I got into bushcraft a few years ago, and I remember how badly I wanted to do everything at once: a night in the wild, lighting a fire with a ferro rod, and building a shelter with no experience. Only later did I realize that the biggest mistake beginners make is exactly that — not taking it step by step.
It's best to start with a simple scenario: a short trip to the woods without staying overnight, or a bivouac close to home or your car. Your first night out is better spent in controlled conditions rather than straight away in the wild — otherwise you're left with stress instead of enjoyment.
You don't need much gear to start. A minimal kit worked well for me: a fixed-blade knife, a lighter or ferro rod, a tarp, paracord, a metal mug, a headlamp and a first-aid kit. Plus a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad. After my first trip, it turned out some of those things weren't needed at all.
What I value most in bushcraft is the peace and quiet and the Leave No Trace principle — I take all my rubbish with me, don't damage trees and put the fire out thoroughly. That way, places like these stay available for the people who come after.
Pine pitch is one of those materials our great-grandparents knew and most of us have forgotten. A new Survival Sullivan guide walks through making it, and it made me appreciate how many jobs a lump of tree resin can do.
The listed uses are waterproofing wood and leather, sealing cracks, gluing together primitive arrows and tools, and acting as a waterproof fire starter or the fuel for a slow-burning torch. It has also been mixed into natural varnishes and used as a folk remedy for cuts and bites.
You start with hardened resin, which you find as amber lumps on knots, broken branches and storm-damaged trees. The author warns against wounding a healthy tree just to make sap flow. Then you add a filler, most often hardwood ash from your own campfire, though sawdust or dried plant fibers also work, and a binder such as beef tallow or beeswax for flexibility.
The method is a double-boiler setup: a large flameproof container holding two smaller cans, one with holes punched in the bottom so molten resin drips through into the other. Tongs or can lifters are essential because everything gets blazing hot, and the guide recommends using old cans rather than your good cookware.
What I liked is how little gear it takes. A fire, a few cans and some ash turn waste resin into something genuinely useful, which is exactly the kind of trick that makes bushcraft satisfying.
If there is one knife that both bushcrafters and dog walkers know, it is probably the Opinel. OUTDOOR Magazin tells the story of this classic from Savoy, and some of the figures in it surprised me.
In 1890 Joseph Opinel invented his pocket knife in his family's forge in the French Alps, and the company is still a family business today. By 1897 he was already offering twelve sizes, from N°01 to N°12. In 1989 the Opinel was even included in the Larousse dictionary. According to the article, one is sold somewhere in the world every seven seconds.
Originally the knife had only four parts: blade, fixed ferrule, rivet and handle. In 1955 Marcel Opinel invented the Virobloc system, in which a rotating ferrule locks the opened blade in place. Later came a variant that also locks the blade when it is folded, which makes carrying it in a rucksack safer.
Today around 15,000 knives are made per day, compared with 650 in 1987. The blade goes through a two-stage heat treatment of hardening and tempering, and the final grinding is done by hand. 95 percent of the wood for the handles comes from French forestry, usually beech, and hornbeam for coloured handles. The magazine also presents the new N°08 Horizon for outdoor adventures.
I like that such a simple tool has lost almost none of its appeal after more than 130 years.
Utemagasinet has published a recipe from outdoor cook Lena Flaten at Flammans Skafferi in Storlien, who makes dishes over open fire using foraged ingredients. This time it is a sourdough kolbulle, a good fit for anyone who enjoys cooking outdoors.
The base is a bubbling sourdough starter that has been fed and left to become roughly the texture of sponge cake batter. It rests for about four hours, then a little salt is added and it is stirred gently. The batter is spooned into hot oil, around a good centimetre deep and at roughly 160 degrees, forming buns of seven to nine centimetres. They are fried until golden, turned once and drained on paper or a rack.
The topping is what makes it especially forest-close: fried boiled potato, fireweed (rallarros) shoots and orpine (kärleksört), thinly sliced dried reindeer meat, lingonberries and grated hard cheese. The recipe explicitly says you can use other goodies from the kitchen cupboard, so it is more an idea than a strict template.
I think this is a lovely example of how outdoor cooking can be more than sausages and stick bread. The sourdough can be brought along or fed in advance, and what grows around you becomes part of the dish. Frying in hot oil over an open fire does call for care, so keep an eye on the temperature.
If you ask preppers and bushcrafters for their favorite piece of kit, a knife usually wins. That is why this Survival Sullivan list of common knife mistakes is worth a read, even for people who think they know better.
The first mistake is destroying the tip. Using it as a screwdriver or to pry open a jar is common, and the author points out that some videos even recommend it, but the tip is the most delicate part of the blade. Next come sharpening at the wrong angle with too much pressure, and neglecting cleaning and oiling. After washing, dry the blade and wipe it with olive, mineral or vegetable oil, keeping oil off the handle.
Overuse is another trap. A good knife can take a lot, but a dull one leads to injuries, so a cheap backup knife for rough jobs such as digging roots makes sense, and a folding knife suits delicate work like peeling fruit. The safety reminders are basic but sound: never run with a knife, cut on a stable surface rather than in your hand, never grab a falling blade.
Storage matters too. Keep the knife in a suitable sheath away from moisture, and avoid leather sheaths for long-term storage since they absorb water. The article ends with a suggested knife set, from a folding knife for everyday carry to bushcraft knives at a retreat location, plus a stone or steel to keep them sharp.
Nothing here is revolutionary, but I found it a useful checklist, and I recognized a couple of habits I should break.
Utemagasinet argues that Cinnamon Bun Day is best celebrated outdoors, and I agree. Susanne Jonsson shares a simple recipe for buns baked on a griddle over the fire, which works as well in the cold as in spring sunshine. It makes five buns.
You need a packet of ready-made sweet dough with an apple filling from the chilled counter (or your own dough), one decilitre of grated coconut and butter for the pan. Roll out the dough, spread the filling over it and sprinkle with the coconut. Roll up and cut into thin slices. Bake the slices on a lightly buttered griddle until cooked through. Press the buns flat so they have time to cook through, and turn them a few times during baking.
The tips about the fire are practical. Bake a test bun first to check the heat is right. And if you want to save time, bake the buns at home in the oven, pack them in your rucksack, then thread them onto sticks and warm them over the fire.
For me, outdoor life and the craft of fire are as much about the good things as the technique. Learning to read the heat of the griddle is a small exercise in reading the fire.
In the latest OUTDOOR podcast episode, thru-hiker Christine Thürmer meets Markus Klek, Germany's only "palaeotechnician". He invented the job title himself. He practises experimental archaeology and lives the European Stone Age, roughly 40,000 to 5,000 years before Christ, as realistically as he can.
The contrast could hardly be bigger. On one side is Christine, who optimises her gear in Excel spreadsheets and saws the handle off her toothbrush. On the other is Markus, who walks through the deepest Swedish winter with a wooden pack frame copied from the Ötzi design, fur shoes and bone tools, with no tent and sleeping only on reindeer hides.
The two swap mishaps and life hacks. Markus explains how he deals with "cheese feet" in leather boots, why animal sinew is good not only as sewing thread but also as dental floss, and why he sells his strong-smelling moccasins to English-speaking film studios as props. Christine counters with stories from America.
What I love about conversations like this is that they show where bushcraft really comes from: many techniques we now practise as a hobby were once simply everyday life. If you want to read more, the article also briefly explains what palaeotechnics is and links to Markus Klek's projects at palaeotechnik.eu.
I always assumed tree bark was something you only chewed on in a desperate survival story. This guide from Survival Sullivan changed my mind: the inner layers of some trees, birch in particular, have been turned into flour for generations, and the process is simpler than I expected.
What you want is not the papery outer bark that makes such a good fire starter. It is the cambium and the thin, soft phloem underneath. You peel the outer layer away, then use a draw knife or scraper to part the inner bark from the wood, taking care not to dig into the wood itself. The article notes that Scandinavian peoples and Native Americans baked it into bread, cakes and crackers.
The processing is plain kitchen work. Dry the strips thoroughly in an oven or dehydrator, break them down in a food processor, then finish with a rolling pin inside a zipper bag, or a mortar and pestle for a finer result. The author says the flour adds an earthy, dense texture and a faint sweetness to baking.
The part I appreciated most is the warning about harvesting. Bark does not regrow as fast as people think, and a wound invites disease and pests. The advice is to take bark from trees that are about to be felled, already down, or blown over, and from a standing tree only a few vertical strips, never a ring around the trunk, because girdling kills it.
For anyone who likes the bushcraft idea of using what the forest offers, it is a good reminder that the skill and the ethics belong together. I will happily leave the experiment to a fallen birch.
I was looking for a small tent for trips into the woods and went with the MFH Schwarzenberg. Reviews were mixed, but it seemed to meet my expectations, so I took the risk. After a few shorter and longer outings, I can now rate it honestly.
The biggest plus is its size: packed, it's 60 x 9 x 9 cm and 1300 g, so it fits into your kit without trouble. Pitched, it's supposedly 210 cm long, but the front and back walls slope, so anyone over about 185 cm will brush against them. On the other hand, a tent like this is hard to spot in the forest and fits almost anywhere.
The floor is fairly loosely woven and stiffer plant stems can puncture it, so I recommend a small construction tarp as an extra floor and pitching while it's still light. Pitching itself is simple: two poles and three guylines. At the entrance, though, the arch is tight, and sliding the pole in with frozen fingers takes patience. The only bigger quality flaw: the shock cord in the pole is tied so that one of the clips doesn't fully seat.
Inside there's room for someone up to about 180 cm plus clothes, but hardly for a backpack, and there's no vestibule, so you need to plan ahead how to protect your pack and boots overnight. With the door closed, the mesh window at the foot doesn't do much and you can wake up with a heavy head, and in the morning there's condensation on the walls, typical of single-wall tents. A big plus for the stuff sack, which takes the tent with room to spare.
Is it worth it? If you keep its size and single-wall traits in mind, why not. It has flaws, but undeniable strengths too; it's a choice for an informed user. For a few days in Polish forests it does the job, and next time I might try a bivy out of curiosity. See you in the woods!
If I could teach one natural fire-starting material first, I would probably pick fatwood, and Paul Kirtley makes a good case for it. Fatwood is resin-saturated heartwood from certain conifers, mainly pines. It forms where resin pools, such as old stumps, roots and branch junctions, often after a tree dies or is damaged. It is dense, golden-orange to reddish-brown, sticky when fresh, and smells strongly of pine.
Why does it work? The resin burns hot and long and repels water, so fatwood still lights when other tinder is damp. It also resists rot and stores well. All pines can produce it; he names longleaf pine in the southeastern USA, Montezuma pine in Mexico and Scots pine across Eurasia.
To find it, check stump bases, large branch junctions and dead lower limbs. Darker, richer wood near knots is a good sign, and a shaved piece should smell strongly of pine and feel oily. Chip into a weathered stump with an axe or split dead branches to reach the core.
For lighting, scrape a stick at right angles to make dust that catches a ferro rod spark, shave thin slivers, or make a fatwood feather stick, which he says burns hotter and longer than a softwood one of similar size.
Harvest only from dead trees or fallen limbs, never live wood. He also stresses that fatwood is a backup, not a substitute for learning proper fire-lighting skills.
Paul Kirtley's latest tree profile covers Scots pine, a species that is wild, wonderful and widespread across Eurasia. It is a good one to learn first.
To identify it, look for a tall straight trunk, branchless low down, with an open crown. Needles come two per bundle, blue-green and twisted, about 5 to 7 cm long, and smell sweetly resinous when crushed. Young bark is orange-pink and papery; on older trees the lower trunk is grey-brown and fissured while the upper trunk and branches stay orange-brown and flaky, which is the best cue from a distance. Cones are 5 to 8 cm and bluntly conical. Lookalikes include black pine (darker bark, longer needles), lodgepole pine (prickly cone scales) and red pine (needles 12 to 18 cm).
For bushcraft, the wood is resinous and burns fast with a bright flame. Straight, knot-free splits make good feather sticks and kindling, and resin-rich pieces are excellent tinder. Dead needle bundles still attached to twigs can boil a quick brew. Roots can serve as binding, needles steep into a vitamin C rich tea, and the inner bark was historically eaten by the Sámi, dried and pounded into flour. Bow-drill works only if the wood is bone dry and not too resinous.
He gives no dosage or safety guidance for the edible uses, so research those before trying them. I appreciate the reminder to cross-check several features, since lichen can hide bark colour.
A good knife is part of the basic kit for almost every bushcrafter, but in Germany the legal side is trickier than many people think. OUTDOOR Magazin has summed up the most important rules of §42a of the Weapons Act (WaffG) for hiking and camping.
Carrying in public is prohibited for one-handed knives whose blade can be opened and locked with one hand, and for fixed-blade knives with a blade longer than 12 centimetres. A fixed-blade outdoor knife up to 12 cm is therefore basically fine. Large machetes, Bowie knives or "Rambo knives" are usually longer. If a knife is explicitly designed for combat, it can count as a stabbing and cutting weapon regardless of its length.
"Carrying" means having the knife within reach outside your own home or fenced private property, whether on your belt or in your rucksack. Simply transporting it is different: if the knife is in a closed container and not readily accessible, that generally does not count as carrying. An outside pocket is not enough; it must be a closed piece of luggage with a secure lock.
The law also allows carrying with a "legitimate interest", for example for work, tradition, sport or another generally recognised purpose. Since the term is not defined more precisely, much of this remains a grey area. The magazine's advice: separate the journey to the place of use from the use itself, and plan transport carefully.
I think notes like this are important because they prevent unnecessary trouble. If you are heading into the woods with a knife, you should know the rules before you set off.
