For reasons that still aren’t clear to me decades later, shortly after starting elementary school in the somewhat barren Texas Panhandle (the metropolis of Dumas), I became enthralled with the natural world and the outdoors.
My family weren’t avid campers when I was growing up, but we did make typical Texan pilgrimages to the foothills of New Mexico (the Cimmaron, Red River, Taos areas most often), though very early on I begged for a tent one birthday and spent many an adventurous night camped in the back yard, honing my skills and slaying mythical beasts along the way.
This was of course back in the “pre-internet” world, one hard to imagine for many these days, and we actually went to a place called the library – an ancient storehouse of knowledge back then, to explore, read, and learn.
Even as an elementary school tyke I poured through whatever books I could find about woodcraft, camping, survival, hunting, backpacking, and climbing (fly fishing came later in life for me). The classics were filled with hands on tips and tricks, often with hand tiffed illustrations, wildlife art and paintings, and rudimentary photographs (mostly black and white as I recall). Those books were an absolute delight, damned instructive, and fodder for many an adventure fantasy when trapped in schoolrooms as a kid.
When given a chance to review and give away a copy of Bushcraft Illustrated, A Visual Guide by Dave Canterbury, I was thrilled, and even more so after paging through the book.
Rarely have I read something in the past few years that so took me to back to those (relatively) carefree days of youth, reading my woodcraft books of the day, fantasizing about escaping to the wild of “the mountains” and living life close to the land.
Canterbury has revived some of that history in his new book released just this month, it covers a host of things that will bring a smile to those of us over 40 – like making your own packs, tools you actually use with your hands (knives, axes, hatches, and saws to name a few), cordage and knots, camp craft, fire craft, navigation without your damn phone or a GPS unit (we call that a compass for you city folks), hunting, trapping, processing game and more.
Yep, it’s a throwback to a simpler time, and a compendium of skills that my family and I STILL think is essential for anyone wandering the woods, or choosing to life a simpler and richer life. You can be damn sure my soon to be 1-year old grandson will learn this stuff…
We’ll be dropping this soon to be classic book in the mail to a lucky winner on Friday the 24th of May; if you know someone who’d appreciate a compendium of hands-on instruction and lore, fire an email here with Bushcraft in the subject line.
Cheers, and see you around the fire this evening.
