You Say Bushcraft, I Say Splendid!

Before I came North, (yes, with a capital "N,") I went in search of blogs about living in Alaska.  I found quite a few and my favorites were about "living off the grid," and various other wilderness survival posts.  (Where was all this blogging about lashing your own snowshoes when I was doing that kind of thing back in the day?  Don't you dare make a comment about how long ago that was!) That search led me to two of my favorite blogs to look in on, and oddly enough, neither one of them is about Alaska. 

One is written by a wizard (I hope he doesn't mind my using that epithet to describe him) honing out a wilderness life in Seoul, Korea.  Well, if you know much about me, you know how this just carved it's way into my heart and psyche.  Manta was a mere college boy at the time I was falling in love with his country.  (They told me back then that living in Seoul would be like camping out in New York City.  I don't really know what that means, but it certainly was a huge adventure.)I know he was studying very hard, because getting into college in Seoul has never been easy, I think.  And he's a literature instructor or professor or teacher--not sure which--but if it's literature, it's smart.  I could be a bit biased about that, but not much.  This is one of my favorite posts of his, but check them all out--you won't be sorry.  He can turn anything into something better!

http://manta-bushcraft.blogspot.com/2011/07/private-natural-bathtub.html

The other place I love to visit is Buzzard's place.  Across the pond.  He mentioned something about Ulster in one of his posts--so you know what that did to me, too.  I don't know what a welig is, but I think I like weligs because of his post about basket-weaving.  He has a lot of other good stories and wonderful pictures of enjoying and employing the natural world, including, but not limited to worms in cod fish, diving gannets, snow-laden Lord Conway's limes, berries on bushes becoming berry jam in jars, among a myriad of other delights.

http://buzzardbushcraft.blogspot.com/2011/09/bolt-from-blue.html

Manta and Buzzard, I hope you don't mind that I am linking to your sites.  I can't even get permission from you because for some stupid reason, I have been unable to comment on your blogs.  I can't figure out why, because I used to be able to.  Maybe some day soon I will get someone more savvy than myself to help me with that problem.  In the meantime, I keep looking for your latest posts, savoring each word and image, sorry that I can't post comments about them..  I'm also going to post links to facebook, hoping you don't mind.

These are qayaks made at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.  I might have to do another post about this.  In the meantime, I wanted to include a picture of "bush crafting" without taking it off someone else's blog.  This is a picture from my own camera.