The D.I.Y. Six Dollar Bush Pot

Hydration is an important health issue.

We do not give it a lot of thought as long as we are close to a faucet or can grab a bottle out of the cooler at the grab it and go store. Get away from the settlements and established parks and drinking water has to be either hauled in or processed from whatever sources you happen upon.

We need water to stay hydrated. We need water to flush toxins and other junk out of our systems. Without water we can be dried-out dead in 72 hours. We become debilitated and unable to function before we become dead.

My canteen holds a quart of water.

On a normal day I need to drink at least three canteens to keep hydrated. Let the summer heat come on like it does, along with sweat running out my pores like water through a sieve, and I need to increase that amount. That is easy to do when I can turn on a faucet. It is not so easy to do when there are no faucets and every source of water needs to be considered potentially suspicious.

I really like the Stanley cook pots. They are great for stewing up a small meal or boiling some water for tea or coffee. 20 ounces though is way short of the quart that it takes to fill my canteen. It is also a bit small for boiling a grown squirrel that would be too tough to chew if cooked on a spit over an open fire.

I pondered the cook-pot dilemma for some time and looked at some of the popular bush pot offerings that are be had. They are nice pots but the thrifty side of me balked like a mule at the price they go for.

I was in Walmart a few years ago picking up some things and found what I considered to be the perfect pot for my purpose. Stainless steel with a lid and holds a little shy of half a gallon. It was not in the pots and pans section. It was in, of all places, the pet section and made to hold dog treats.

The pot cost me a whopping $6.00.

My thrifty side latched onto it and brought it home.

The lid had a soft rubber gasket on it that I pulled off and threw away as soon as the pot entered the house. Two little holes were drilled, and a piece of metal coat hanger was attached as a bail.

A stainless cup with folding handles sits in the bottom of the dog biscuit pot. The Stanley pot sits inside the cup leaving room for stuff like a dish rag or pot holder.

The pot comes with some stamped embossing around it. Dog tracks.

I told Shirli that I thought about hammering out the embossing. She told me those were bear tracks and to leave them alone.

Yep.

Bear tracks.

That’s what they are.

This pot has accompanied me on a good many trips over the years. It is still serving its repurposed purpose. Sadly, though, I have never seen another one like it in the pet section of that chain store.

DIY Packable Fire-Irons

I saw the idea somewhere along the way so I can’t claim the idea as an original concept.

I can’t remember where or when I saw it. I wish I could so I can credit the idea. All my Googling turned up nothing like it. That’s not to say there isn’t. It’s just to say I haven’t found it. So if I’m stepping on someone’s patent, I apologize up front. The encroachment is purely accidental.

What I do remember about what I saw was that I liked the idea but it was made from thin flat bar material. I didn’t care for what I saw. I figured the thin flat bar would get hot fast and bend under the weight of something sitting on it so I kept my bucks in my pocket.

Back during the winter, when it was fun to build fires and cook over them, I decided to play around with some salvaged 3/16^th round stock. I wanted to make a set of folding fire-irons that were lightweight but strong and packable … something that would be ideal for solo trips.

This particular metal round stock comes from one of those tripod style flower stands that florists attach arrangements to (commonly seen at Visitations and in cemeteries). Very few of these sources for metal are ever recycled. Most of them are left behind and eventually thrown away.

I cut two pieces 14 inches long, figuring this length would be neither too short or too long, then used my forge to heat one end of the two pieces just hot enough to flatten them a little.

[Here’s a little tip. Hammering and flattening the ends hardens them. Heating them a little after flattening them makes it a lot easier to center punch where you will be drilling the two 3/16^th inch holes that have to be drilled. Without center punching the two pieces, it’s really hard for a bit to get a bite when you start drilling.]

I used a flat washer on the slotted side and one on the nutted side of the 1/8^th inch threaded screw. I also spun on a nut between the two halves as a spacer before adding the outside flat washer and nut.

The next step was to use side cutters to trim the length of the diminutive bolt leaving about 1/8^th of an inch showing before peening it on the anvil to flatten the excess screw to insure the rig would never come loose. A little touching on the grinder finished rounding the ends.

These stands come with a heavy coat of baked on enamel paint that is a real chore to sand off. I quickly gave up on sanding, built a hot fire, and put the painted fire-irons into the fire. It was a cold Lower Alabama morning and sitting by a hot fire felt good. A quick wire brushing finished the creation process.

It was a fun little DIY project that yielded a very usable take-along tool.

I also found that the 14-inch length is ideal.

What?

You don’t have a forge?

A forge isn’t necessary for a small project like this. 

A good bed of red hot hardwood coals will heat the small diameter metal enough to make if workable.

A Strange Wildlife Episode

[NOTE: One of the outdoor magazines that I grew up on had a feature entitled "This Happened to Me" that depicted out of the ordinary outdoor experiences. This short blog article is a this happened to me thing ... something completely out of the ordinary and a first for me.]

You just don’t know what a day holds in store when you wake up in the morning.

Most days are routine and uneventful. Now and then one comes along that leaves an indelible memory etched into the memory chips.

Today was one of those memory makers despite the ordinary routineness that began the day.

I made a trip down to the other end of the county to pick up some barnwood. The drive down was pleasant. Hot enough to feel like summer but not brutal like it has been lately. Windows rolled down. Wing windows cocked at just the right angle.

It didn’t take long to load the wood onto my truck. I was in and out in less than thirty minutes and that includes a bit of time visiting with the retired Marine Captain and a retired Army Warrant Officer. I drove back out to Scenic 98, the less than ½ mile to County Road 32, and turned East on 32.

That’s where this strange episode began to play out.

It came from the passenger side and made its way to the driver’s side. Across the bottom of the windshield.

I wanted to video it or at least get a picture, but I figured I’d best leave that alone and mind the business of driving safely. Traffic. Plenty of it. Coming at me and following behind me.

I closed the drivers wing window and rolled up the window when it turned the corner headed toward the rear of the cab.

It turned and headed toward the bottom of the door just before the door handle. I’m thinking all the while that at road speed the wind would blow it off the truck. It disappeared altogether from my view and I figured it was gone. Wing window is open again. Driver’s window opened some but not all the way.

There it was again. It was coming through the wing window.

I shut the wing window on its head and held it in place.

What do you do with an Oak Snake ... a four feet long Oak Snake ... that’s doing its best to get into the cab of the truck with you?

I sat at the light at 32 and 98 and waited for the light to change. I couldn’t help but to chuckle and grin. I was wondering what folks in the flow of traffic might be thinking about this sight.

I pulled into the parking lot of the church there on 32, snapped this couple of pictures with my phone, then (without harm) removed the snake’s head from the wing window and turned it loose.

I’m just glad it didn’t travel across the truck in the other direction and find the open wing window on the passenger side.

Farewell To An Old Friend

It’s gone.

It needed to happen.

It took a lot of years, but it did finally happen.

There is a part of me that is relieved that it happened.

There is a part of me that is very sad that it’s a done deal.

Even knowing it’s what must be done … when it’s done … when it’s all said and done and finally a done deal … there’s something about it that’s difficult to wrap my mind around. Maybe not so much my mind. More so my heart and soul. There is a very real side to the deal that causes me to feel like I’ve said farewell to and buried a dear and lifelong friend.

It didn’t look like much there at the end.

Neglect had taken its toll. Neglect has a way of doing that. Decades of neglect take a heavy toll. At its end it looked nothing like its former self … not even a shadow of its former self.

I’ll not postulate on what it meant to others that had their start in life there. Nor will I postulate on what it meant to others that had some related or sterile association with it. Others have their own personalities. Others have their own perceptions. Others have their own experiences.

Personalities, perceptions, and experiences create their own judgments. Judgments have a way of creating either lasting bonds or fractures that endure. It’s one of those realities in life where, at times, even agreeing to disagree is unable to do the work of Super Glue in reattaching the pieces.

It was, to me anyway, a lot more than a familial habitation surrounded by fields and woods.

It was there where my woods wandering nature began to germinate in the soil of my nature.

I didn’t recognize the event. 

Nor was I aware of the seedling in my soul as it emerged and took shape. It was a slow and subtle process … one overshadowed by the life and social happenings that motivated me as a young boy to solitarily seek out the safe and friendly respite found in the fields and woods of that place. 

Motivated is too weak of a description. Drove is honestly a more accurate way to describe it.

Woods do not recognize social status. They do not impose peer pressure. They do not sponsor sibling rivalry or pecking orders. There is a rhythm of saneness in the woods … a wild and appealing rhythm of saneness … a rhythm of saneness that has a way of teaching and encouraging without ever succumbing to tactics involving personal humiliation.

I don’t remember who she was talking to. It may have been someone there in her living room. It may have been someone on the phone as she sat in her chair. I do remember my mom telling someone that David took to the woods after his daddy died.

The truth of the matter is that I took to the woods a long, long time ago … long before my dad died. That little seed that sprouted and quietly grew into a tree rooted in my inner being has cast its shade and influenced me a lot of years now. It’s always been there. The sorriest and worst times in my life were the years I ignored its shade and tried to blend with the other trees growing in the forest of life. 

At this point I can do no better than to live in its shade.

I admit that I spent a lot of time in those woods after my dad passed from this world.

I did a lot of reminiscing out there. I did a lot of mental sorting and reasoning. It was a convenient place to simply go for a solitary walk. Shirli and I went there to wander on a number of occasions. I used the fields and woods as an outdoor classroom for teaching bushcraft skills. There was also the looming reality factored into the equation … after the For Sale by Owner sign went up … that one day, sooner or later, the land title would be transferred, and I would no longer be able to wander those fields and woods except in memory.

Here’s to you, old friend.

Thanks for the memories.

Good Medicine

I knew nothing of W. H. Murray until a few weeks ago.

Robert Macfarlane recounts Murray’s life in one of the chapters of The Wild Places. Murray was a Scot that found himself attracted to wild places and first began adventuring into wild places in Scotland during that hard time in history referred to in this country as the Dust Bowl Years or The Dirty Thirties.

Wildness, for Murray, took on a near-mystical importance.

The mentally embedded images and experiences discovered in wildness, during the dire years of mortal combat and imprisonment in German prison camps soon to follow, kept him from succumbing to total despair. He was, in the very worst of hard conditions, able to venture in his mind to beautiful and peaceful natural places unaffected by the insane brutalities and ravages that surrounded him.

I think, and this is just me thinking, that the vast majority of people on the planet are unable to see the insanity that surrounds them. It’s easy enough to see and hate the obviously insane violence that constantly fills our news feeds. What’s harder for most to see, in my oldering opinion, is the insanity created by the commerce and consumerism that daily surrounds and drastically affects all of us in large degrees.

The Mount Rogers National Recreation Area occupies 200,000 acres in SW Virginia. The area contains Virginia’s loftiest terrain and hosts some 500 miles of trails … the most notable being the part of the Appalachian as it wanders its way through Virginia. Mount Rogers, hence the name of the recreation area, stands 5,729 feet tall.

Shirli and I spent a few days in one of the campgrounds situated at above 3,800 feet. The signs of Spring, in the world down below us at 2000’ elevation, were well formed. Here, in the climate created by elevation, the hardwoods were just beginning to bud.

I stood at the overlook admiring and soaking in the views of the valley down below and the mountains on the near and distant horizons … land that once belonged to one of my bloodlines. My Cherokee bloodline.

There are times when, in respect for this line of my heritage, I feel compelled to make an offering.

This was one of those times.

I reached into my pocket, took out a pinch of tobacco, acknowledged the Creator and my Cherokee ancestors, and let the tobacco settle to the ground.

Mere seconds passed before a Raven made an appearance.

It lingered. Circling in near effortless close circles directly in front of me. The closest part of its flight circle brought it to maybe fifty feet from me. The circles got larger and farther from me as it drifted away and then went on its way.

I stood there. Halted. Amazed. Feeling in my insides that something out of the ordinary had occurred. Not knowing what out of the ordinary had occurred. I needed to know more, sought the more, and discovered the more about what I had experienced at the overlook. The Cherokee believe that birds are messengers between earth and heaven, between the People and Creator. The Raven, Turtle Dove, and Eagle are significant representatives.

People can believe what they choose to believe about this. I’m good with believing that the Creator, and my Cherokee Grandmothers and Grandfathers, were pleased and responded with a messenger showing their acceptance of not only the offering but more so of the offeror as one of theirs.

There is good medicine in wild places.

The solitude found in wild places is a highly medicinal thing. It offers us an opportunity to disconnect from and take a break from the routine of our normal synthetic lives. It forces us to reckon with ourselves, with what we have become, and with what we can become.

We are, when we open and allow ourselves to experience the interior processes of this wild places solitude, irrevocably changed.

3 S's For Woods Wanderers

Slowing down is easier said than done.

I think the difficulty is the product of a socially ingrained inordinate need to generate some kind of   personal performance that we can measure by the same standards that are part of everyday life in a fast-paced world.  We have to be producing something, for some inordinate reason, that is measurable in order to feel we have accomplished something.

I remember back in my professional life when I would take a week of vacation twice a year. I could have taken two weeks at a time but felt my absence would create some sort of inconvenience for people that depended upon me.

People were expecting me to perform at a certain level. People pressed me to perform. I pressed myself to perform. That level became a personal standard for me week in and week out. A week-long vacation was just enough time for me to realize how performance oriented I had become. It would take three or four days for me to disengage and relax. Disengagement usually lasted a day before my mental transmission began gearing back up for returning to the performance routine.

I no longer measure myself according to standard social or cultural performance measurements and haven’t for quite a long time now. Those days, and those pressures, are far back there in the distant past. Busyness is no longer my business. Especially where outdoors is concerned. There is too much to miss out on in the woods by being too busy.

Busyness in the woods is a sure way to remain apart from the woods. Slowing down helps us reconnect and realize that we are a part of the bigger picture painted by the natural world that surrounds us.

We don’t have to get far off the beaten path or go miles to have a great experience in the woods. Any woodlot will do. Every woodlot, and every step in every woodlot, is a destination within itself.

Here is the nutshell version of my 3 S’s for Woods Wandering.

_____

Watch Your STEPS.

Take three and stop.

We’re not on a military forced march or any sort of power hike. We’re here for the pure and simple pleasure of being here.

Do a SURVEY

Look ahead where those next three steps will take you.

Survey around where you are standing.

Check overhead where your steps will be taking you.

Utilize Your SENSES

Open your gates and absorb all that you can through them … eye-gates, ear-gates, nose-gates.

The sights, sounds, and smells of the woods are in a constant state of change with the coming and unfolding of each season of the year.

_____

All of us that “take to the woods” do so for an assortment of recreational reasons and share a lot of common ground out there in the woods. Those of us that are seasoned Woods Wanderers are familiar with these 3 S’s in one way or another. 

Others may not define them with S’s. The essences of the S’s are there though in every wander that a Woods Wanderer makes in the woods.

Here’s a link to a blog article that Shirli and I collaborated on that talks about making the most of short trips.

http://woodsmokewoodcraftschool.blogspot.com/2017/01/making-most-of-short-trips_22.html

Little River

It’s misting a rain as I sit here in the cabin beginning this keystroking.

The mist in the air is the preliminary stuff ahead of the faint rumbling of that weather front that my sense of hearing is able to detect way off to the west.

We’d still be there enjoying a leisurely morning and going about breaking camp at a slow-mosey pace was it not for the weather images on our phones that prompted us to pack it in and get back to the cabin late yesterday.

There are a few things about this modern era that even a dinosaur can appreciate … a weather app on a smart phone happens to be one of them.

I’m not sure when it was that we personally discovered Little River. It was quite a while ago on one of our spur of the moment day-rides. Many of our day-rides have no particular destination in mind … we just hop in the car and take off exploring backroads and byways that would cause tears of boredom for a lot of the people we know.

Little River.

That’s what it was known as in the beginning when it was built as a State Park. The name, somewhere along the way of its existence, was changed to Claude D. Kelley State Park but everyone that knows the place still calls it Little River. Claude D. Kelley Recreation Area is its official name these days but that’s a lot more syllables to pronounce than the four found in Little River.

Little River sits fairly well in the center of the 2100-acre Little River State Forest. It was so named for the aquatic feature that meanders through it and makes its way to the Alabama River some twenty bird-miles to the west. Those bird-miles, translated into river-miles, are likely close to fifty miles with the greatest part of the distance unnavigable. Following the course of the Little River would make for a mean trip.

Little River Lake was not formed by damming Little River.

The small river is bridged just before the gatehouse on the way into the park.

The lake itself is fed by a couple of small unnamed creeks, one from the north and one from the east. Overflow from the lake, via the spillway, connects with Little River a couple hundred yards from the spillway. Also designed into the earthen dam (3/4 of the way across the dam from the spillway) is an additional overflow (A well-thought out just-in-case measure?) to keep the earthen dam from being cut and compromised by high water seeking its escape from captivity.

Little River is no longer a State Park.

We watched it lose its status and close down when the prior Governor mandated budget cuts as a band aid remedy for the budget crisis that he inherited when he took the Oath of Office. Closing Little River, one of fifteen or eighteen smaller State Parks, did not solve the budget crisis and came as a hard slap to the faces of residents in smaller less commercialized areas that used these parks for wholesome recreation on a regular basis.  

The first closing broke our hearts. It was our go-to spot. We lost our favorite place to camp. We had grown to know the staff that ran Little River. They were doing a great job. Little River wasn’t a day-job for them. It was their day-home and their grief at losing it, though they tried to not show it, was pretty obvious.

Since it is part of the Little River State Forest, responsibility for the park fell into the hands of the Alabama Forestry Commission. The job of the Forestry Commission is to manage State Forests. There is no clause in their job description that puts them in the business of managing parks. Their financial and man power resources are directed toward forestry management.

Two dilemmas were now at work. (1) Little River was closed to the public. (2) There is a clause in the original deed granting this land to the State. The clause says something to the effect … If this property ever ceases to be used as a public area, ownership reverts to the heirs of the original benefactors. It was no secret that those heirs wanted it back.

Little River was closed for a couple of years while the Forestry Commission looked for someone to step in to reopen it. A non-profit did step in (I’ll not mention the name), the park reopened, and everyone thought that all was well. Things were happening again at Little River. Then, without notice, these folks pulled the plug, fell off the face of the earth, and the gate was locked with an affixed sign that said Little River would be opened again when the Forestry Commission found a suitable manager.

We lost, again, our go-to spot. We lost our ideal spot to introduce people to camp. We also lost our ideal location to hold bushcraft training camps.

Little River reopened under new management last month.

We spiked our camp midday Friday. It was the first time to set up again since our last camp in April of 2016.

A lot of good Little River memories garnered over the years were relived during those 48 hours. And, as a small group of volunteers known as Friends of Little River, we were able to make a very visible mark on getting one of the neglected walking trails back into something that makes it a very pleasant 1.5 mile stroll through the woods.

There is something about Little River that grabbed us the very first time we drove through checking it out. That something attracted us at the beginning. It still attracts us and holds our attention and affection. Some of that something has to do with knowing the history behind it … how it came to be in the first place. Some of that something has to do with the way Little River extends an invitation to simply kick back, relax, and leave all the crazy hecticness of the world out there at the gate on Highway 21.

Check out the following links.

https://cccresources.blogspot.com/

https://forestarmy.blogspot.com/