civilisation, when the ability to track hedgehogs and signal in semaphore would be quite handy.
But what if the closest you come to a desert in your day-to-day life is a square mile with no cash machine, and the highest summit you’ve seen today is the top of the multi-storey? Why escape to a fantasy wilderness to get our primal rocks off? Why not use all our innate brilliance to generate some red-blooded adventures right here, in the 9-5, where it matters most?
It’s time for bushcraft to come out of the woods. It’s just as much fun, far more relevant, and there’s no vague whiff of urine.
Man loves to make a good fire. But why persist with sticks and fire lighters when you can use a car battery and a Brillo Pad, with far more impressive results?
Navigation used to be about reading the stars and finding the campsite. For the urban bushman it’s about direction finding by Sky dish, and finding where on earth you parked the car.
And here’s the best bit. Urban bushcraft doesn’t mean turning your back on the comfort of central heating, wireless broadband and a fridge full of cold drinks.
There’s a lot to learn. Let’s get started.
SURVIVAL V BUSHCRAFT
They have different dress codes, different terminology and different attitudes to fossil fuels. But the main difference goes a little deeper.
Our fascination with bushcraft sprang from a revival of interest in American ‘ Wildwood Wisdom’ and Australian aboriginal skills, shortly after World War Two, when it offered some simple certainty in an uncertain world.
Back then you cooked up your coffee on the embers every night and a man’s best friend was his gun and coon-skin hat. Now there’s a Starbucks on every corner and a man’s only friend is his iPhone. But like the woodsman, the urban bushman’s aim is to be happy and relaxed in his chosen habitat. After all, it’s a nice place to be.
You’ve heard of bush craft before, I’m sure. But you may have noticed that there are lots of people doing the same kind of stuff, but calling it survival. Which is which? Here’s a quick and easy identification guide.
| BUSHCRAFT | SURVIVAL |
|---|---|
| TROUSERS | |
| Shorts. If too small then probably Australian (but that’s ok, they invented all this stuff). | Long trousers. Gore-Tex and camo gear. Stubble. |
| DEMEANOUR | |
| Relaxed, like big boy scouts. Keen to give it all an educational purpose. They like to be at one with their environment. | All very breathless and fast paced. This lot just want to survive and get the hell home, quick. Whatever it takes. |
| FIRE | |
| Natural firelighting techniques. They like bow drills. | Oil from the Zippo, petrol from a wrecked car. |
| DIET | |
| Nuts, leaves, wild game, witchetty grubs. | Very happy to snare game, skin rabbits. But prefer to stick to ration packs. |
| SOURCES | |
| Ancient wisdom and primitive tribes. Especially aboriginal Australians. | Once knew someone in the SAS. Also respected: Royal Marines, US Navy Seals and French Foreign Legion. |
Most survival guides would leave you politely at your front step, on the presumption that if you’re home then you’re safe. But for us it’s indoors that it all begins. The reason’s simple: the urban bushman is driven to unearth new challenges and new thrills in the most familiar of places, and, for that, there’s no place like home.
With this fresh perspective and a few new tricks, your humble abode will be transformed into the Great Indoors; a place that screams adventure, with its wide expanse of carpet, and seductive line-up of gadgets (just look at all those remote controls!), not to mention the benefit of central heating and more tea than you could ever drink.
It falls naturally into two sections. To begin, this chapter concentrates on handy skills to turn everyday annoyances at home into a journey of discovery; junk calls, washing up and arguments over the telly are all problems we’re out to solve.
But there’s another important dimension to bushcraft with your slippers on, far beyond pure practicalities. Home is a place of respite from the need for results that muscles in on the rest of your life. So in the second part of this chapter you’ll find some bushcraft for the weekend, where we take things at a more leisurely pace. There are discoveries to share with the family and suggestions to ensure you’ll always have something to do when it’s raining.
But first, it’s purely practical. You need to put the kettle on, so let’s start in the kitchen.
SCREENING CALLS WITH A MICROWAVE
If you’ve ever felt that your mobile rules your life, this one’s for you; a guaranteed way to dodge unwanted calls.
HOW TO SCREEN YOUR CALLS WITH A MICROWAVE
This stems from one big difference between two gadgets that use microwaves. In order to communicate, the mobile phone gets microwaves to shoot around, passing through anything in the way, whether it’s solid brick or gooey grey matter. Our microwave cookers, on the other hand, prefer to contain the waves and focus them on a single bowl of porridge. The microwave stops them escaping with a Faraday cage (a mesh in which the holes are too small for microwaves to squeeze through).
So when your phone rings and you suspect it’s someone you’d rather avoid, here’s what to do:
1 Start to move towards the microwave (switched off).
2 Answer brightly, ‘Hello…’
3 Gradually move your phone in and out of the oven and watch the signal strength fall and rise. With the phone held in the oven (keep the oven switched off, of course) you lose contact completely. Just inside the open door, it fades in and out.
4 Now assume a confused voice…‘Sorry I’m losing you, we’re going through a tunnel’…etc.
The strength of this system is that it can be used after you’ve answered; far more convincing than hanging up in mid-call. After a couple of tries you’ll become a virtuoso, bringing the caller in and out of range at will, playing them like a fish on a
