A new blog... A new direction...

I am going to be starting a new blog.  Now worries, I am not abandoning this one.  There are just some topics I would like to explore that are not a perfect fit for Midwest Bushcraft.  I am going to call my other blog "Journey to Gentleman".  On it I will chronicle my attempts at self improvement.

I was inspired to start down this road by The Art of Manliness, and while bushcraft fits within what I see as this self-styled "journey", many of the other aspects do not mesh with the theme of this blog.  So if you are interested I hope you will consider following my Journey to Gentleman, and possibly give me encouragement, or perhaps direction when I stray along the way.

Winter Camping... The Paragwam!

The Paragwam

After following several British bushcraft forums and blogs for years, and seeing how often they used parachutes for shelters at group meets I had really wanted to try one out myself.  Then, much to my adulation, I stumbled across a 24’ reserve parachute dating from the late 1960’s in an card board box in an obscure corner of the basement at my work.  Needless to say I was giddy.

The first time I set up the parachute was during a early fall camping trip I led, and we elevated the the chute by making a hoop out of willow, slightly larger than the hole at the top, reinforced it with cross-braces, then suspended it from a limb in cotton wood that was approximately twenty or so feet off the ground. I pulled the chute up so that the edges were about 5 ½’ off the ground creating a canopy you could easily walk under.  We had a communal fire for cooking in the center and that raised the air temperature beneath the canopy a good 5 degrees warmer than the air outside.  

We cut some driftwood we found on the flood plain we were camping on and cut the to 6’ lengths and placed them around the perimeter of the chute and used them to hold the chute edges the desired height, then attached guy-lines to the ground to tighten the whole thing up.

It rained that night, and off-and-on the next morning, but by and large we stayed dry beneath the canopy.  I think if we had made more uprights and guy-lines there would have been less leakage.  All in all, for not being waterproof it preformed really well.  I was sold on the parachute as a warm weather shelter.

The next test came in mid-December, 2011 when I scheduled a winter camping overnight course.  We have had a very mild winter thus far, and that weekend was almost too warm during the day to call it “winter camping”.  The high during the night was forecasted to be around 250 F, which I thought would be plenty cold since a some of the folks who signed up had never been camping in temps below freezing.

To set up the paragwam this time I needed to use two ropes.  The first rope was thrown over two seperate tree limbs in a Red oak (Quercus rubra) and an American hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) about 15 feet in the air and spaced about 30 feet apart.  over this was thrown another rope, roughly in the center of the first rope and it was allowed to hag to the ground.  

Discussion time

One end was used to lash together the cross-brace/spacer sticks the were inserted into the hole at the top of the canopy. They served two purposes: 1) to keep the smoke hole open, 2) to provide an attachment point to the rope that elevated the canopy. After the rope was used to square lash the cross-brace the other end was taken one time around a tree about 20 feet away and to be pulled upon, thereby raising the canopy once it was staked out. We made the stakes from some young Sugar maples (Acer saccharum) that I had thinned out doing some TSI (timber stand improvement) work. Because the ground was frozen, and because of the large size of the canopy I made the stake pretty stout. They were about a foot and half in length and 2-inches in diameter (give or take a 1/2 inch) at the blunt end. Once the stakes were sharpened with the axe we were ready to drive them in.

The center of the canopy was elevated by pulling on the rope that is attached to the cross brace holding open the smoke hole.  The top center of the canopy was elevated until it was about seven feet off the ground.  I thought this would give enough space for the smoke to fill without choking us out inside, and it made moving around a lot easier since one could stand to one's full height.


Staking out the canopy was very simple.  There are loop attachment around the outside of edge of the canopy for attaching the parachute lines and the worked perfectly as stake pockets.  Stakes were placed about three feet apart, or every other loop.  As the stake were driven in the canopy was spread out and tightened.  Three loops in a row were left un-staked on the south east side of the canopy to act as a door.  The door was held open with a three foot tall stake that was rounded on one end and sharpened on the other.  The sharpened end was placed on the ground and the rounded end rested against the canopy.  The downward tension of the canopy on the stake held it in place.


To increase the size of the livable space beneath the canopy springy branches, about four feet long and an inch in diameter at the thick end were placed around the inside of the canopy in the same manor as the stake holding the door.  The larger ends of the stakes were rounded, and the narrow eds were sharpened.  With this step the Paragwam was set up and ready for habitation.


We took a old tractor wheel that we use as a fire ring in the the paragwam and built a fire.  Even before the fire was built you could tell a huge difference in temperature between the outside and the inside.  With the sunlight shine on the material the air inside warmed up quickly.

Campfire and the smoke hole

With the fire built in the fire ring we were quickly enticed to begin removing layers of clothing.  Soon we were in shirt-sleeves an quite comfortable.As the air inside the paragwam began to warm up the canopy "puffed-out" and expanded a bit more from the rising warm air.  The rest of our time was spent inside the paragwam discussing skills, traditional lifestyles, history, knives, gear, philosophy and the like.  There was also a lot of time spent singing the praises of the parachute as a shelter and discussing other configurations that could be implemented for different situations.




Below are a list of pros & cons of "The Paragwam" put together by my friend and paragwam enthusiast, Trace. 

Pros

• About $50 from a surplus dealer
• Light-weight, stuffable
• Most economical way to sleep 8+ people
• Easy to set up in forested terrain
• Fire inside
• Did I mention it packs to the size of a volleyball?

Cons

• Fire inside, can get smokey
• Tree dependent
• Dirt floor (reaching here!)
• May require some waterproofing
• Smokey fire when sleeping can be a carbon monoxide risk.  Keep the flames high and the wood dry!

The Paragwam at night

An Improvised Day-pack

While on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters this summer my wife and I took a day trip to see the Picture Rocks on Crooked Lake.  We took a lunch of crackers, summer sausage, cheese, and trail mix along.  My satchel that I use as a day pack did not have quite enough room for all that and my EDC gear so we improvised a day-pack for my wife to carry.  Know what it is?  It is a large compression sack!

I shortened two of the straps (facing camera), and lengthened the other two (not seen) to act as shoulder straps. Once the food and a couple of water bottles were stored inside and the drawstring was tightened it is placed on your back and then you tuck the drawstring end beneath the "lid" of the compression sack and you are ready to go.

It worked great with the light load and we did not have to take along an extra pack that would have been taking up space during the rest of the trip.  Let me know if you try it out!

An Uncommon Visitor

Recently my family and I went hiking at a local state park while I was off from work for Christmas. We had heard buzz from a number of bird watcher friends that they had been seeing Saw-whet owls near the bird blind and feeding station. My wife has a special fondness for these tiny owls because she did her ground breaking senior theises on their nest success rates on an aspen plantation in Oregon.

So on a gray, late-December day we bundled up the squeakers (aged 2 years, and 4 years) and made the trek down the road to the state park. We parked the van near the trailhead that leads to the bird blind and made our way as quietly as one can with a 2 and 4 year old along.

We sat for a couple of minutes in the bird blind and enjoyed the sights of the common winter feeder birds, White-breasted nuthatches, Black-capped chikadees, Dark-eyed juncos, Red-bellied woodpeckers, American goldfinches, Downy woodpeckers, Mourning doves, Hairy woodpeckers, and Northern cardinals.

We then began to thread our way through a miriad of trails that criss-cross the flood plain forest that is the state park. We were searching for clumps of Eastern red cedars (Juniperus virginiana) where the Saw-whets like to roost during the day. We had checked all the prime spots closest to the main trail but my wife, ever the birding adventurer, wanted to follow a deer trail deeper into a stand o cedars that we both agreed looked promising.

While she tore off in search of the eluzive owl the girls and I stuck with the main trail and more-or-less walked along and the girls shouted to each other and practiced their Barred owl calls (which need A LOT of work). In spite of the girl's best efforts I did see some game. Namely a very nice looking white-tail buck. We continued on our merry way until I felt my wife would have had ample time to check the cedar grove I tried to talk the girls into heading back. No luck. We had been that way already. Then wanted, neigh NEEDED adventure! So we opted to bushwack it through the timbers and find our way back to mommy and eternal glory! Which we did, and I am very glad. Because if we had not, we never would have stumbled upon our owl.

We made our way into the backside of the cedar stand when I heard my wife give the family "locator whistle" so we veared in the direction of the Bobwhite call and there we found Mommy who stated she had not found an owl. The girls were getting a tad bit cold so we decided to head back to the van, but with heads held high. For even though our goal had been thwarted by the elusive boreal visitor we had spent time in the woods as a family, and there is no loftier goal than that.

The oldest and I took off down a deer trail as Mommy helped the youngest with a mitten emergancy. Just before we were about to emerge from the cedars onto the main trail my oldest stopped randomly (she dominates at doing things randomly, ask anyone that knows her) and started to shake a small tree back and forth vigourously. That was when I caught a flas of yellow out of the corner of my eye. I looked to the yellow flash, and there, 4 feet from me was a very surprised little owl. Had it kept it's eyes closed, we never would have seen it.

I called the oldest back to me and had her sit just off the trail to prevent her from doing anything excessivley random that migh scare off the owl and called my wife up. She was elated, and took the picture you see at the top of the blog from about 6 feet away.

Needless to say we were some happy hikers on the van ride home, and we were all very excited to see what other adventures awaited us during Christmas vacation...

Stuffed Crust Pizza on the Trail

Boiling water and making stuffed crust pizza

 This was a largely improvised recipe that turned out to be our new camping favorite.  To make one stuffed crust pizza you will need:

• Two flour tortillas
• pizza sauce
• cheese
• toppings of your choice (ours was pepperoni)

Improvised dutch oven

 I improvised a dutch oven using the two fry pan/lids from our mess kit.  The smaller fry pan is about 8" across and the larger is about 10".  I placed the smaller fry pan on the fire great off set from the fire a bit so it was not catching the full force of the heat.  The ingredients were layered in as follows:

1. Tortilla
2. Pizza sauce
3. Pepperoni
4. Cheese
5. Tortilla
6. Pizza sauce
7. Pepperoni
8. Chesse

On top of the smaller fry pan I placed the large fry pan, right side up and filled it with hot coals.  When cooking with a dutch over you usually want to err on the side of more heat on top and less on the bottom.  Heat rises as you know so the underside will tend to cook faster than the upper side.

Melting cheese

Once the cheese was well melted on top , but not fully browned, I slid the smaller pan over the flames and replaced the top pan still full of coals.  This causes the bottom tortilla to crisp up nicely while the top brown.

Ready to serve!

Here you have the finished product.  It was one of the most amazing things I have ever dined upon on the trail.  Just to be sure it was good as it seemed in the woods we made the same dish again once we had been back home for a week. It was indeed as good, so it was not just deprivation that drove us to crave it.

I am hoping t make it again soon with alfredo sauce and to add more ingredients.  I will let you know how it goes.  What is your favorite deceptively simple trail food?

Packing for a Canoe Trip; My Opinion

A packed and balanced canoe

Canoe camping is a great way for people who are a little leery of "roughing it" to get started in outdoor recreation.  I see it as a perfect next step after car camping.  It is also a way for experienced outdoors folks to hone their skills and push their abilities.  Hiking a pack with the bare essentials does indeed take skill, but paddling a canoe across a bay with a 20 mph breeze 4-points abaft your larboard beam?  That is poetry in motion! (Plus you get to say things like "20 mph breeze 4-points abaft your larboard beam")

In this post I am going to cover what I took on my last Boundary Waters canoe trip.  Did I pack light?  No. Why?  Because I am big for one, and because I didn't have too because we only had three short portages to worry about.  At the end of this post I will go over the items that I did not use and would leave behind next time, as well as the items that I did not use but would take again anyhow.

Our gear

In the above photo you can see the three packs that my wife and I took along on our trip.  The grey one on the left was our food pack and you can see our bear ropes daisy-chained and carabiner clipped to D-rings on the front of the pack.

The red pack in the center is a water proof dry bag made from a rubberized canvas type material that my wife used as her personal pack.

The green pack on the right is a "Duluth" style pack made from a East German Army duffle obtained from Sportsman's Guide that the Amish added leather closure straps and buckles to convert it.

Shelley's pack~33.8 lbs

My wife carried a vintage Eureka Timberline tent (oblong green bag), poncho liner (camo), sleeping bag (beneath tent and poncho liner), toiletries (in zip-lock bag), compression sack with clothes (black), and Thermarest sleeping pad.

To pack the dry bag I first loosely rolled the sleeping pad up then inserted it vertically into the bag and allowed it to unroll again.  The sleeping pad then forms a tube in which the rest of the content of the bag goes   The sleeping pad acts as a barrier between your back and oddly shaped, hard items like mess kits, camp stoves, etc.  Works really slick.  That is a trick I learned in the Forest Service.  At the bottom of the pack I placed the compression sack with the clothes and the sleeping bag, next was the poncho liner, followed by the tent, and topped off with the toiletries.  

When packing up your gear be sure to put the last thing you will want first, and the first thing you will want last.  The tent is left near the top so that if you are setting up camp in the rain or after dark it can be the first thing you lay your hands on.  If it is raining and your tent is on the bottom you will have to lay everything else out in the rain in order to access it.  Bad idea.

My pack~40.8 lbs

 The contents of my pack included (clockwise starting at top left), tool kit bag (made from brown cargo pants leg), first aid kit (zip-lock bag), heavy green wool blanket (beneath & first aid), mess kit, 12'x12' green Etowah tarp form Ben's Backwoods, dark blue wool sweater, Cabela's 25" x 76" sleeping pad, tent poles (orange bag), tent stakes (small brow bag), my lovely axe, 3 sticks of dynamite (kidding, they are flares), black compression sack with clothes, rubber poncho (under flares & compression sack).

The wool blanket is folded into a thick rectangle, roughly the length and width of the pack. It is then laid in first to act as a pad between my back and my gear. My compression sack and mess kit go in the bottom, followed by the tool bag, and tarp, then the first aid kit and my sweater and finally the poncho.  If the weather gets cool I can easily fish out my sweater to add a layer, and if it begins to rain the poncho is on top to throw over myself, or my gear.  We used the poncho to cover our firewood when it threatened rain.  When I solo camp and have my hammock I lay out the poncho on the ground beneath it  to keep my feet clean an dry when getting in and out.

The axe, tent poles, and sleeping pad were all tucked under the three leather straps that close the pack up.

The food pack and Lil' Bastard...

  And then there was the food pack.  I will go a little bit into our favorite dish on the trip in a future post.

Items taken and to be left behind next time:

• Some extra clothing was superfluous.  I wore the same thing the entire trip and washed it every night. I had an extra set of lighter weight clothes that I only used as a pillow at night.
• Snacks; for some reason when I am in the woods I do not get as hungry as often as I do at home.  Leaving behind trail mix and the like would have greatly decreased the weight of our food pack.
• File and stone for axe/knife; I need to invest in a small, lightweight, high-quality stone for sharpening in the field.  Any suggestions?

Items taken, not used, to be taken again:

• First aid kit; fairly self explanatory I think
• Flares; the flares could be used for signaling, or starting a fire in an emergency
• Sweater; bulkier than it is heavy, if it had gotten cold I would have been happy it was taking up space.
• Tarp; had it rained on our trip the tarp would have been priceless.  It can be stretched over the cooking area to provide cover.  If you have ever spent rainy days trapped in a tent you will understand why it is worthwhile to pack a rain-fly.

Items we wished we had:

• Water purifier; we boiled the entire time which worked out well because our trip itinerary was so laid back.  It might have been nice to have a purifier on our day trip though.
• More pizza ingredients!  This will make more since later...

Deer Camp 2011

 We had another successful deer season this year that, yet again, has given us a full larder.  My wife and I each took two deer.  In the picture up above you can see a portion of the crew from this year.  At one point we had 14 hunters*

*Did you know you can fit 14 people in a 4-door Dodge Dakota, armaments included.  Impressive, I know...

My buck

Here you can see the buck I took through the neck (the ONLY place to shoot a deer) at about 40 yards with a .50 caliber flintlock long rifle.  Dropped where he stood.

Shelley's buck

 Shelley took this buck with a .50 caliber in-line.  The ballistic tip bullet she used did amazing amounts of damage from the shock of the bullet.  This was another neck shot and the buck didn't even wiggle.

Dad's buck

My Dad broke from tradition and took this buck literally between the eyes from a whopping 6' away.  How did he get so close?  The trick is all the camo and scent blocking equipment he uses.  If you don't use that stuff you will never get a deer. Obviously...