Water Indicating Trees, Full Campfire Burnout, Ideal Winter Hot Tents | #AskPaulKirtley 58

Description

Welcome to Episode 58 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about water indicating trees, encouraging campfires to burn out completely, axe re-hafting in the field, ideal winter hot-tent set ups, chimney effects of fire reflectors and bow drill ember failure.

TIMESTAMPS:

05:10 Water indicating trees

07:58 Encouraging campfires to burn out completely

13:05 Axe re-hafting in the field

18:30 Ideal winter hot-tent set ups

25:00 Chimney effects of fire reflectors

33:31 Bow drill ember failure

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Tags: bushcraft,survival,wilderness,camping,hiking,outdoors,question and answer,advice,questions,answers,bushcrafting,nature,self reliance,self sufficiency,outdoor skills,outdoor knowledge,Paul Kirtley,askpaulkirtley,bow drill,bowdrill,friction fire,hot tents,hot tenting,winter camping,water indicators,trees,axe,axe handles,campires,leave no trace,fire reflectors

Video Transcription

in this episode of asphalt curtly we are going to talk about water indicating trees encouraging campfires to burn out completely axe rehab ting winter hot tent setups the chimney effect of fire reflectors and bow-drill ember failure [Music]

welcome welcome to episode 58 of ask pool curtly where I answer your questions about wilderness bushcraft survival skills and outdoor life and there's been a lot of outdoor life recently I have been running courses down here in Sussex I've been up in the Midlands on a course myself which is very interesting and now I'm back down here again in Sussex and time is passing and we've had loads of fungi out already this year it's been interesting it feels like we're getting towards autumn now just in the last week or so it's starting to feel like we're on the turn a little bit there's a there's a bit of brown edging on the birch leaves some of them are going yellow but what's been really interesting this year is it's been quite a good year for fruit so far apart from down here not so much in the way of Rowan berries loads of Rowan Mary's last year not so many this year but otherwise as Loza BlackBerry's there's loads of just everything and again when I was in the Midlands this last week

loads of gelda Rose berries loads of apples lots and lots of fruit on the trees lots of fruit on the things you don't want to be eating as well things like Briony in the in the hedgerows but yeah it's despite the fact that we had a very dry first part of the year it seems like nothing's really suffered as a result and we've got another good year for fruit what's been interesting there what's been particularly interesting down here in Sussex where I run courses and I've been working down here every year since 2006 it's the best year I've ever seen for fungi this this area is not traditionally in my experience the best area for fungi there are other places where I've worked not not in this locality but further afield around the UK where

have been much richer pickings on a consistent basis but here this year lots and lots of Bowl eats and related fungi so the SEPs or the penny buns or the porcini whatever you want to call them lots of those around boletus edulis and lots of its relatives and a few chanterelles not a lot but then there's also been a lot of other stuff shaggy parasols and various other things all coming out some nice deceivers amethyst deceivers in particular various web caps and things clearly which you want to avoid but there's a lot been lots and lots out all just appearing in the last few weeks so that's been really interesting to see those are the sort of most notable things that I've been noticing around and about in the woods that may be a little bit different to normal and hopefully you've been out and about and seeing similar things as well always interested to know what you've seen and clearly that's here in the UK but a lot of people who watch this are in the UK but I hope wherever you are there's a big audience in North America I know and then there are people all over the world who watch and listen to this so I'm hoping you've had a good summer so far and that's going into the autumn or the fall if you're in the northern hemisphere it's going to be interesting as well with lots of foraging lots of fruit lots of opportunities to get out camping maybe in the back end of the summer in North America without so many of the biting insects as well so lots still to go out even though it's feeling a little bit back end ish I think now and starting to turn a little bit I think there's still lots to go out by no means the end of the outdoor season then of course we've got the winter camping to look forward to and of course those of you who are down in the southern hemisphere have got your summers to look forward to before too long as well it should be starting to warm up maybe a little bit now for you guys so anyway without further ado it is towards the end of my day down here and it is drawing in a bit at night now I mean it's two months past the equinox we've just had the eclipse in North America that's what I'm recording this

that's the time of year we're at and the day is significantly shorter now the latitude that I'm at then it was a few months ago so we are going to lose the light a bit here so I will crack on and the first question is from Twitter from wells B roots Dave Wells B and good to have you back on the show Dave and his question is hey Paul I was wondering what trees it would be a good indication that there is water or a natural spring nearby thanks bro I said in a very English manner at the end there and yeah clearly there are very localized indicators in terms of vegetation as you go from place to place but in general terms in the northern temperate which I know you are Dave and a lot of people who are watching this or listening to this are there's a couple of key species of trees you've asked specifically about trees that I would be looking out for there are going to be an indicator water even if there's no obvious ground water you know so clearly if there's a stream or a pond you don't need the localized vegetation to tell you that there's water there but in terms of damp ground in terms of trees that need consistently damp ground or that enjoy damp ground or that can tolerate damp ground that are going to tell you that it's worth maybe digging down a bit to create a well that is going to seep full of water over a short period of time or an hour or so maybe and those can be really valuable because you can't find any surface water you need some water and you know there's going to be some around because you're not in a desert but where you're going to find it these are the species that I'll be looking for willows in general like to have their feet in water or in damp ground so if you can locate willows and clearly if there's any sort of undulation in the in the terrain you're going to want to be heading down into the localized dips or downhill to try and increase your chances of finding water and in those places if you can locate some willows that is a good indication that that area of ground is quite damp the other genus that I would be looking for olders and there are European species of all this there's North American species of alders and they all like to be in damp ground typically so illness genus or seelix genus are the ones that you want to be looking for and they're the main ones that I'd be going for if you can identify and locate alders or willows that is going to be a good indication that you've got damp ground good question not about kit.question via Instagram this is from Russell originally and here's a question with a nice photo of a fire or the remnants of a fire some nice glowing embers there his question is hello from Canada and my question is this when done with my campfire I stopped feeding the fire well before I need to leave and keep an eye on it as it burns low while I pack up the rest of the camp however I'm often left with a rather large averaging size of my fist chunks of charcoal such as these referring to his photo of course which seemed rather unwilling to get much smaller I usually give them a thorough soaking and once I'm sure they're well out I break them into small chunks and distribute them by hand as this is rather labor-intensive I was wondering if you have a quick trick to prompt them to burn to ash completely the photo shown was taken well over two hours after I stopped feeding my fire at Blue Lake BC last weekend well Russell originally who knows what you call now and maybe you're still called Russell thanks for the question and that's a good one and I like it because you give some context and that I to me you're doing the right thing you're doing what I teach people to do on my elementary courses for example think ahead think about when you're going to leave and manage your fire accordingly and that's always the best thing to do and that's a way that I judge how experienced people are because inexperienced people will just keep throwing stuff on the fire or they'll put big stuff on the fire in the morning or they'll put big stuff on the fire last thing at night sit in front of it for a bit they'll let it burn out a bit but they'll still have half a charred log left in the morning they haven't managed a fire and then they're not having a fire in the morning or a very big fire in the morning and then they're left with all of this stuff to deal with so I like the fact that you're thinking ahead you're thinking about when you're going to leave and how much is left to be consumed and making sure it is burnt down to the minimum before you go and that's what I would encourage anybody to do so well done there yeah you are going to get to a certain point where the rate of consumption the rate of combustion is going to reduce and particularly with the chunkier bits that you're left with they're not going to burn particularly quickly and if it's hardwoods that are going to give you good embers they're exactly the sort of woods that you'd want from roasting the sort of woods that you'd want charcoal made out of for your barbecue they are going to continue to give off a steady heat for some time and they will take a long time to burn down if you've got soft woods that are of the likes of some of the pines even some of the spruces even if they're relatively densely grown if they're growing in cold climates and they're quite dense they're still going to burn down to ash much more readily than some of the the hardwoods like willow left in the round we talked about willow in a different context a second ago but willows good for roasting Oaks are good for roasting and olders are good for smoking for example those that are going to burn slowly are going to be the ones so maybe think about what you're actually using as well in terms of the firewood you've got in the fire I don't know what species of wood you got there but either way you are going to get to a certain point where things slow down the fires getting smaller the rate of combustion reduces so yes you are often left with a few bits at the end a good soaking is important and breaking them up is important as well because of course you can have them damp on the outside and still hot on the inside so if you can break them down into smaller components make sure they're well wetted well out and then distribute and yes it is somewhat labor-intensive but I personally don't know of a quicker way of making absolutely sure that everything is out and cold and that everything is broken down as small as it can be and the only thing I would suggest is maybe think about what species of timber you're using because clearly when you're roasting versus boiling some woods are better than others and there's a little little Wren just landed on the log past me here just beneath the bracken on the end of this log that you can't see which is nice that's what just distracted me I don't know if you picked up the fluttering on the microphone perhaps but that that's my suggestion so to me I think you're 99% of the way there there isn't really a simpler way of dealing with it or quicker way than what you're doing with what you've got but perhaps if you're burning some really nice roasting wood that's going to last longer than some of the ones that are going to burn down to ash more readily and that's the only thing I can think of there to add frankly axe rehab ting here's a question from Andy via email and he asks hi Paul I found these a spork early episodes on YouTube very helpful thank you for doing them my question if you are out in the wild and referring more to the UK woodlands as that's where I'm from if you have found yourself needing to haft your acts as the existing handle broke what kind of tree would you advise for this well that's an interesting question Andy first off a couple of things one is a lot of the axes that we use now for bushcraft that have seen the traditional axes or the axes that are made in a traditional or semi traditional fashion that we find ourselves using now grants fours Brook Vetal ings halter fours those sorts of axes they typically have American Hickory handles and they are very difficult to break so that's the first thing is that it's unlikely that you're going to break a handle and I've been using grands fours axes mainly and there's no connection between me and grands walls other than the fact I use their axes not sponsored by them I've got no commercial interest I don't even sell the axes myself on my website on my on my online store at frontier bushcraft but I use them personally I have a whole raft of them which we use on our wood craft of course and ranging from small hatchets through to full-sized felling axes and everything in between and I've never ever seen one break and yes we teach people how to use them efficiently and with good technique but even so even in the learning process I've seen knives break I've never seen one of those axes break and I've not known of any of them break I've seen handles sometimes have cracks in them because there's been maybe a little bit of quality control issue that the wood is maybe not as good as it could be but I've not seen any break in use so I think it's highly unlikely with that material that one's going to break that's the first thing secondly if you're in the UK you've got to ask a question of how critical is it that your while you're out your ax handle wear it to break how critical is it that you don't fix that immediately and I would suggest that in most circumstances I can think of your you're not going to be critically dependent upon an axe being in use for the whole of your trip because you never that far away from a road you never that far away from public transport compared to many other places in the world where you might be taking an axe with you compared to some places I've been in a boreal forest where an axe particularly winter is much more critical an axe a lot of the time is a nice to have in a bushcraft camping situation and therefore if you were to break it my question will be why bother putting a new handle on it from a material that you could find in the woods when you could go home ordered a new one and and put it on you you know of a of as good a quality in terms of material as the one that it had originally so that there is a very that that said some people might think that's a bit of a defeatist attitude but it's just a pragmatic attitude of like why do you need to be able to rehand alit in the field now if we're talking about more generally people could say well why do you need to do fire by friction why do you need to be able to forage we've got supermarkets etcetera so I take the point it's good to to be able to do these things even if we don't need to be able to do these things and in which case I would be looking for a nice piece of ash common ash not mountain ash so fraxinus Excelsior is what you want to be looking for and what you want to be looking for is a nice straight grained piece of ash you know ash is a wood that's quite flexible but it's also quite tough so it will it will take the vibrations and the stress of being an axe handle but it's not as tough as Hickory so what you want to do is make sure that absolutely the grain is lined up with the axis of a handle you don't want the grain at all going across the handle you want the grain going down the handle to give it maximum strength so that's one thing that you need to do with some ash rather than with Hickory you can get away with a little more with Hickory than you can with ash so that's what I'd be looking for there's not much else that I would I would I would choose and you want a nice tough straight grain piece of ash that you can make a handle from if you want to do that and it's a worthwhile project to make your own ax handle it's like making your own canoe paddle or making a bow these are good things to be able to do definitely winter hot tent setup this is from Shane Bonin and Shane ASP all love your content thank you for what you do for the outdoor community what is your ideal winter hot tent setup well if we're talking about proper cold-weather boreal forests consistently sub-zero winter hot tenting I really like the snow trekker tents hi to the guys at snow trekker and again no commercial connection there but I just love the product I love the tents that they make they're really really nice and for that winter camping and if you want to have an in-depth look at how we use those tents then I would suggest you go to my blog called curly coat UK and you either look through the winter camping section and then I know that the the sidebar navigation is getting a little bit busy and it's gonna be one of my November December January at some point in that in that period where I'm not running so many outdoor programs it's going to be a bit of a project to reorganize that menu a little bit so that people can navigate because my blog is coming up 7 years old now and there's a lot of content on there and it does need a little bit of the filing needs a little bit of tidying so you can look through the winter camping stuff there and there's a really nice article on living in art in a hot tent or just search in the search bar and there is a search power on my blog I had a guy on my intermediate course a couple of weeks ago saying I can't search your blog I'm like well what about the search bar it's there and just on the side bar search poker at least blog and if you search on how to live in a heated tent or just heated tent you will bring the article up called how to live in a heat intent and that's an article on my blog but the nice thing about that article is that I have had a PDF download made of that into a nice little ebook it's about 20 pages and that has some really nice pictures and descriptions of those winter camping setups now if it's more of a sort of autumnal spring northern temperate situation I really like the tent TP tents because of their steeper sided more conical shape plus the fact you can have a stove in them not a huge fan of the tent TP stove to be honest they're heavy I am more of a fan of the tents that come with the the snow tracker tents or the likes if you can afford it likes of the for dog stoves those lighter weight box those that you can put pots on the top of that don't weigh an absolute ton they're my preferred stoves but I like the tent tepee tents they're very nice and in situations where you might get some wet precipitation I like them a little bit more than the a-frame frame tents for this type of environment where I am now for example in the autumn you never get a lot of snow on the ground here in the South of England but you do get some cold nights some frosty nights even you know even right out into March early April sometimes you get sub-zero temperatures overnight it can be very damp in the morning with a heavy dew having a heater tent at that time of year it can be absolutely fantastic you get everything dried out and it gives you a nice warm space to live in and that and you don't need to you know just from a an environmental perspective as well you know it's staying warm outdoors in February in the UK requires quite a lot of firewood even under a tarp where you've got a recirculation of warm air if you've got a canvas space around you you don't need to put in a stove where it's more efficient use of that fuel you don't need to burn as much firewood either so there's those advantages as well

there is an additional expense to getting that equipment as well and none of those canvas tents are really tense you can hike with because they're quite heavy the snow trekkers come into their own for proper winter camping in the boreal with snowshoes toboggans or from a snow machine or the pharmacist from skis and poke you could get away with it and the lighter the lighter tent teepees you can as well but I like the snow trekker a-frame type tent particularly in the real cold because you've got more room to hang your gear up the heat is closer down to you the hottest part of the tent is bigger whereas a conical tent the hottest part of the tent is up and away from the ground quite a long way and you can't get much clothing and equipment you can get four people in a three-person snow trekker tent with all their gear hung up and dried by the morning and in the boreal at minus 30 minus 40 that is an advantage so those setups are all on my how to live in a heated tent you've got both examples there of the conical type and the a-frame tents and give you some idea of how we use them and maximise their advantages so have a look at that have a look at the download as well get the download off that page you can keep that as a little guide and I'm gonna do more of those sorts of guides and if you'd like to see more short guides to particular aspects of wild camping outdoor life bushcraft skills and drop me a line by email at Paul Apple Catholic code at UK or just in the comments under this on my blog in particular would be useful or on youtube if you want to although I prefer the I prefer the message management system on my blog as opposed to YouTube to be honest it's hard to keep track of what's going on YouTube things get lost there and it's harder to have conversations there I find maybe that's just me but anyway let me know if you'd like to see some short guides on various areas that you're interested in let me know and maybe I'll look at prepare in a few of those over the winter chimney effects and this is a follow-on from the the recent discussion about fire reflectors and this is from a Z I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly there a Z Zed II a Z or at C a holy pole at first thank you for sharing or your knowledge about bushcraft and the outdoors you have one of the most important YouTube channels when it comes to knowledge transfer and education in this genre well thank you I appreciate you calling that out I don't have the biggest YouTube channel by a long way but I hope it is good quality and those of you that appreciate good quality appreciate the channel and so thank you for that I have seen your apk episode 56 and the part with this fire reflector I think I will do in the winter a little test set up and measure the temperature difference with and without a reflector you made me curious but now my question I have heard about this chimney effect imagine it's wind still then you always have the problem that the smoke blows in the face no matter where you sit does the reflector not have the advantage of keeping the smoke away I would be very happy about an answer best greetings from Germany as he okay so my experience of people with smoky fires and why my course assistants will back me up on this the largest contributor to fires being smoky is bad choice of firewood and by bad choice it's not a reflection on personal moral standing or anything by bad choice all I mean is that it can be wet it's either not being seasoned for long enough I it might be dead it might be standing it still contains moisture and because trees when they die they don't immediately go from being green and healthy to being dead and dry that's a process that takes some time just in the same way as if you chop down a tree and split it and put it in your fire if I would stack it to season it takes a good while I mean two years really to get it properly dry eighteen months depending exactly when you chop it down and how wet it is to start off with in the species of course but it takes some time to dry out so sometimes you get people chopping dead standing down that isn't properly dry and anything that is going to be wet is going to increase the chances of smoke and you just get more incomplete combustion and more of the heat goes into boiling the water off it doesn't burn properly it's smoky and then you also have the lack of convection current or less convection current coming off because there's less heat and then you get more stuff floating around low down whereas when you get a fire that's burning well it's dry wood is hot and you get good flames you get less smoke you get more thermal updraft and that is a is it positive again and that you get less smoke what smoke there is gets carried up and away so I would say a lot of the time it's either people picking up firewood with the best intention that's dead and it's standing but it's still a bit damp or it's from the ground it's wet it's been horizontal it's had more rain or snow or sleet on it and that's penetrated in it's damp you can get stuff that's slightly rotten with quite a lot of moisture between the inner wood and the bark which is still on that bark can often be very smoky as well so choose your firewood well I would say that's the biggest contributor to smoky fires now is a fire reflector going to help with that and maybe maybe but is it going to be significant I I don't know I mean I've built myself and colleagues back

long time ago we'd built a sort of log cabin on a course similar to what the New Zealand deerstalkers used to build back in the day when they were dropped with a canvas a frame tent just the outer and then they used to make it into more of a semi-permanent camp and they would use the canvas tent and then they would so we did that with some modern tarp so we did that with some students on a course a long time ago and then what we did what some of us did was we built a chimney on the back of the shelter in subsequent years it was either a year or two later we extended the shelter and we put this chimney and the chip the fireplace and the chimney was all made out of wood which sounds like a recipe for disaster I know but you just need to make sure it's spaced out enough so effectively what you had on the back of this shelter was three sides of fire reflector but what we found was that that was quite smoky you didn't get a lot of draw you know with a chimney in a house you need the thermal updraft to be going upwards sucking air in and into the fire and from elsewhere and then the heat going up the chimney had to draw the smoke up and out and the way that we got the draw was to narrow the aperture of the chimney and the way that we did that was by creating a kind of roof inside the chimney space where the the aperture that the smoke had to go out was relatively narrow so we created a sort of slanted roof within the the whole chimney fireplace higher up and then that the heat went up underneath this roof to the thin aperture and then you've got the thermal updraft which create the draw and then you got less smoke coming out into the shelter and more going up the chimney so the point I'm making there is I even with three sides even with three sides of a fire reflector if you like around the fire it was still smoky there wasn't a chimney effect and only when we actually narrowed the aperture above I've gotten people crawling down my back if you watching me if you watching the YouTube video now so I've got something for I could feel something crawling it's a little one of those little black beetles got down my back cement without the without the narrowed aperture above it with a real proper chimney you didn't get a chimney effect so that's why I'm doubtful of one reflector a pace or two away from the fire on the far side of you from the fire is that going to stop you getting smoke not really the biggest factor is going to be the quality of the firewood and how rapidly the fire is burning now if it's if it's really died down and there's it's smoldering it's going to be smoky regardless of what's around it and that's the you know if it's wet it's going to be smoky when it's burning nicely

you've got good flames the smoke is there's gonna be much smoke in the first place and that smoke is gonna be carried up and away by the thermal updraft but by all means experiment with it by all means play and I'll be interested to hear what your findings are in terms of temperatures but make sure you record the methodology as well are you recording

ambient temperature i recording the temperature where you're sitting how are you recording it and how you making sure that the output the fire with them we at when you measure it without the reflector and with the reflector is constant because of course the main as my argument is and I stand by this the main factor that's going to keep you warm is the quality the fire the reflector on the other side is going to do little so you need to make sure the quality of the fire is consistent from one measurement to the next or else you're not comparing the same thing with the with the same thing and you're going to get a false result last one another one from Instagram this is for Mick and nice picture of a bow drill set there's a couple of points I'm going to make about that bow drill set when we come on to answering your question Mick and but this is Mick's question and he yeah and context as well today I tried to make fire I took a walk and found the materials field maple for the drill set dried grass and some sweet chestnut bark for the tinder bundle an ash stick for the bow I made the set and got plenty of smoke and some nice black dust but the thin wisp of smoke in my ember just slowly disappeared each time after several attempts I just could not get an ember I decided to put a spark into the dust to see if it would provide an ember and as soon as the spark hit the dust it burst into life I used it and made a fire but ultimately this was a learning failure asked for curtly do you have any idea why I fail to get the Ember from the use of the drill that just seemed fine as it burned very well and I got plenty of thick smoke during the drilling but it was obviously not hot enough we'll keep trying but your thoughts would be most welcome rain coming in so I'll keep the answer relatively short for the sake of the camera for the guy who asked a while ago why is it always nice weather when I'm outdoors it isn't it's just that cameras and recording equipment don't do very well in the rain so I only tend to record when it's not raining but anyway that's coming down quite heavy and so to answer the question I think it's partly to do with your set there make a couple of observations the notch is quite narrow the knots you've carved is quite narrow I certainly think it's less than eighth of the circle you could afford to make that a little bit bigger the advantage that that's going to give you is that you'll collect more dust and you'll get more critical mass of heat if you want that you need to get that spontaneous combustion where the ember takes on a life of its own and I suspect that you didn't quite have that large enough and that you probably had quite a lot of material building up around the top of the hole that you were drilling into rather than in to all of it going into the knotch so bigger knotch and the other thing is that the the hole that you've drilled is quite close to the end of the hath boards and that could be problematic in itself you can have the hath board break and because there isn't enough material to keep it in good to keep it solid and it can break I've seen that happen a lot when people carve it close to the edge the other thing as well is that you look like you're pretty much drilled off the edge of the board and I much believe that some of your powder some of the dust will have been falling out the side of the board as well so you've you've not been getting as much dust as you would have liked in the knotch and some of its been going out the side as well which means that you're not getting the heat and that you need and concentrated enough to get the spontaneous combustion and get the Ember going it doesn't sound to me like there's anything wrong with the actual half board material you're getting nice black dust you're getting smoke and you were able to light the dust with a spark so that to me suggests that the materials were good but I think the execution of the way you've drilled it into the hearth is a little bit off and I think the the notch is a little bit narrow so those that if you've still got that set I would try to drill a new new notch as it were try to drill in new carve a new notch slightly bigger than that 45 degree angle remember is 1/8 that isn't quite 45 degrees you'll get more dust in there and I hopefully you get the ember as a result of those tweaks and and that will solve that that problem if you're only getting a little bit of wispy smoke when you're drilling I think what you're saying about the wispy smoke was that it was you've got the Ember I've got the initial parts of an ember but when once she'd removed it you got a wisp of smoke and then it died out but do make sure you're getting lots of thick almost green certainly the cigar like smoke coming out of the bottom of the drill consistently for a good 10 strokes before you stop drilling because again the issue might just be that you weren't putting enough heat into the dust that you had did your creating good dust use black dust is burning together nicely but clearly you need to be doing that long enough to build up the heat into the pile of dust so that you get that sponte I keep saying spontaneous combustion that's what it is you heat it for long enough that it takes on a life of its own and maybe you weren't doing that either but I suspect the the main issue is the size of the knotch and the positioning of that of the hole that you drilled in as well so hopefully that helps make it let me know how you get on be interested to know and the rain is continuing here but that was the last question so thank you for those questions I will look forward to seeing you on episode 59 before too long I'm hoping that will be next Friday and provide I get the opportunity to record one in the next week I'm at the Swedish bushcraft festival this weekend in guitarra not far from Stockholm so I'm looking forward to that and if I see you there fantastic and if you're watching this and I have seen you there fantastic that's my last event of this year that I'm doing and I might be at one of the Dutch events over the winter that remains to be seen and but yeah so if I see you there fantastic really honored to have been invited back to the bushcraft festival in Sweden by the guys there looking forward to doing some fire demos fire workshops there and catching up with our good friends in Sweden and this bushcraft community is fantastic and it does in combination with the modern marvels of the Internet as pernicious and negative as they can be in some respects the positives are that it connects you with other like-minded people around the world and we can be our own little tribe of outdoors people who enjoy bushcraft wherever we are in the world and I know all of you watching this and listen to this are spread out around the globe I can see where people are downloading from when I look at the I look at the data of where people I can't see you as individuals of course but I do get some data from the where the audio files are hosted I can see that there's a real spread of geography of where people are listening so that's absolutely fantastic I really appreciate it

I hope this has brought some value to your day and always good to hear from people drop me a line with questions drop me a line with thoughts about some of the things we've talked about today always good to hear from you on my blog page but of course there's the YouTube and there's the email as well that you can contact me on very easily so as it's getting dark

and it's raining I will sign off but I will catch you on the next episode of a sport curtly and take care and enjoy the outdoors

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