Tarp Versatility

A while back I led a program on the versatility of tarps and tarp variants.  I demonstrated how to use a parachute as a cooking fly (which did not go perfectly because it was insanely windy that day). 

Cross-brace and tether in place (Photo by R. Thurman)

Canadian jam knot tied to tether to raise and lower the parachute (Photo by R. Thurman)

Upright and guy-line (Photo by R. Thurman)

Completed (Photo by R. Thurman)

Demonstrating under the parachute (Photo by R. Thurman)

After we had the parachute up we moved a short distance away to talk about just how damned useful a poncho can be.

Tying in poncho liner to make a bivy sack (Photo by R. Thurman)

Snapping two ponchos together to make a pup-tent (Photo by R. Thurman)

More snapping... (Photo by R. Thurman)

Sharpening a tent stake (Photo by R. Thurman)

Almost done... (photo by R. Thurman)

A Canadian jam knot tied by one of the participants (Photo by R. Thurman)

All done except the center pole (Photo by R. Thurman)

And done! (Photo by R. Thurman)

 The last thing we did with the poncho was make it into a stretcher using two Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) saplings for poles.

Cutting a sapling (Photo by R. Thurman)

Poncho has been laid out then the saplings were laid out a foot or so apart then the poncho was folded over itself into the center... longest caption ever... (Photo by R. Thurman)

Stretcher in use (Photo by R. Thurman)

 The last thing we worked on was putting up a diamond fly with a camping hammock underneath.

Putting up the fly (Photo by R. Thurman)

Continued (Photo by R. Thurman)

Prepping to suspend the hammock (Photo by R. Thurman)

Finishing suspending the hammock (Photo by R. Thurman)

Camping in style! (Photo by R. Thurman)

A New Spoon

Buckthorn Spoon

Just a quick post of a spoon I carved on a hike today.  It is made from Common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica L.).  From tree to what you see here took about 20 minutes.  I will sand and finish it tomorrow. Special thanks to Brittney for letting me use the photo.

Modified Swedish Torch

I have been fascinated by the idea of the Swedish torch for some time, but the found it unpractical since the cuts in the logs were often done with a chainsaw.  I should have prefaced that comment by saying when I first came across information on the Swedish torch the ones I saw were made with a single block of wood using a chainsaw to make the air channels.  Then I saw a blog post (which of course I cannot find now) that showed making a Swedish torch out of small diameter limbs lashed together.  Brilliant I thought!

That was about 2 years ago...

I have been meaning to experiment with the idea, but I just did not make the time.  That happens to me.  A lot.  That is something I need to work on, but I will blog about that elsewhere.  I find the best way to force myself to learn a new skill, or hone an existing one is to teach a class on it.  Then I have others depending on me, and here are the results.

Batoning the cedar log.
Photo by R.T.

Lashing split-wood together with jute twine.
Photo by R.T.

Inserting River birch (Betula nigra) bark as tinder.
Photo by R.T.

Lighting with my ferro rod
Photo by R.T.

Fire started.
Photo by R.T.

Billy pot on the torch.
Photo by R.T.

The advantage of the Swedish torch in wet, or snowy conditions is that it gets your fire up out of the moisture and it creates a ready made pot stand so long as the wood you are using is roughly the same length.

The only thing I will change the next time is I will use a light gauge wire, like florists wire, to wrap the bundle in.  The jute burned through (which did not surprise me) but how rapidly the fire spread into the interior of the torch did surprise me.  I can definitely see some huge advantages to the Swedish torch in non-wet conditions to, such as greatly limiting fire scars.

Have you ever made one of these?  What are your thoughts?

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!

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...

Bushcraft vs. Leave-No-Trace: A Response

Brian of "Brian's Backpacking Blog" fame had a post semi-recently asking his readers to chime in on whether buschcraft and leave-no-trace (LNT) are compatible.  I started to write my response in the comment box but then it started to take up A LOT of space, so I decided I would use my own blog as a soap box for my opinion.  And here it is...

Bushcraft for me is the act of participating in nature while taking an "extreme" (my words) view of the LNT principles is the act of passing through nature.  I believe that following the LNT principles as they are written makes them completely compatible with bushcraft. In order to prove my point we are going to explore the 7 principles and my interpretation of them with the juxtaposition of how some LNTers interpret them.

The Seven Principles of Leave-No-Trace:

1. Plan and Prepare Ahead: Fairly straight forward.  If you are camping in winter, don't pack Bermuda shorts, that would just be silly. But seriously, learn as much as you can about where you are going before you go there and pack accordingly.  Think of possible scenarios and make sure you are ready for the probable ones.
2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces:What's a durable surface?  Refer to Principle One and learn if there are any fragile soil types that you need to avoid.  When I was a ranger in the Boundary Waters I always slept on exposed granite.  Pretty damn durable stuff that granite...
3. Dispose of Waste Properly: Another straight forward guideline.  Do not litter.  Idiots litter.  Do not be an idiot.  We will revisit Principal One here, find out if there are backcountry latrines, if so use them, if not find out if cat holes are sufficient, if not maybe you need to pack out your feces.  For me, if I can't get by with a cat hole I do not need to see it.
4. Leave what you find:  This is one I struggle with.  I am who I am today because when I was a boy I filled my pockets with rocks, and acorns, and skulls, and *gasp* picked flowers for my mother.  If I had not done those things, or if I had been told not to do it I think there is a really good chance I would not have developed such a fondness for the outdoors.  I see this a lot in my line of work.  Teachers are often screaming at the kids not to touch anything in nature because they might hurt it or it might be poison ivy.  Which brings us back to Principal One, I'm detecting a pattern here.  Learn if there acceptable things to pick up an take home as souvenirs. You will be impacting the environment less by taking a pebble home as a reminder than if you buy a cheap petroleum based knick-knack that traveled in excess of 5000 miles to arrive at the tourist trap you picked it up at. In Iowa, on public lands nuts, fungus, and berries are fare game.  In National Forests shed antlers are ok to pick up, but antlers attached to a skull are to be left.  I once let a young gentleman who was about 11 years old carry a moose skull with moderately sized spoons out of the Boundary Waters.  Illegal?  Yes.  But if you had seen the pride in that little guys eyes as he passed me on the portage with that skull balanced on his pack you would understand why I did not.  His scout leader said he had found it early in the trip and had carried on each portage, including one portage that was over 500 rods (one rod= 16.5 feet). I console myself in that now he may be majoring in natural resources at a major university because of his experiences on that trip.. There are non-native/invasive flowers, trees, shrubs, etc almost everywhere you go.  Learn what they are an let your little ones pick the flowers and you can cut the trees and shrubs for your spoon carving and buck saws. You will be things out of the forest and leaving a trace, a positive trace. Educate yourself and make a difference.
5. Minimize Campfire Impacts: Note that it does not say "never use a fire" which is how some folks interpret this principal.  Keep your campfires small.  Harvest dead and down wood away from your campsite. Use grate when they are provided.  If you want to use a stove look into making your own like one of my woodsman heroes.  If you think you are "leaving no trace" by using a white gas stove you need to visit a bauxite mine and an oil refinery sometime...
6. Respect Wildlife: Another straight forward principal I think. Leave wildlife alone when camping.  Other wise you could end up like Timothy Treadwell... Oh yes, I just went there...
7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors: Be peaceful and respect other recreational users.  If they are compiling with regulations keep off your soap box.  If you are a hardcore LNTer please do not accost a bushcrafter for practicing there craft if they are not breaking rules.  It is a bad idea.  We carry insanely sharp knives and axes all the time. (That's joke you realize,  sometimes the knives and axes are only moderately sharp).

And that is my take on implementing LNT into bushcrafting.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic, even if the conflict with mine.  I will just be sitting here...sharpening my axe...

Look at me... I'm sailing!!!

A few years ago I went to a movie featuring Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany called "Master and Commander: The far Side of the World" and instantly wanted to sail on a tall ship.  A good friend of mine we'll call "Morgan" informed me that the film was based upon a series of books know, collectively, as the Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian which only furthered my desire to sail on a tall ship.  But alas it is my lot to live in land-locked Iowa where tall ships are exceedingly, nay exasperatingly rare.  So what is a bushcrafter to do when he has sailing blood coursing through his Scandinavian veins?  Why he needs to improvise a sailboat!

So I did, during a summer camp at work.

The kids, other naturalists, and I took a couple of canoes down to a lake found near our Nature Center and then set about to find sticks to use in lashing the canoes into a pontoon and for the mast for our sail.  The sail in this case was my ever present surplus poncho.

We lashed the two canoes together with assorted ropes and 550 p-chord and three, wrist diameter sticks each about 3'-3.5' long.

 The sail was supported by a frame made by lashing together four wrist-diameter hackberries (Celtis occidentalis L. ) that were being shaded out by some old cottonwoods.  In this picture you can see me and two other naturalists lashing the starboard (right-hand) mainmast to the thwart located abaft (behind) the bow seat.

 Once we had securely lashed the cross-braces to the canoes thwarts and attached backstays to the mainmasts, and the sail lashed to the spars it was time time to see if she was sea worthy.

 Here you can see two other naturalists lowering the sail after we'd paddled into the wind and swung the pontoon around.  The top spar (not in photo) is square-lashed to the two up right masts.  The bottom spar is lashed to the sail only and is longer than the distance between the two masts.  The overlap of the lower spar pushes into the mast when the wind fills the sail and pushes the whole thing forward.

 Look at me.... I'm sailing!!!

We didn't get going to fast, slightly slower than an easy paddling speed largley because of the way the wind acted on the lake that day.  With a larger body of water where the winds are steadier, and less erratic we could have gone much faster than if we had paddled.  I look forward to trying it again soon.

Anyone else ever improvised a sailboat?  I'd love to hear about it!

My Guide to Field Guides and Journals

I did this post a while back on a now defunct blog.  I was pretty happy with it so I’d thought I resurrect it here. The post is about my choices in field guides for identifying flora and fauna while out in the field.  In it I explore print media, free on-line sources, and also show some of the ways that I use to help me ID plants and animals that are new to me.  

Print Media

There are a wealth of books out there that cover plant and wildlife identification in very broad terms covering entire continents such as the Sibley Guide to Birds to highly specialized books that focus on one family, or species like Stokes Field Guide to Warblers. Selection of a good field guide depends entirely on what you...(wait for it!).... want to identify in the field!  If you are interested in birds alone, pick out a book that covers birds in your region (i.e., Western U.S., or Eastern U.S., etc...).  A little later I will give my recommendations for the series of books that I use.  At this point I would like to give a disclaimer; this is an opinion piece.  These are the books that I prefer to use.  I strongly dislike some books that people better at identification swear by (I am thinking of the Audubon and Peterson guides send hate mail here(include link for email address, do research and find what works for you.  I suggest going to your local library and to check out book layouts.  If they don’t have the ones you are looking for try getting them through a inter-library loan.

OK, so now to the subject.

Birds

For birds I have a couple of recommendations.  For a true field guide I carry the Kaufman Guide to Birds of North America.  I like the Kaufman Guide because of the artwork.  Rather than artists renditions, they are digital photographs, which I find a little more useful in the field.  There are other books in the Kaufman Guides series now covering insects and mammals and that are of the same high quality as the bird guide.  I’ve looked at them but have not purchased them yet.

You’ll notice above I mention Kaufman being a “true field guide”.  By that I mean it’s reasonably sized to be comfortably carried in the field either in a day-pack, shoulder bag, or if you’re built like me, a cargo pocket.  For my “desk guide”  I use the The Sibley Guide to Birds.  The Sibley guides are excellent and go above and beyond simple bird ID by including text on bird behaviors that you may observe.  The wealth of information included in the Sibley books make them a touch prohibitive for use in the field, but they make a great reference to cross check your findings once you are home.

Plants

For plants the books I prefer are a bit specialized and focus on the tallgrass prairies because of my location.  I don’t use an ID book for trees because I was taught those by my Grandpa and Dad growing up.  The prairie book I use is the Falcon guide Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers.  It is broken up by the colors of the flowers rather than my families which makes it nice for beginners.

When it comes to wild edibles I have to go with Sam Thayer’s Foragers Harvest.  I have been lucky enough to meet Mr. Thayer on a couple of occasions through work and the man knows his stuff backwards and forwards.  Mr. Thayer’s books are focused on the Upper Midwest, but a lot of the plants he covers can be found throughout North America.  The layout of the book, the text, and the art work are the best and most concise I’ve ever seen in a book on wild edibles.

Budget Buys

I, like many others in the survival/bushcraft world, tend to be a touch on the frugal side.  So I thought I might take a moment here to endorse some books you can get on a budget.  For a great source of field guides that can easily fit in your back pocket I recommend the small Golden Guide.  There is a Golden Guide for just about every thing you could come across on a hike, day or night such as; insects, birds, trees, flowers, stars, weather, geology, weather, and the list goes on.

One of my favorite desk references, and one of the most important books in my life, is the Reader’s Digest North American Wildlife.  I can remember a copy of this sitting on a shelf in my Grandma’s living room.  I always loved to sit on the floor in front of the kerosene heater on winter evenings after a night of coon hunting and just pouring over the pages.  I think I can safely credit this book with a good portion of my interest in the natural world.

By searching around you can get these guides at very reasonable rates.  If you are a patient lot and as thrifty as I am I recommend setting up an account over at PaperBackSwap.com.  When you set up your account you will get two credits to order books for free; after that you have to mail books out to receive credits (one credit per book).  All you have to do is pay the media mail postage.  You can pay your postage in advance on the site and then print your mailing label with postage right at home.  It isn’t as always as convenient as ordering from an on-line book seller, or going to a local bookstore, but it is low cost and sort of adventurous.  When you set up the wish lists of books you are looking for you receive an e-mail notifying you if one of them has been posted then you just request it and it will be mailed out to you.  You never know when that book you’ve been trying to find will suddenly be within your grasp.

On-line Resources

If you are R-E-A-L-L-Y cheap and aren’t looking to shell out money there are a wealth of websites out there that are very useful for plant and animal ID.  This is all the better you you are tech savvy and have an internet capable phone.  Below you will find a list of my preferred websites and a terse description of what you can find there.

Animal Diversity Web is a excellent source put together from reaserch done by students at the University of Michigan.  Lots of in-depth information no all aspects of the ecological niche’s that animals hold.

eNature is a loss scholarly website geared more towards the layperson interested in animals in there area.  At eNature you can search plants and animals that can appear in your zipcode.  

All About Birds is one of my favorite websites, largely because I love to identify birds.  All About Birds is run by the prestigious Cornell Lab of Ornithology so you can count on the validity of the information you will glean from there site.

American Mushrooms is a site maintained by mycologist an author, David Fischer.   The site has ton of rich photography an text on every fungi imaginable.  Mr. Fischer has also been very good about IDing photos of fungi that I have sent him via e-mail, which is listed on the site.

Kansas Wildflowers is a great place to ID a lot of grasses, flowers and trees, even if you are not from Kansas.  Most of the plants listed on the site occur in my native state of Iowa, and there for can be found across a wide expanse of the Midwest. The site is affiliated with Kansas State University.

Insect Identification is a site I just stumbled across in writing this post.  I had been using a different site for a few years, but i always found it a bit cumbersome to navigate.  In the brief while that I have been looking over Insect Identification it seems that a lot of the problems with my old standby have been worked out.  I am happy about this...

The Importance of Field Notes

When I go hiking I don’t like to carry a ton of ID books with me because of the added weight.  If I carry any ID books at all it will usually be my bird book, or maybe my wild edibles book if I’m on a foraging expedition for new food stuffs.  Instead of carrying a book to ID each new thing I may come across I have taken to carrying a couple of small notebooks that I use for sketching and note taking.  I have found that this technique has greatly improved my powers of observation when traversing the wilds.  

I carry a small Moleskin notebook and pen in my shirt pocket where ever I go.  All day, every day.  Lot’s of important people have done so,  just look here. Then in my satchel (It’s a satchel, not a purse.  Indiana Jones carries a satchel.) I carry and unlined hardcover notebook that I picked up at a local art supply store.  It has a small elastic strap you hold it shut, and a loop on the side where I keep my pencil.

In addition to my satchel notebook I carry an inexpensive set of water colors.  I started out with a set marketed towards children and I had really good luck with it, like this Belted kingfisher.  I purchased my first set of water colors at the lowest possible price for fear I would royally suck at it.   I have since purchased a nicer, yet still modestly priced set of water colors from a company called Reeves.  This kit was appealing to be because of the nice mix of colors it has and it had white, which I have found to be useful for blending and muting colors, etc.

To demonstrate some of the different ways I use field sketches and notes I have included a few of the things I have done over the last few years.  Each sketch was selected to highlight different mediums and different attributes to look for when sketching.

Sketch 1:Pencil Sketch of Bird

I was leading a hike in western Iowa for a group of grade schoolers focusing on Lewis & Clark and the journals they kept when an unidentified bird lit into the top of a nearby tree.  TEACHABLE MOMENT!!!  I deftly reached into my ever present satchel and grabbed my trusty notebook an whipped up this sketch.  I made notes as to field marks that i knew would probably appear in my bird book back home. I promised the kids I would e-mail their teacher when i knew what it was and we continued on our hike.  Upon returning home I was able to easily identify the bird I saw as a Harris Sparrow.

Harris Sparrow

Sketch 2: Pen Sketch of Hawk Tail

One day while my assistant and I were scouting some areas for potential prescribed fires she spotted an unidentified hawk circling above us. As I stared at the distant hawk through my binoculars (don’t scrimp on your optics, cut cost elsewhere) I looked for an distinguishing markings like the shape and length of the wings and tail, and markings on the birds chest.  What stood out most of all was the hawks tail.  So I sketched it in my Moleskin notebook/planner and sketched it.  I also jotted a note next to the picture that the hawk in question was a “Buteo”.  Buteo’s are soaring hawks that have relatively long wings, and short tails that specialize in hunting over open ground.  The “opposite” of a buteo is an accipiter, which generally have short wings and long tails and specialize in hunting in forest environments.

I bring this up because while the hawk in question had the body type of a buteo, and was soaring high above a grassland the tail was marked with distinctive bands, a trait common among accipiters.  Needless to say I was intrigued.  When I was able to look the bird up I learned it was a buteo that has adapted to forest hunting.  Hence the crossover markings on a buteo body of the Broad Winged Hawk.

Broad Winged Hawk Tail Detail

Sketches 3-4: Pencil and Watercolor Plants

Here, side by side, you can see how adding water colors to a sketch can really make a difference when IDing a plant.  Both drawings were done with a No. 2 pencil with notes pointing to where certain colors appear on the plant.  The drawing on the left is a Prairie Larkspur and the one on the right is Toothed Evening Primrose.

Left:Prairie Larkspur Right:Toothed Evening Primrose

Sketch 5: Pencil and Watercolor Bird

Finally I have included an example of a practice painting I did in my kitchen.  I sat down with my bird book and my paints and chose to do a Black-Throated Blue Warbler.  As with any skill it is important to practice to keep yourself sharp.  It’s not always easy to go birdwatching (i.e. the birds are out when the 11 month old is napping, etc.),  so I cross train.  When I can’t make it out I spend time looking over field guides memorizing characteristics and range maps.

Black-Throated Blue Warbler

Conclusion

I hope that this post will be helpful to beginners and experts by showing just some of the resources out there.  I believe that survival is all about observation, and awareness of your surroundings, and that it is arguably the most important skill to have.  Get guide books you are comfortable with, get a note book and a pencil, start taking notes, and sketching.  Paint a picture of a flower.  You will notice intricacies you never before noticed and I believe it will open your eyes and your heart to a world around you that you may have missed.   I hope that you will share your ideas about field guides that I have missed and that it will open a dialog about perception and awareness as it pertains to bushcraft and survival.