The Art Of Walking In The Woods

I spend a lot of time walking in the woods. Walking in the woods is a love  affair that began as a young boy. It is an intense affair.

In fact, as part of our retirement lifestyle, Shirli and I now live in the woods. Our tiny cabin is surrounded by woodland. Our yard, if it can even be called a yard, is little more than a small clearing. There is no lawn to mow or shrubbery to manicure. Large bay trees, tall longleaf pines, a variety of oaks, sweetgum, blackgum, red maple, wild blueberry, and a variety of other woody shrubs and vegetation are our natural landscaping.

The small clearing is also characterized by surface roots, small stumps and stobs left from clearing scrub and saplings, and fallen natural debris. I’ve grown to appreciate the natural debris that is constantly falling from the trees. I am never without kindling material.

Some would consider our yard an obstacle course littered with tripping hazards and ankle rollers.

I admit that I did turn an ankle two winters ago. 

Accidents happen. They can happen to the best of us. I did not break anything, but the incident caused some serious nerve damage in my foot that took several months to get over. It was my own fault, something that I paid for with a lot of painful hobbling around. Floppy slip-on house shoes are not designed for walking around outside in an environment where surefootedness is a requirement.

Most of the walking performed by modernites is done on level and smooth surfaces … on the concrete and asphalt paths and floors of modern life. Most of it is what I call get there walking. I have done a lot of get there walking over the years. 

Get there walking is really a mindless type of walking where we don’t think about our steps. We are simply picking them up, putting them down, and bi-pedal locomoting along as a means to hurriedly get to where we are going. Heel and toe. Springing along as we go. Unconcerned about the level surface beneath our feet and, all too often, unconcerned about the surrounding environment.

This type of get there walking is fine for streets, sidewalks, and floors where most people do their stepping. It is the only mode of walking that most people are familiar with.

It is, however, a pitifully poor way to walk in the woods.

I have a great appreciation for those that wrote about and left behind a record of their outdoor adventuring in those days-gone-by. There are a number of them that I would sit around a campfire with if I could. There is a purity and genuineness about them that evokes deep respect and admiration from me this far this side of their time wandering the woods. They, in my mind, are the great ones. Their tools and technology may have been inferior to ours but … pardon me if what I am about to say offends sensibilities … the rest of us, regardless of what we think of ourselves, our tools, and our skills, are merely living in their shadows.

Allow me to borrow a quote from one of these great ones.

“In walking through a primitive forest, an Indian or a white woodsman can wear out a town-bred athlete, although the latter may be the stronger man. This is because a man who is used to the woods has a knack of walking over uneven ground, edging through thickets, and worming his way amid fallen timber, with less fret and exertion than one who is accustomed to smooth, unobstructed paths.” Horace Kephart, The Book Of Camping & Woodcraft, Chapter XIII, p. 179, © 1906.

There is an art to walking in the woods. It is not a difficult art to learn. It is something though, like any other art, that involves consciousness and takes practice.

It is easy enough to learn a different way to step so that our feet are landing flatly on the ground. Simply walking barefoot or in thin soled moccasins for a few consecutive days on ground filled with pebbles and littered with sticks and other debris will teach a person to walk lightly and flat footed. The bruises on the bottom of the heels received the first day will be the greatest teacher.

I think the most difficult thing involved in learning the art is breaking the patterns of hurriedness in our minds. The hurry up and get there lifestyle patterns imbedded in our minds, and the daily get there schedules that birth these mental patterns, are the mean culprits standing in our way.

Go ahead. Go for a walk. Take three times as long as it would normally take to get there.

Enjoy the adventure.

Note: The above photos are gleaned from our archive of photos that we have taken over the years. 

Fire As A Life-Essential

Fire is a friend that serves several important purposes in outdoor settings.

We use fire to cook uncooked food and to heat up already processed food. Fire is used to elevate the temperature of non-potable water to 212 degrees as a means to sterilize it and render it safe for human consumption. We use fire to ward off the cold that would otherwise cause us to become hypothermic and possibly die as a result of our core body temperature getting too low. The heat from a fire is effective in helping to dry damp or wet clothes that would otherwise increase the danger of hypothermia. The light from a fire, even a small fire, at night lends a sense of comfort to us. The smoke from a fire during the warmer months keeps mosquitoes away from the immediate area. Fire and smoke also help to discourage four-legged night visitors while we are trying to rest in preparation for the next day ahead of us.

Fire requires three elements in order to exist. Every fire requires fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source that is hot enough to generate combustion.

We find and utilize the fuel (wood) that nature provides. Nature provides the oxygen (air). We carry with us the tools necessary to generate the initial combustion.

In teaching the art of fire making to youth (and others) I have always pointed out the importance of collecting all the fire making material needed to build a fire that will sustain itself before wandering away in search of more firewood or to engage in the other affairs necessary in setting up a camp. A fire of twigs and small sticks will quickly burn itself out and send you back to starting over from the beginning.

Have on your person and in your kit the tools necessary to build a fire. Don’t just possess them. Become proficient in using them.

There is quite an assortment of modern and primitive ways to generate combustion. 

I consider primitive ways to be quite novel. 

I think it is important to acquire the primitive skills if you can. Knowing how to spin an ember with a hand drill and a bow drill involves a learning curve and a good amount of physical energy. Learning them can be a lot of fun. Learning them can also be terribly frustrating and, for some people, physically impossible due to a number of physical health conditions. 

These primitive methods also become practically impossible in wet conditions.

The primitive flint and steel method is a fun way to generate combustion. It was, at one time, the “modern” method and made the fire making chore a lot easier for people. The problem with primitive flint and steel is that the pre-processed charred material necessary to catch a spark has a tendency to absorb moisture from the atmosphere and becomes difficult to ignite with the relatively cool small sparks from a primitive fire steel and a rock that is capable of shaving sparks from the steel.

While these primitive methods can indeed be used to generate combustion, I am of the opinion that they should not be depended upon as the “go-to” methods when there are more effective and dependable modern tools to accomplish the purpose, especially in a multiple day/night get-home journey that can, in every sense of the word, be considered a survival scenario.

Matches (particularly the wind and waterproof types), Bic (and similar type) lighters, and ferro rods (modern version of primitive flint and steel) are the most practical combustion tools that you can carry on your person and in your kit. They are the most dependable methods of generating the initial heat necessary in the fire making process at our disposal.

Practice the art of fire making until the art is perfected. 

It is important to practice in all types of weather. Practice with damp, wet, and otherwise marginal material. Fire is a life-essential.

It is not always a bright sunny day or clear dry night when we need a fire.

Note: This blog article is an excerpt from a larger body of work focusing on practical prepping and personal preparedness that we will be uploading soon and making available via Kindle Direct Publishing.

Growing Old?

We try.

We give it our best shot.

Our best efforts, however, are futile.

The stark reality eventually breaks through all the clouds and smoke screens of our personal denial.

I will admit it.

I am growing old. I refuse to think that I am old. Growing? Yes. Old? No. Perhaps even this refusal is yet another illusion in my aging mind. I will continue to protest and grasp tightly to this refusal … illusion or not.

Stark reality. Mail has begun to arrive in our P.O. Box insisting that my existing health insurance will soon be transferred to the department that will oversee my “Old Timer” health insurance coverage with its assorted alphabetical parts. Stark reality. In March I will turn Sixty-Five.

Where did the years go and how did they go so fast?

The Autumn beauties shine only for a short season as part of their cycle of life.

Then they are gone.

They are fading fast now.

Winter is coming.

How many more seasons do I have in me to enjoy their seasonal shining?

The unanswerable question spurs me.

I cannot answer the unanswerable question. I can say that I will make the best of the remaining seasons … ever how many (or few) there happen to be.

Life, in some ways, is just now getting really good. It is, at the same time, leveling some physical limitations on me that require adjustments and creative work arounds in order to maintain my status as an avid woods wanderer and outdoor adventurer.

The stark reality is that reality bites. It bites all of us sooner or later. None of us are immune to its effects. Our challenge is to recognize and accept our limitations and find ways to continue doing what we do in spite of them … even if that means doing them in lesser degrees over shorter distances.

Rest assured, I have taken up the challenge. In numerous ways the best is yet to come. I am yet a long way from dumping my pack and calling it quits.

I have always been given to episodes of nostalgia. I have always been an introspective person. I have noticed that I have grown even more nostalgic and introspective as the calendar months have brought me closer to the sixty-five-year age marker. That these traits appear in my blogs and videos are unavoidable.

Pardon me.

My age is beginning to show.

Growing old has its perks though.

Life has gotten a lot simpler now that the mad rush to get here is behind me.

In its simplicity there is time to more fully apprehend and appreciate the things that were, during the rush, snatched and grabbed at fleetingly when time would allow. There is time to go at things at an unhurried pace. There is time to entertain nostalgia. There is time to experience introspection. There is time to wander and wonder with less thought given to the movement of the hands on the clock, or the day of the week, or the month of the year.

There is, at the same time, no time to entertain distracting disputes, controversies, and forms of bovine fecal matter that needlessly consume emotional and mental energy. 

The adventure continues, folks. Even when the Old Timer Insurance kicks in. We may not move as fast or carry as much weight as we did when we were younger and more spry but there is still room for us in the woods. 

Enjoy the adventure!

Daybreak on the Perdido

The moon made its waning appearance overnight.

Though waning, it was still bright enough to clearly illuminate the reflective white sandbar that we made our twenty-four home.

The words, as they often do, returned to hauntingly ring in my head.

“For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,

With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;

And men are withered before their prime

By the curse paved in with lanes and streets.

And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,

In the smothering reek of mill and mine;

And death stalks in on the struggling crowd –

But he shuns the shadow of the oak and pine.”

-        George W. Sears (Nessmuk), Woodcraft and Camping

Out here where everything reminds me of how insignificant I am in the great scheme of manmade things and agendas ... I can be myself with nothing to diminish who I am.

I first met the Perdido back in the late 70’s when large tracts of the land on this side of the river were owned by one of the paper companies.

That company closed down and something to the tune of 17,000 acres is now held by the State and used as a Wildlife Management Area. Blocks of it have been purchased by Forever Wild. Forever Wild land is just what the name implies. The hand of man, for perpetuity, ceases to interfere with the order of nature. The native habitat, and the wildlife supported by it, will have a chance to recover for future generations to see and enjoy. https://www.alabamaforeverwild.com/   

It is a smidge less than a three-mile drive from the paved highway to where Shirli dropped us off. The hike in from there is a short one. Maybe a quarter of a mile on an eroded and closed woods road. There was one spot in the eroded road where we had to work our way around a deep hole of water then walk through near ankle deep water.

It is wild woods … beautiful woods … along the tannin stained Perdido with its average water temperature that ranges between 53 and 56 degrees. 

A sandbar on the Perdido is about as remote as one can get in this county without trespassing on private property.

The remoteness of a sandbar on the Perdido tends to create the illusion that one is far deeper in the wilderness than they actually are. The illusion will likely unsettle pavement and concrete pounders. It is, however, a pleasant illusion for a woods wanderer with a lust for wandering the woods.

There were a few signs that others use the sandbar but not nearly what I expected to see. We saw only one other person during our stay … a lone kayaker making his way down the river. https://www.alabamacanoetrails.com/perdido  

The chilly water of the Perdido creates an interesting micro-environment.

This micro-environment isn’t particularly noticeable during the day. It makes itself known at night. It cools down significantly at night along the banks of the Perdido. The micro-environment, where the river cooled air meets the warmer surrounding air, generates an unavoidable heavy saturating dew. Plan for that. Take along an extra layer of warmth in the cooler season. A warm blanket during the summer is advisable.

A lot has changed since the day when Nessmuk wandered the Northwoods.

The spaces for wandering the woods freely have greatly diminished. 

Yet, despite the losses, there are still pockets where we can escape the grips of modern times. There are still spaces where we can wander, relax, recover, and experience at least the illusion of something that existed long before our time.

I took along my camera and a GoPro to capture the trip. There is a link below to the Perdido River Overnight video on my David Kralik Outdoors YouTube channel.

Also, you can subscribe by email to receive notifications when new articles are posted here on the David Kralik Outdoors blog. The subscribe feature is in the right hand column. Fear not, folks. I do not generate spam mail.

Enjoy the adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8FE63gTr0

Just Passing Through

They showed up early Friday morning.

I saw them when they arrived.

I was sitting in my camp chair drinking coffee and watching a lone Cormorant swimming around on the end of the pond where we were camped for the weekend with a group of friends that we often refer to as Tribe. It is called a pond. A thirty-acre pond, in my mind, is more akin to a small lake.

The morning warmed up quickly once the sun broke the horizon. Not the first hint of a breeze was stirring. The surface of the pond was smooth as glass.

They came from the North, circled once before lowering their landing gear, then touched down near the middle of the pond. That is where they stayed throughout the day. At times they would swim in tight circles. Clockwise. Counter-clockwise. At times they would swim in a straight line in one direction for fifty yards or so before turning about and then, in single-file fashion, retrace the duck paddled distance.

The Cormorant stayed close to our camp until late in the morning. I don’t know if it was some kind of longing for company or if it was out of curiosity. Regardless of the cause, it took the Cormorant half an hour to paddle its way to the small plump of ducks in the middle of the pond. It stayed with the ducks during the middle of the day. Slightly outside their circle-swimming. Always a short distance from them in their single-file paddling forth and back. 

Then, after mid-afternoon, the Cormorant returned to the end of the pond where we were camped.

Wallace Stegner, historian and novelist, makes a lot of sense in The Wilderness Letter (1960). He wrote, “we need wild places because they remind us of a world beyond the human.” It is in the wild places that we “have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.” Without wild places we would be “committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life.” Stegner concluded, “We simply need wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

Almost sixty years have passed since Stegner typed those words on what long ago became an obsolete typewriter. A lot has changed in sixty years. The termite-life has become tremendously more advanced and complicated over these near sixty years.

I pleasantly found myself both entertained and amused by the Cormorant and the ducks. I also found myself a little surprised by what seemed to be an irresistible attraction to watching them … something a little akin to a child’s interest in watching a fuzzy caterpillar for the first time crawling up their shirt sleeve. I felt that I belonged there in that day-long moment that would have bored most people to tears.

It was not only where I belonged. It was where I needed to be.

What happened to the ducks?

I looked for them Saturday morning and glanced out over the pond several times during the day. 

They were gone … apparently just passing through. A lot of migratory birds are passing through on their way to places farther South for the winter.

Just passing through.

That is all any of us are doing. We are all just passing through.

Enjoy the adventure.

Why I Am On Public Platforms

I was not afforded the pleasure of knowing either of my grandfathers. My maternal grandfather died when I was still in diapers. My paternal grandfather divorced my paternal grandmother in 1953 and moved to Florida where he was run down and killed in a very suspicious hit and run incident. I was a grown man, about eight years ago, when I first saw a picture of my paternal grandfather.

I have only a vague memory of my maternal grandmother. I was barely out of the toddler stage when she died. There are pictures of her. My mom, aunts, and uncles told stories about her and their father. Hardscrabble farmers … sharecroppers in the upper part of the State before moving to the lower part … where they managed to pull things together and purchase their own hardscrabble forty acres.

My paternal grandmother?

She lived next door to us in a little house that my dad built for her. I was a young kid in elementary school when she died. I walked over to see her quite often. She cared for me like a grandmother cares for a grandchild. I remember that much about her, and that our conversations … if you can call them that … were little more than a mess of pointing and grunting. She, and her husband, had immigrated from Czechoslovakia. She never learned to speak more than a few words of English. My dad was born in Minnesota and grew up bi-lingual. He saw no value in teaching us to speak the language, though when he and his siblings were together they carried on their conversations in what sounded like jibber-talk to me.

So here I am, all these years later, myself a grandparent. Shirli and I have eight blood-related grandchildren and another ten step-grandchildren. I never wanted to be called grandpa. I opted for the grand-title of Poppy. Maybe it is my futile attempt at escaping this age-related reality. Poppy, in my head anyway, doesn’t sound as old as grandpa or its other life-spectrum counterparts.

People use these modern self-publishing platforms for an assortment of reasons … blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and the like. Some uploaded keystroking and video footage and, in an instant, the world sees you and knows your business. On the one hand it is a good thing. On the other hand, it is scary considering the enormity and diversity of what can be found with a few keystrokes.

Why am I on these platforms carving out my own little corner in cyberspace?

The answer is basically three-fold.

I am a solitary hermit-type that thrives on solitude. I am not anti-social. I have grown, however, quite selective-social. It would be extremely easy for me to pull the plugs, drown my smart-phone, and disappear from view altogether except for the occasional wander into town to pick up supplies. These platforms keep me from becoming a total recluse and offer me a needed outlet for personal creative expression.

The encouragement factor figures into the three-fold answer. I want to encourage others to explore and adventure outdoors. All of us may not be able to hump a forty-pound pack deep into remote areas for days on end. All of us can discover and develop an interest in activities that take us at least to the edge of deep woodlands, mountains, and flowing streams where nature’s medicine can be absorbed by our senses. I personally need a lot of nature’s medicine. David Kralik Outdoors reflects my pursuit to satisfy my personal need.

The third part of the answer has to do with legacy. Those old black and white photos of my grandparents are merely cold and lifeless images of them. The stories told of them by their children will be forgotten with the passing of time. These modern printing and recording tools offer me a way to leave something of my living-self behind as a gift for my grandchildren … a lot more than a box of cold and lifeless photographs.

Note: I have added a subscribe feature in the right-hand blog column. By subscribing you will be sent an email notifying you when blogs are uploaded.

I also want to make a few keystrokes to express my appreciation and say thank you for including David Kralik Outdoors in your reading and YouTube viewing material. Your comments are always appreciated.

The adventure continues. Enjoy the Adventure!

Curing My Nature Anemia

I do not know quite what to think about this crossroad.

Maybe it is a normal part of the process. Maybe it is simply part of my personal born a Pisces personality complex that is coming into full-bloom. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that life has arrived at a point where I can allow myself the luxury of allowing it to accompany me. Maybe it is a combination of the three with a dash of this and a shake of that thrown in.

At times I find the crossroad a pleasant place to be.

At times it evokes a sadness that pulls me into a passing state of melancholy.

I never know which direction it will take me, and I have learned to simply go along for the ride.

The simple reality that I reckon with is that I am becoming quite nostalgic as I go through this aging process. It is odd how good memories unexpectedly float to the surface of life’s experiences and drift around in the flotsam that is always present. I cannot help but to notice and pay attention to the good memories.

Important stuff becomes more important and there is now time to focus on the things that are most important.

Important? More important? Most important?

Relative terms of measurement that mean something different in the lives of everyone.

We all set our priorities. The tragic thing about priorities is that all too often our personal priorities can turn into pits of despair. As Robert Burns put it, “The best laid schemes o mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.”

What I do outdoors is more than a hobby that has made its way onto my personal priorities list. It is, for me, more of a lifestyle choice.

I spent a large part of my adult life looking forward to my next occasional outdoor adventure. Other important life-matters seemed to always take priority over outdoor adventuring. Those outdoor adventuring occasions were few, short, and often far between. I shorted and deprived myself of something that I needed. I think, in retrospect, that by shorting and depriving myself of something that I needed, I also shorted and deprived others of a better part of me that was left neglected and malnourished.

Those days of neglected malnourishment are behind me. I no longer suffer from N.D.D. (Nature Deficiency Disorder).

Autumn is here. 

Trees are losing their leaves. The autumn wildflowers are really showing their colors and our crazy L.A. (Lower Alabama) heat and humidity has finally let up. It’s time to pull the Kodiak tent out of the shed and get our Fall Camping Tour on!

Shirli and I are headed to a group camp this coming weekend. We’ll be camping and making more good memories at the Open Pond Recreation Area in the Conecuh National Forest.

I consider myself a fortunate man. Part of the fortune is that I share life with someone that not only feels my need for the outdoors but also shares in my need for it.

Note: For those of you that enjoy YouTube, here's a link to my most recent video.

Payne Lake Overnight