Woodlife

At last we’ve had a bit of rain but this has also brought strong and blustery winds. It’s been reasonably mild though. The wind and rain fortunately didn’t start before I took myself into the woods for another 24 hour excursion. This time I took more kit, more water, heavier tarp and the new Bcuk Magikelly hammock for a trial run. I wasn’t too bothered about space and weight as I dragged along the Sabre 75 for a bit of an outing.

I set up as usual and collected firewood for the fire later on. I’m getting used to prepping the fire far in advance of nightfall. I use small fires and start with digging a small trench about a foot long by 6 inches wide. I then place fine twigs as kindling across the gap and layer increasingly larger twigs on the top, alternating the direction as I layer. This is my favoured method over a pyramid type fire at the moment. When lighting the fire, I always use the fire-steel and birch bark slivers. I then feed the kindling by using the small trench. This keeps the flame out of the wind, but provides a little air circulation. The birch bark produces a flame after a few strikes with firesteel without producing an ember first, which is quite handy, but I know I must practice blowing an ember into a flame sooner or later.

As the evenings are now getting longer I decided to do a bit of spooncraft before going to watch the wildlife. It’s been a while since I’ve made a spoon and this was my first effort with the mini hatchet. I was extremely impressed with this axe. After initially missing the weight of the Small Forest Axe for the heavy stuff, I was soon glad of the mini’s small blade for more intricate and delicate carving. In fact most of the carving was done with the axe and not so much with the Companion’s fixed blade. I knew this would be the case. Watch out Companion!

After wandering about looking at the night time wildlife (I’m pretty sure I saw a Barn owl sweeping silently across the field), I returned to the site and lit the fire. It was a bit windy and again I made heavy weather (‘scuse the pun) of lighting the fire, but it eventually caught and soon a nice warming fire was crackling away with a small flask of Brandy to keep away the chill.

As I’ve already said, the Bcuk group buy hammock is huge. It certainly swamps me, and that has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Slinging it like the DD leaves a large sag where I’m literally bent double, so I tied it lower but even more taught than the DD. Even so, I can’t see over its edge when lying down. Lengthways, the 3×3 tarp only just covers the hammock. The material is like parachute material and stretches a little more than the ripstop of the DD. Despite the differences, I had a good nights sleep. What I do like about this hammock is that you can sit very comfortably “athwartships” due the the extra large width. I might take this combination (Tatonka tarp and Bcuk hammock) to the Bushmoot at the end of the month.

I finished the outing the next morning by looking for a few new plants in flower. I saw some Forget-me-nots, Bugle, Dog’s mercury, Vetch, Ground ivy and the Arum lilly (or Cuckoo pint – pic). This is one flower you don’t want to mess with as most parts are poisonous (especially the red berries which show in the autumn). Apparently, the roots are in fact edible and contain a high starch content. In Elizabethan times, they were gathered for stiffening the high, pleated linen ruffs seen in the paintings.

The afternoon looked increasingly like rain, and rather than get everything soaking wet, I packed away and headed home.

By the way, I’ve added another short video to my video channel. This one’s about the Crusader cooker. See you next time and thanks for the visit.

Pablo