Category Archives: Educational

Bushcraft – Survival Skills to Survive in the Wilderness

Bushcraft is a set of skills that can help you survive in the wild. These skills include foraging, hunting and firecraft. They also include shelter building, first aid and navigation.

Survival and bushcraft have some similarities but are different in that survival is done to keep you alive while bushcraft is more focused on living comfortably in nature for enjoyment. This is why you will find skills like birch bark cups and whittling spoons.

Foraging

Using indigenous skills to thrive in the wilderness, bushcraft promotes self-reliance and a deep connection with nature. The ancient survival techniques it encompasses include foraging, hunting, shelter building, and water sourcing.

Responsible bushcraft emphasizes taking only what you need while ensuring the long-term health of the ecosystem. For example, you should never feed wildlife or leave trash behind. Also, it’s best to observe animals from a distance rather than approaching them directly.

Learning how to forage, hunt, and build fires is a great way to get outdoors and experience the beauty of the natural world. But it’s also a challenging discipline that demands patience and perseverance.

Hunting

In addition to being a lot of fun, bushcraft offers a unique and calming connection with nature. It fosters a deeper appreciation for natural resources and encourages environmental stewardship.

Bushcrafters follow the Leave No Trace principle, respect wildlife, and observe from a distance when encountering animals. They also avoid damaging historical, cultural, and natural artifacts.

Hunting provides a kinship with wildlife and wild places, combats the nature deficit disorder, increases Vitamin D, and puts healthy food on the table. It also promotes sustainability by reducing the need to collect or import supplies from outside the wilderness. However, some bushcrafters take hunting to an extreme and use animal hides for utensils and clothing, which aren’t necessary in survival situations.

Firecraft

Bushcraft focuses on wilderness survival techniques at the most basic level, but also includes many other useful skills like tool making, container construction from natural materials, flintknapping, cooking, tracking, hunting, shelter building, and much more. These skills are rooted in ancient practices and indigenous wisdom, and foster self-reliance, problem solving, and deep nature connection.

While some of these skills may be necessary in a survival situation, others such as processing hides for buckskin garments or carving birch bark cups are more luxury items that can add comfort to your time out on the trail. Responsible bushcraft practice also includes knowing how to treat common wounds with wilderness first aid.

Shelter

One of the most important skills to develop in bushcraft is shelter. This will allow you to avoid dangerous weather conditions and survive in the wilderness.

Start by finding a good spot to build your survival shelter. Look for areas with a flat face of rock to reduce wind exposure. Also, try to stay away from mountain tops, open ridges, and bottoms of valleys where cold air collects.

Then, gather armloads of any kind of dry debris you can find to build a mattress of insulating material in your shelter. Branches, pine needles, and mosses work well. Poke your head inside the shelter to see if light is penetrating, and keep adding material until it is.

First Aid

First aid is the act of administering immediate care to a casualty to prolong their life and prevent their condition from worsening until professional medical assistance is available. Although not a substitute for professional medical treatment, the application of first aid can minimize the time required to recover from injury or illness and minimize lasting damage and scarring. First aid protocols are simple to follow and don’t require specialist training and can be executed under stressful conditions. They can also be used as a tool to build first responder confidence and provide a foundation for more in-depth training. First aid is a critical skill that every person should have.

Navigation

Bushcraft is about connecting with wilderness and having good navigation skills is a key part of that. It’s easy to get engrossed in the technical aspects of navigation (reading contour lines, finding north with a map and compass and so on) but good observation is important too.

Learning to identify vantage points is an excellent outdoor skill and can be a lifesaver in survival emergencies. It also helps you to internalise a mental map of the landscape, which is useful when backtracking in a survival situation.

The Art of Chinese Language and where to Find Them

Whether it’s for business, personal travel or just to understand more of the world around you, learning Chinese is an incredible skill. It’s one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and can open many doors on a local, national and international level. But if committing to a full-time language course at a university isn’t feasible for you, online chinese language class are a great alternative. They offer a flexible schedule and can be just as effective as traditional classroom-settings.

If you’re looking for a free, comprehensive course to learn Mandarin, check out the free Chinese lessons from Duolingo. This popular app teaches conversational Chinese using a gamified approach. It also offers a paid subscription that removes adds and has extra features for $30 a month.

Another option is the free online Chinese classes from FSI (Foreign Service Institute). They’re very comprehensive and come with free downloadable lesson + audio. However, they’re a bit dated since they were originally created for diplomats in the US government back in the 70s and 80s.

For more structured learning, there are a number of reputable universities that offer free or low-cost online courses for beginners to advanced speakers of Chinese. Oregon State University has a series of Chinese language courses available through its Ecampus system. The first is designed for students with no prior experience, the second is for those who have taken a first-year college Chinese course or the equivalent. Students who wish to take these courses are required to fill out a questionnaire and participate in an interview to determine their Chinese level.

Then there are the Coursera Chinese courses from prestigious universities in Asia. These free courses focus on introductory concepts such as characters, pronunciation and basic vocabulary. They also teach students the four Chinese tones and provide useful cultural context. Students who complete these courses are able to participate in conversations with native speakers. Get to know more on ripetizione cinese!

Finally, there are a number of private companies that offer live online Chinese classes. These are often more expensive than self-learning courses but include the benefits of having a live teacher with you to practice speaking and listening skills. GoEast Mandarin, for example, offers a combination of self-learning materials and interactive live 1-on-1 or group lessons.

No matter which online Chinese class you choose, be sure to find a time that works for your busy schedule and stick with it. The more dedicated you are to your learning, the faster you will progress and start speaking Chinese. And who knows, maybe someday you’ll be able to talk to your friends and colleagues in their native tongue! Happy learning!