A friend sent me this article on the human sense of smell. It discusses the results of a study from the University of California, Berkeley where a group of undergraduates crawled through a field following a scent trail while blindfolded and wearing sound-muffling headphones. Read it here. It turns out our sense of smell is [...]

Yesterday I started working on the canoe mold I’ve been thinking and talking about for years under the expert tutelage and in the shop of Don Merchant of Pole and Paddle Canoe. When canoe builders switched to using canvas to cover their boats instead of birch bark, and as the process became industrialized, people started [...]

By now many people have heard the sad story of James Kim, who became snowbound in his vehicle with his family in southwest Oregon after taking a wrong turn. After being stranded for days, Mr. Kim set out on foot to find the nearest town. While his family was eventually rescued, he was not. His [...]

Even though it has warmed up a little since last week’s cold spell there’s a thin layer of ice on the pond this morning. The forecast is for it to be a warm week, but the water is still cooling off as the nights have been cold and days are short. Today I’ll be working [...]

We had our first snow of the year last night, a dusting of about an inch to brighten things up. The front came through late, and as a result the winds are high and blowing the snow around. I’m busy getting prepared for our Winter Survival Weekend Course which begins tomorrow. My preparations include cutting [...]

I just posted an annotated bushcraft and Earth skills education bibliography on our web site. It’s a 19 page .pdf file and includes my picks for the twenty most important books. Give it a read here.