It is said that the recent history of outdoor pursuits has been to replace missing knowledge with equipment. Bushcrafters strive for the opposite, by seeking to replace missing kit with knowledge. Check me out trying to light fire by rubbing sticks together!
I had a great weekend in June with some bushcrafty friends, playing in a private wood in Wiltshire. I'm used to wild camping on my mountain trips, but this showed me a new way of spending time outdoors, and a very different camping style. My friends were irrepressibly evangelical - they weren't happy until I was wearing my knife round my neck and abandoning the enclosure of my tent for a night out sleeping on the forest floor under a 'basha' - a tarp stretched out between two trees.
Despite the heavy rain I was warm and dry under my borrowed basha. At dawn I woke first to birdsong, and then later to the sound of an axe splitting wood to refuel the fire. The beauty of a basha is that you can see out from beneath it - you are connected to your environment, rather than removed from it. Stumbling over my guy rope and losing the peg, I smugly unsheathed my knife and fashioned a new one from green hazel.
Bushcraft is the perhaps the oldest form of culture, and is tied up with the development of language, music and society, in that the discovery of fire-lighting created conditions in which early humans could could gather and commune. It is the culture of survival and expression - like hip hop, it is about finding comfort in your environment.
I found little comfort in gutting and filletting the trout we caught for dinner. As a fairly strict vegetarian since 1992, I get even less contact with raw meat than the average carnivore, for whom preparation can be no more visceral than removing the plastic. This was sticky, gory and grim, but wonderfully real. Uncomfortable, yes, but affirming and honest. Seared to perfection on the fire, it tasted of reality, wildness, and of course, fish. Wild camping indeed.
