Canuck in the wild @canuckinthewild-blog - Tumblr Blog

small bear or large racoon? Found in the clearing fairly close to house.

Found this large Spruce in the middle of the Cedar forest and managed to find quite a few branches Containing fatwood. Then found a neat rock ledge so tried to make a small rocket stove-like horizontal fire so it would heat the rock I sat on while ate lunch. I got a small fire started briefly using a lighter but it quickly smoldered out. I used the rest of my lighter fluid trying get it restarted to no avail. Using birch bark scrapings and fatwood I still failed to start a fire with my ferro rod.

cold lunch for me.

#rocketstove #fire

Milkweed tinder

Experimented with Milkweed seed fluff with a ferro Rod today with nice results. The is a flash tinder so once I got a dried grass and weed nest setup around the Milkweed fluff all I had to do was throw a single swipe of sparks into the fluff center of the nest and quickly flipped the nest as the flames jumped to life. The fluff quickly burns out leaving you with nicely burning bird nest that I placed under my twig/kindling. My first successful fire with the fire steel.

#fire

It seems I managed to mildly poison myself somehow and and woke up Monday with dizzy spells and vomiting. I think it may be due to my previous late afternoon of fire practice blowing on (and inhaling) a mix of mullein, grass and yarrow flowers in my tinder bundle for a good half hour straight while trying to get my damp temperamental tinder to light. It never did. I didn’t eat much that day either so the chemicals may have effected me more than they otherwise might have. Not surprising though given the strong medicinal effects of yarrow. Weird how it hit me the next morning like a bad hangover. I felt better after barfing but ended coming home early from work due to returned sick feeling and slept the rest of the day away.

#health

Hand drill afternoon

Spent 4 hours out today enjoying the warm November weather practicing the hand drill. Tried making sure the hole was deep enough in the center so the pith in the center of the spindle bottom would not start to concave. This did help, allowing me to get smoke easier with as much force. I used a damp burdock and surprisingly got good smoke but no ember after about 3 attempts. Tried a small mullein and got smoke easily as well but still no ember. Used 2 different poplar hearths that were somewhat damp but no worse than the burdock. Just too much humidity here it seems. Even in the middle of summer on a sunny day I cannot get the hand drill to work. I couldn’t even get birch bark scrapping to light off my ferro Rod. The lighter did it though. Maybe I should try mullein on a burdock hearth again since both smoked so nicely.

Weather: rained off and on all week. 10C , cloudy.

#hand-drill #friction fire

Closest to the woods I'll be getting today. A park in kanata, Ontario. 10c.

Fall day out in the woods. There was a light west breeze and 7C, half hour of very light rain. Tried birch bark for first time as tinder (never had access to it before) and lit very easily with lighter. Cooked canned stew on/beside fire and ate with my first carved spoon for the first time. While waiting for the fire to die out I attempted the hand drill again with no luck. Used mullein on cedar. Great afternoon out.

Got spooked by some wild critter in the woods tonight while practicing the hand drill. I never saw it but it did not move away quickly, rather, choosing to screech at me and slowly move around me a bit. I picked up my sticks and decided it was getting late enough to leave anyways. Turns out it was probably a skunk after looking up that strange screech sound it made. Glad I didn't stick around to say hi.

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