Pablo’s Woodlife

A Lunar eclipse took place last night. This happens when the moon is immersed in the shadow of the Earth. During “totality”, only light that has been filtered through the Earth’s atmosphere reaches the Moon’s surface, making it appear a reddish colour. I took this pic at about 11 o’clock.

There’s been a lot of talk on some forums about the early onset of spring, so I thought I’d go outside of my usual woods to try and find out what’s happening in other areas. I started out in Broaks Wood on Friday. I had a day off and it was a good choice as the sun streamed through the house when I woke up. I packed light with just my day sack, a few sandwiches, flask of tea, sit-mat, belt and pouch. I don’t usually take any tools with me when I go into public woods except the Opinel.

The plan was to follow the main tracks which is about a 3 mile route. No sooner had I walked 100 meters when I noticed a Comma butterfly on the track. It was soaking up the sun and didn’t seem to be bothered when I closed in for a photoshoot. I’m aware that these butterflies mate in March, but this was only 2nd March. There were definitely signs that there was other spring activity with buds on the trees, including some cherry blossom. The only other wildflower I saw however was the primula (primrose) which is probably a normal time to bloom.

The walk was hard work as the tracks were saturated with mud and very slippery, but it was good exercise. The only other wildlife spotted was a single muntjac and mallards on one of the ponds. I had lunch over looking the small valley while the sun warmed the area. A glimpse at the thermometer showed 15 degrees C. More like summer than spring!

Saturday saw a bit of morning rain, but the temperatures were still quite high. I went to the ‘new’ woods. I hadn’t been there since November and I was interested to see if my renovated watch tower has survived. Again, it was a muddy slog getting to the area. The watch tower had survived and the rope holding the ladder was still in place. Unlike the myriad of Fallow deer tracks, there was no sign of humans. I thought that I should really visit these woods more often and I started looking around for a suitable site for the spring/summer. I had brought my hammock this time and I tried a few areas for suitability, eventually mentally marking an area on the south side of the wood, close enough to the entrance but far enough away from the open fields. A nice fallen tree would provide a sitting/working/cooking area.

I looked back in my wildlife diary from last year and really didn’t notice anything different wildlife or climate wise except that I didn’t notice a butterfly until 2 April, so there might be a bit of truth in the early onset of spring.

Interestingly (or not) my blog for March last year showed the delivery of my first tarp and Swedish Army Trangia. How time flies!

All the best, Pablo

What I love about Bushcraft is the wide variety of knowledge and skills associated with it. There’s fire-lighting, cooking, shelter-building, tool-making, tool-using, traditional crafts, carving, aspects of survival skills and hunting/trapping to name just a few.

My particular interests at the moment are archery, tracking and observing wildlife, which for some reason I tend to keep separate from main-stream bushcraft skills. But there are other subjects on the periphery of Bushcraft which I also take an interest in.

Aspects like the weather fascinate me. My excursion posts usually start off with a record of what the weather was like and I try to interpret the weather maps and synoptic charts as best I can. I’m certainly no expert, but skills such as reading weather signs in the field can be handy on excursions as well as creating another interesting facet for study of the natural world.

Astronomy is another interesting subject which could be classed as relating to Bushcraft especially in a navigational sense at night. I’m not particularly good at identifying constellations or individual stars yet, but with the help of Stellarium (free) software, I think I’m improving.

Talking of navigation, this is another area of interest. American Bushman published a link to a site recently LandNavigation.org which offers great information on map reading and compass skills. I really don’t have occasion to use this skill too much, but I do like looking at and interpreting maps. Somehow I find them fascinating. I try to make my own sketch maps that really don’t make any sense to anyone except me! But it’s good fun doing it.

Horace Kephart enjoyed doing the same. He liked to study published maps but also made copious notes and maps of the areas he travelled. He created a key at the beginning of a notebook where each number represented where the specific map section was to be found. Like me, he used a quadrilled notebook and marked secret areas and hide outs which he marked on his maps calling them “masked camps.”

I love the phraseology he uses to describe one of these areas in “Camping and Woodcraft”:

“The camp is to be situated where not only men but cattle and wild hogs are unlikely to go. There should be nothing in the neigbourhood to attract to attract any of the various classes of people who frequent the woods. Study each of these classes of people in turn, and their habits.”

A man after my own heart.

Pablo