brindle staffy that has been in so many of my blog photos passed away this week. She was 14 years old and never left my side other than for hospital stays for 12 years.
I hadn’t dealt well with the passing of my red staffy I was still on oxygen and had been told there was no hope of a second transplant and had given up for six months. The mental neighbor with his attack poodle was going around stirring up everyone’s dogs in the area. After numerous times of telling him to stop I called the local council. His junkie son in law then came around threatening to put a hit on me. It was a great area of stabbings and arson attacks.
I went around to his place on a mobility scooter and 4 liters of oxygen with a hammer and told him exactly what his mental his parents were like and ended up offering him a hundred dollars for then brindle. I had her two days later.
She couldn’t walk fifty feet she had been hit so much. I later found out her spine had fused and she had a rabbit trap through one paw. I couldn’t even open a plastic rubbish bag with her going and hiding and shaking for 15 minutes she had been abused that much. I had to climb under the kitchen table and hug her till she stopped shaking, then try and stand back up with 25 percent lung capacity. I did that for months.
After much rehab and having her ride on my mobility scooter down to the dog park where it was fenced off she could run without a lead and her back straightened up and through rubbing horse lineament into her paw it started to open back up from being crushed.
We had traveled half way around the country together. She could always make friends for me. Even when I went to the gym she would come with me. We’d go for a walk beforehand and then she would crash out in the back seat of the ute while I did a workout and then we would get scrambled eggs a ta cafe after-woods. If there was someplace that wouldn’t let me take her into the business then I wouldn’t deal with them. She would always keep me calm.
I couldn’t even do my current rehab without her following me back and forth up the corridor trying to walk.

I had a dog run built around the awning of my caravan. If I was gone too long at the shower block. She would push down the gate, the saw horses or anything else I had used blocking the way out and try and find me. Always having stopped at everyone she met to say hello and for pats mind you.

I only heard her growl a few times in her life and very rarely barked unless no one said hello to her. That staffy got me through two bought’s of cancer and waiting 6 years for a second set of lungs. She got me up and walking again and out my front gate after 3 months in ICU. Without her I would have been in wheelchair years ago.

Tash passed in my arms. She will be missed.

This movie had a lot to do with me becoming interested in bushcraft.

https://www.ballisticmag.com/jeremiah-johnson/

https://www.booktopia.com.au/mountain-man-vardis-fisher/book/9780893012519.html

I found the following Naturalist Courses today on Tracking and Bird language run by Lee Burton at Naturalist Studies.

Bird Language 15 chapters 133 lessons almost 12 hours of video content

Core concepts and significance of bird language

Learning methods

Baseline and alarm behaviors

Bird species to follow

Principles and behavioral norms

Ground and aerial alarms

Advanced alarm types and learning methods

Species of particular interest

Tracking 182 lessons 12 hours of video content

Animal Sign

Tracking Morphology and Ecology

Canine Tracks

Feline Tracks

Ungulate Tracks

Bears Skunks and Procyonidae Tracks

Medium sized Mammal Tracks

Rodent Tracks

Bird Tracks

Reptile and Amphibian Tracks

Scat and Pellets

Aging tracks and Sign

Animal gaits

Trailing Animals

https://courses.naturaliststudies.com/

In the last few weeks. I dropped a glass roasting dish on my bad leg and had blood pissing out of my foot and realized how little people know about first aid when they were more interested in cleaning up the mess than stopping the blood flow.

Tonight I cooked roast chicken with harissa, garlic and oregano with roast potatoes, sweet potato, pumpkin, and carrot (I like cooking) when a mate choked on a piece of chicken. All the first aid and first responder courses paid off when I managed to stop him choking, when he spat out a 3 inch piece of chicken from his throat.

No panicking, no not knowing what to do, just got in there and responded with instinct. Do a First Aid Course.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

Found an online Permaculture course that looks pretty good. Taught by Geoff Lawton.

https://www.discoverpermaculture.com/permaculture-masterclass-video-1

Lure of the North David and Kielyn Marrone are bad influences. This is an irrefutable fact. I watched David and Kielyns speeches at the Global Bushcraft Symposium Online and found their talks to be one of the most inspirational Ive heard in a long time. Between Davids talk on making his own gear and Kielyns on traveling by sled and snow shoes through the north Woods of Canada I wanted to pack my bags and head to the northern bush.

I was going through their website and found an instructional section on making your own gear. Strange from a company that also sells the same products. I came across and instructional on making a Trail Toboggan. I really like working with my hands and the idea of making my own sled I cant pass up. The idea that traditional equipment is better than modern materials intrigues me. I own a pair of mocs but now I’m looking at adding a pair of cold weather mukluks too.

I’m not sure how practical a sled is in Australia, I may have to put wheels on it but I’m sure its easier than making a canoe by hand.Im going to have to find a workshop. This is something I can do on one leg. Id like to try and make my own snow shoes too.

LOTN Instructional Booklets

It looks like the rest of this 2022 is a right off for me in terms of dirt time. Itll be spent doing rehab for the leg. I have planned the following training courses.

Online :

Tracker Mentoring Level 1

https://trackermentoring.com/tracking-courses/

Bird Language with Andrew Turbill

Bird Language & Nature Connection online

Paul Kirtley’s Tree & Plant Identification Masterclass 2nd year

https://www.onlinebushcraftcourses.com/tree-plant-id-find-out-more

Kamana Naturalist Program Level 1

Home

In Person Training :

Rescue Trauma and Casualty Care Tacmed Australia

https://training.tacmed.com.au/shop/product-details/productid/509?_kx=kwnFsuphIrvI9IrGKiJchA9IQpXO9OU0g0mNqyqdsg4%3D.NQmVX4

Al Ainsworth Foraging

https://www.facebook.com/groups/255804947779277/posts/3223306311029111/

Jake Cassar Bushcraft Plant Based Survival

https://www.jakecassarbushcraft.com/

Bushcraft Survival Australia level 2

BSA Courses

Rick J Peterson

https://rickjpetersen.com/

Permaculture Design Course

Trying to find somewhere that will let me take my staffy? Otherwise

https://www.permaculture.org.uk/education/course/classic-72-hour-permaculture-design-certificate-course-pdc