Weekend skills

I think being able to travel on foot quickly and for long distances is an important survival skill to have. It is more important than being strong so I have stopped lifting weights and started running. I am also in a basketball league so I'm trying to get in shape for that. So far I can barely make 2 miles without stopping.

I ran at the park Sunday and afterwards sneaked into my sit spot. It was a little after noon, and I was sweaty so I figured there wouldn't be much activity. Noon is one of the less active times of day as animals are often avoiding the mid day heat. Animals also pick up on human scent so extra sweat wasn't doing me any good.

Yet after 10-15 minutes a muskrat came swimming by and never looked in my direction. He was literally 8 yards in front of me. I had never really seen anything besides birds and squirrels there so it was a very pleasant surprise. Right after the muskrat swam by I looked upstream from where he came and saw a family of mallards. Soon after that a pair of American goldfinches, birds I'd never seen there, flew in and played in the tree to my left for awhile. As soon as they left I looked up to see two mallards flying overhead. They crossed the stream and then made a tight descending circle and landed in the stream to my left.

It all happened in a 10 minute time span. It was pretty unexpected and pleasant as if a reward for getting myself in shape.

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I've been meaning to experience eating wild plants. While at the park I tried some young spruce needles as I was running. I think they are edible however I haven't seen them in any wild edible book I've read. They tasted pretty good and the texture was enjoyable. I also grabbed some chives that grow with the grass. There's something cool about being able to just grab plants and eat them as your walking by.

When I got home it was time to mow the lawn. Our lawn as most has dandelions. These are unacceptable weeds to most people. Since I'm trying to sell my house, I figured it would be a good idea to remove them. To kill two birds with one stone, I decided to remove them and eat them.

Below is a dandelion. Notice the size and length of the root.


I referenced "Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants" to find out which parts were edible. The leaves and flower heads can be eaten raw so I tried that.


I've eaten the leaves in the past and I think the key is to make sure they are young leaves. Anything old or big enough to have fuzz is too woody. I also tried to boiling the leaves for five minutes. This did get rid of some of the bitterness but the texture isn't as nice as when they're raw.

Finally, I dried the roots in the sun and then baked them in the oven for 3-4 hours. The now brittle roots will be ground up to make tea. I haven't tried this yet but look forward to it.

For another look at eating from the yard, check out Rix's blog here.

Easter Flintknapping

Over Easter weekend my brother and I worked on a chunk of obsidian he brought. Also with him were many antler billets he made. We took turns spalling. It was my first time using antler so it was a learning experience. I wasn't used to striking so hard. As we are both still beginners we didn't really end up with a meaningful piece although we knocked of many nice spalls.

In the picture below I (left) am holding the best spall I knocked off. After we finished with the big rock, we both worked on smaller pieces.


I continued the work on my piece last night. I was pretty happy with the overall shape of the piece. I had a good center line and the piece was pretty symmetrical. There was however a stack of mass I wanted to remove. There were step fractures protecting the stack from three sides so I had one angle to attack from.

I was worried that if I didn't push hard enough, I would make another step fracture and then I'd be totally screwed so I pushed really hard. It turns out that I pushed too hard and flaked all the way across the point and up towards the tip.

In the picture below, the flake was pushed from the bottom left to the middle right. The path of the flake is the glossy area. Also notice how the stone is convex on the upper right. This was concave before I took the flake.


What I learned:

• First experience with antler and stone billets and an ishi stick
  
• Be more aggressive with thinning during percussion flaking. Strike harder than I'm used to.
  
• Got the feel for how much pressure is need to take the flake I want with out leaving a stack (too little pressure) or overshooting (too much pressure).

This was my best point to date so I know I'm improving.

Deer Hide

Last weekend I started tanning my first deer hide. I soaked the hide in a bucket of water and wood ash for about a week to get the hair and grain to come off more easily. The picture below is what it looked like when I started to scrape off the hair.


After I scraped the hair and grain off, I then flipped it over and scraped of the mucous layer. The hide had a lot of holes near the edges so rather than spend time scraping these areas, I just trimmed them off. The picture below shows the hide after scraping both sides. There is still some grain left that I'll try to scrape off. After that the next step will be to brain it.


I had to put the hide in the freezer because I don't have enough time to work on it now. I'm getting ready to sell my house so I may be posting less frequently for awhile.

Viburnum Basket

When I got home from my gathering trip on Saturday, I made a basket. This is the first basket I've made of this style so it isn't flawless by any means. It is kind of lopsided, but nevertheless functional which is what really matters. Some people like to let the wood dry and then soak it to make it flexible again. This is so the wood has shrunk to it's final size before making the basket.

I thought it would be cool to have a basket made the same day I collected the material so I didn't do this. To get an idea of how to start the basket I referred to Torjus's post about his willow basket. You'll notice that this first picture looks like one of his pictures. For more detailed instructions on how to make one, refer to his post.


After getting it started, it was pretty easy. The only other hard part was the change from horizontal rings to vertical rings. It was tough because the thickness of the spokes made it hard to accomplish a near right angle bend. This is the main reason why the basket is lopsided.


Ideally I would have made the basket a little taller, but I ran out of material. To make a handle I bent over some of the spokes and wrapped them together. The other spokes I cut off. Due to their thickness there was no nice way to weave them back into the basket. I'm all ready for the annual Easter Egg hunt at my parents' house! :)

Gathering Viburnum

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to go to Eagle Creek Park over the weekend to gather some viburnum. It was our second day of 50F+ degree weather in Indianapolis this year so it was a perfect day for it. There was still a little bit of snow and ice around, but most of it had melted and most of the area I was in was very wet. I was very glad to have brought my rubber boots. I spent a portion of my time standing in 3 inch deep water since that is where a lot of the viburnum was.

My primary goal was to find potential atlatl darts (spears). My theory is that a good arrow wood is also a good dart wood. Viburnum is awesome because it grows straight and long. It doesn't put out branches unless it has reached sunlight, so some of the shoots in the middle of the patch grow 15 feet high or more without any knots or branches. The middle of the patch is where I looked to find my atlatl darts.

While I was looking, I also found some nice arrow shafts. As I trimmed the darts and shafts down to size, I ended up making a pile of thinner pieces. I decided I almost had enough to make a basket. Viburnum is also nice for making baskets because of the long semi-flexible branches. Long material means fewer ends to tuck in when weaving. Some of my basket material was 7 feet long.

At the top is my basket making material. The middle branches will become arrow shafts, and the long ones on the bottom will hopefully become atlatl darts. I will be straightening them as they dry out.


Most of the viburnum was off the main path I was on. I spent over an hour moving from one patch to the next looking for candidate darts. On my little journey I came across a few interesting things. Below is a dead stump that caught my attention. I scraped some chunks off and then ground them up in my palm. It can be used as a coal extender when making fire by friction. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, coal extender is basically fuel to keep a coal burning until such time as you can blow it into a flame. I broke off a couple big chunks to take home and try out.


On my way back to the main trail I stumbled across a little metal tin. It was odd because it was covered in camouflage duct tape. I had no idea what it was and the scout in me was a little nervous since it was camouflaged. Convinced that the park was clear of bombs, I opened it. It was a geocache.

Basically it is a little treasure box that people locate with a GPS device using coordinates posted on geocaching.com. People take and leave trinkets and sign the booklet. I signed it for fun and noted that I found it without a GPS device to let future seekers know that I'm better than them. :) Just kidding.


There is a navigation trick I've seen in almost every survival book I've read but never tried before. Before I went on my excursion into the viburnum patches, I set it up. I put a stick in the ground and marked the top of the shadow it cast with a small twig. When I came back about an hour later I marked the shadow again with a twig. I then laid a branch so that it intersected both points. This made an east-west line. From there I found north and south. It probably would have helped to have a compass to confirm to myself that this works, but it seemed to be correct based on my understanding of where I was.


Tomorrow I will post pictures of the basket I made when I got home Saturday.