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Author: Tom

The wood match, icon of the Age of Flame

The wood match, icon of the Age of Flame

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TweetThe wood match is an icon of the ‘Age of Flame‘ in home and hearth and of the woodcraft tradition in outdoor recreation and wilderness survival. Not so long ago families and outdoors enthusiasts relied on wood matches for daily use for cooking, heating, lighting, hygiene and more. Today, the iconic wood match is mostly replaced by technological systems; butane lighters, piezo-ignitors, natural gas pilot light systems, and electric element ignition systems. Daily dependence on wood matches is a bygone…

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Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine 7e

Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine 7e

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TweetEvery time you decide you know everything a new edition of Auerbach comes out! Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine 7e offers current information with authority-of-resource for ever-advancing  wilderness medicine and outdoor methods. This is my go-to reference for all things physiological and emergency medical for austere environments, backcountry and wilderness. Auerbach is discounted online! This is THE heavyweight text, all 12.4 pounds and 2848 pages in two volumes. Purchase the printed volumes and get the code opening access to a heavy dose…

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Field Note: Check for mechanical damage to water filters

Field Note: Check for mechanical damage to water filters

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TweetHear a new rattle inside you water filter? Don’t use it. Don’t let your water filter freeze. I think that’s what snapped the rigid element inside my NDUR Survival Straw–along with some pretty rough handling. I put it away indoors, end of last winter, then noticed a rattle, later. I disassembled it and found the black filter element had snapped off. The straw is no longer available for sale and I found no parts for sale online. This well made…

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Winter Solstice initiative: 50K on the Shortest Day

Winter Solstice initiative: 50K on the Shortest Day

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TweetGo Outdoors and Do it… You probably don’t need much of an excuse to Go Outdoors and Do It. Just getting out there, wind on your face, your senses visited by breezy natural aromas and immersed in a soundscape of birds and bugs–those are reasons enough. And, there’s that orchestra of tree music strummed by fingers of wind playing the forest canopy: Oh, and the watery “poik” of fat raindrops on rocks and the gentler patter of dripping foliage. If…

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New labeling graphic for bug repellent products, 2016

New labeling graphic for bug repellent products, 2016

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TweetA new voluntary labeling program to hit your gear supplier and grocery shelves in 2016. The United States EPA worked with manufacturers to develop standardized testing and data interpretation protocols for skin applied insect repellents. Data and suggested labeling are supplied by manufacturers and reviewed by EPA for approval. Manufacturers are not required to participate, but those who do may use the new labeling to inform buyers. Symbols indicate pests repelled and typical protection times. Follow this link for more…

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The Great Human Race, authentic survival television

The Great Human Race, authentic survival television

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TweetNational Geographic Channel’s The Great Human Race is a late entry in the sprint for wilderness survival programming audience. It’s a powerful entry and much more than wilderness survival. GHR reaches for anthropological authenticity. The scope and breadth of GHR exceeds competitors geographically and intellectually. Viewers follow the tribulations of our archetypal founding pair of survivors along the path of early humans from African origins, onward. Four episodes have aired to date, six remain. This is the venerable  National Geographic…

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Bushcraft by Mors Kochanski. “The more you know, the less you carry.”

Bushcraft by Mors Kochanski. “The more you know, the less you carry.”

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TweetVenerable bushcraft instructor Mors Kochanski is one of the most experienced outdoor skills instructors in North America. His specialty is northern forests, the boreal, all seasons. Kochanski bridged primitive and historical methods and skills (actual skills, not just descriptions of skills) into the 21st Century and commingles these treasures with limited modern technologies and social media. Very few outdoor skills instructors have achieved Kochanski’s broad fluency in wilderness living and survival skills. Fewer still have achieved his fluency in instructional…

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The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher “The art of using gadgets”

The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher “The art of using gadgets”

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TweetTrailblazing backpacker Colin Fletcher (1922 – 2007) carried his home on his back through decades of wildlands journeys and throughout the ascendancy of modern technological solutions for living on the trail. He bushwhacked new territory and left ample sign for others to follow, all detailed in The Complete Walker IV (Alfred A. Knopf 2002). Fletcher tested myriad methods and outdoor gear solutions throughout the second half of the 20th Century, detailing their utility first in 1968, and then again and…

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Fed young bear likely to become dead bear…

Fed young bear likely to become dead bear…

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TweetThis adorable video could be titled something like, Fed young bear begging for more goodies…, OR, The beginning of the end of a grizzly bear. It is obvious in the young bear’s behavior that it learned to seek handouts, to beg human food at a very young age. Wild lands moments like this one are precious in the present, only if we are ignorant of, or just ignore, past impacts and future outcomes? Young begging bears become massive smash and…

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Wilderness Survival Television goes Naked and Afraid 40 days

Wilderness Survival Television goes Naked and Afraid 40 days

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TweetHard core survival television on tap for summer 2015.  “…it is impossible to disentangle completely a persons behavior from their physiology. The physical traumas, privations, and deficiencies which can undermine the body’s  strength and efficiency all have psychological consequences.” John Leach, Survival Psychology* Discovery Channel, the folks who bring us the most elemental and challenging wilderness survival series in production, Naked and Afraid, is one-upping itself. The July 12, 2015 Premier of Naked and Afraid XL will feature a group…

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