Living Primitively

Since there isn’t much to report from skillswise, I thought I’d give the readers a simple treatise on walking barefooted. Walking barefooted, however looked down upon in our society it has numerous advantages over using shoes. I have done this for several years during the warm season and find it much more comfortable than using shoes.

First on the advantages of going barefeet:

Hygiene
Having your feet exposed to water, dirt (which sucks up fats and moisture) and the sun washes, dries and condition your feet automatically. Shoes on the other hand, locks in moisture and promotes bacterial and fungal growth. At first it only creates annoying smells, but in time it can develop into quite dangerous foot-rot. There is a reason why all the rainforest tribes around the world go barefeet. Shoes would never dry up.

Foot health
If you ever have heard of massaging your feet. That happens all the time when you walk barefeet. Being as close to the ground as practically possible, it almost eliminates the chance of stepping over. It also trains your feet and legs (very much in fact) and toughens up the skin. Blood circulation is increased and that reduces freezing on your feet in winter. Something which I have barely done after I started to walk barefeet almost all the time.

Silence
There are three reasons why you walk silently without shoes.

1. The pain of stepping on something sharp makes you take care when you step (effect is reduced as you toughen though).
2. Better contact with the ground, when you feel the sticks directly you can avoid breaking them much easier.
3. The sole of the foot is softer than that of the shoe.

Economy
Maybe not so relevant today, but in a time when you needed that leather for winter shoes you would want to save it by walking barefeet in summer. Modern shoes may not wear out so quickly, but moccasins, birch bark shoes and other natural shoes do. So, if you are going primitive for a longer period of time, you more than likely need to learn yourself to walk barefeet.

Limitiations
Like a heavily used horse, a human trekking for multiple days with a backpack over rough country and without rest will need some sort of shoe to avoid wearing down the sole underneath. The sole will regenerate, but you need to rest for that to happen. You will also need shoes on very hot sand, where there are a lot of thorns and in the snow. There are plenty of ethnographic examples that defy all of these, so it isn’t written in stone.

Getting tough feet

Tough feet are unfortunately impossible to buy in a shop. Every spring I do this, as my feet has pretty much reverted by then. It will not revert all the way though, so it will not take as long as the first every time.

If you have extremely tender feet, start on grass and coarse sand. Walk around all day on this soft ground for several days, it should make your feet sore. Dont’ bother resting after this small ordeal, but press on. On the days that come, start walking on very coarse asphalt and coarse gravel. That will be very painful and your feet will be very sore. When it gets so bad that you feel like tendons are pulling all over the place and blisters are forming. Take two days with shoes on.

After the rest, start walking everywhere without shoes. Especially in the forest, where the ling will whip the soft parts on top of the feet and toughen them too. Take two days with shoes whenever you feel blisters forming.

As you continue walking barefeet it will become second nature to you and you will loose your fear of stepping on something sharp and become able to run, even in the forest.

Little to write about these days. I have made another fishing hook of antler. I don’t like the proportions of it, but it’s usable. This time I used Patrick’s method. Seems like I am going to stick with my own, I like it better.

And also, I have this bad habit when making hooks. If there is room in the width of a piece, chances I will use it, even if it doesn’t give good results. The blanks I have ready now, I will halve. Hopefully that will make me do it properly.

Not making much progress on anything today, I thought I’d post on pretty much the only primitive thing I did today. The rest of the elm bark I had from making the straps to the pack-frame will go into make a braided fishing line.

I need more fishinglines when the ice fishing season starts soon (very late this year). I also will need them on my expedition this summer.

The process is simple. The sheets are seperated into smaller sheets.

The sheets are plaited into a braid. It is very slow work. But the result is a very strong line.

The 2007 Winter Course details are now up. Application to the course will be offered Full Members of the Bushcraft UK Community. If the places arn’t filled by the 1st of May however, it is open to everybody.

If you only have poor quality birch bark available or just have lots of unusable strips left, making woven baskets is a good option. It can be done similarily with other materials and you can weave anything from rucksacks and arrow quivers to shoes. This roll is of fairly good bark, but a little brittle and only about 2mm thick.

Soak the dry roll in water for a while to make it possible to unfold.

The strips are cut straight with an even width by using a stone knife, a straight edge and a wooden plank underneath.

One of these strips aren’t as good as the other, most of the brown stuff should be scraped of before using them. The one with most brown and cracked bark is of much poorer quality, but still usable with this method.

There are a few considerations:

• It is hard to do if the bark is too thick, split it thinner.
• Use a heavy weight about the size of the basket, that will make things easier.
• You have to have even numbers of strips.
• Even if you are weaving a non-square basket you still have to start with equally many on each side, you just have to adjust your starting points.
• The strips can be spliced, but you need substantial overlap.

Weave (tightly) an ordinary square, even and equal numbers of strips in both directions. Weigh it down.

Fold the two middle ones on one side over eachother (make sure that you continue the weaving pattern from before), and start weaving until you have integrated all the strips on that side. Put a clamp on it.

Do the same on the opposite side, then take the two remaining sides.

Then, weave them together. The weave will become ever stronger as you work upwards, so you can pull out the clamps when you reach them.

Don’t weave all the way to the top of the strips, you need some ends to tuck back into it. Tighten it all up really well first. Then fold the outer one over first (to the inside) and tuck it into the second “pocket” down from there. Don’t be bothered by it ruining your pattern, the next fold will fix that.

Now, fold the inner strip over the inner part of the outer strip (Got it?). Tuck it into the third pocket (also the first, but that does not apply to the first fold).

I haven’t made a lid to these yet, I don’t know how I want to do it either. We’ll see.