Primitive Skills and Wilderness Crafts

Do you realize how useful rope, string, and other sorts of cordage can be in daily life, and how valuable they become when not readily available?

There are so many raw materials that can be used to make a sturdy cordage, depending on your region of the country, and now would be a good time to practice this valuable skill. Milkweed, nettle, dogbane and yucca are some of the best cordage plants in my area--you want to look for a plant whose stem contains sturdy fibers which don't easily break when the stem is broken--but there are some interesting non-plant options as well. Get out and explore, experiment and discover your favorites!

Yucca fibers, soaked, scraped and dried, and finished yucca cordage:

Cording the inner bark of an aspen tree:

Basket made from aspen bark cordage:

Cordage twined from mountain goat wool that I collected up on a ridge above 12,000' elevation!

Rabbitbrush bark cordage, double-twined for extra strength.

Sinew (tendons) from the legs and back of deer, elk and other animals provides another valuable source of cordage material. Primitive peoples around the world, including Native Americans, used deer sinew for bowstrings and to back bows themselves to add strength. Before twisting into cordage, backstrap sinew (the longest, most useful fibers) must be scraped to remove all traces of meat and fat, and dried, and the round, thick leg sinews need to be pounded gently with a rounded rock to separate the fibers so they can be twisted.

Deer backstrap sinew, scraped, dried, separated and ready to turn into sturdy cordage!

There are many ways to produce fire without modern tools such as matches and lighters. Some--such as the bow and drill or hand drill--take more skill than others to master, but it is very rewarding to be able to walk into the woods and know that you can obtain fire with nothing more than the raw materials you find close at hand. One of the simplest ways in which you can do this is to carry a ferro rod, which is made of a special metal that produces sparks when scraped with steel, glass or even rock:

Materials all ready to go--ferro rod, striker and milkweed down for tinder...

Success!

Waterproof "tinder pellets" can be made from milkweed down and pine pitch. These can be carried in one's pack or bag to aid in starting fires under the worst of conditions. Here I am pouring liquefied pine pitch (sap) into a pile of milkweed down--the first step in making these pellets.

And, the finished pellet, ready to use. Simply break open the waterproof shell of pitch, and strike sparks for ready tinder!

A basket of willow wood shavings and "feather sticks" to help get fires started...

For thousands of years, animal hides provided humans with clothing and shelter. Brain tanning your own hides--either from animals you take for meat, or hides donated by hunters who don't wish to use them, if you don't hunt, yourself--is a great way to reconnect with this tradition and learn some very valuable skills.

It's hard work to take a hide from its raw state to finished, wearable leather/buckskin, and the task will certainly give you a new appreciation of the readily available clothing that we so take for granted, these days!

Fleshing an elk hide, the first step in brain tanning. All of the meat, fat and membrane must come off...

Deerskin moccasins...

Primitive lighting can involve anything from cattail seed heads dipped in pine pitch to make a long-burning torch, to seal fat burned in carved out dishes of soapstone with cottongrass wicks such as the Inuits used for lighting and cooking, to beeswax candles.

This is a very simple lamp I carved from sandstone. The wick is corded cattail leaf fibers, with bear fat for the fuel. It provides a good, steady flame.

A primitive shelter can be as simple as a good dry pile of leaves or pine needles beneath a tree, or as complex as a large skin or bark covered lodge fit for spending an entire winter, as different as cleft in the rock or a snow cave, but the basics are the same--keep yourself dry, warm and out of the wind and weather.

No matter where you choose to shelter, it's important that you insulate yourself from the ground as well as possible, to help conserve warmth. This may involve sitting on a pack or an item of clothing, or piling dry leaves or even freshly cut evergreen boughs beneath you, for insulation.

Here is a picture from inside a snug little shelter I built from scrub oak trunks, and one showing its outside, which is covered with cottonwood tree bark. The bark helps shed water, and I have spent many dry nights in that shelter, even during the hardest rain. Inside, I have piled a good foot and a half of good dry oak leaves on the floor to provide insulation, and have stuffed cracks between the logs with sagebrush to keep out the wind.

No matter where a person may live, desert, mountains, plains, forest or even in the city, there will be numerous food plants available for use and enjoyment. An interesting way to learn about your local food resources is to study (in North America, at least) which wild food crops were relied on by the Native Americans in centuries past.

One must not, of course, ever eat a plant until it has been positively identified, and the best way to learn is in person from someone well versed in local edibles, but this skill can be learned by studying books and comparing what you see there to things found out in the field, also.

Here are some tasty an nutritious plants that I enjoy harvesting and eating, here in my area (Western US.)

Waterleaf, avalanche lily and spring beauty roots...

Currants...

Oregon grapes...

Prickly pear cactus...

Cattail roots (just like fried potatoes, with eggs!)

The primitive skills and wilderness crafts featured in this article are just a few of the many to which I've devoted time over the years, and they have become a lifelong pursuit and passion for me.

Get out in the dirt and give a few of these ancient and productive skills a try, and you may find that you enjoy them, too!

All photos taken by the author, unless otherwise noted.