22 okt 2014

Predicting thunder by looking into the water at the beach?

by Tim | posted in: Bushcraft, Knowledge, skills, Survival | 1

– a story from my childhood

It was a clear sunny day when my mom took me to the beach many years ago. I was about 8 years old I believe and all I thought about, was playing in the sand and swimming.

My mom was standing in the edge of the water when this old lady comes up to us. “It’s going to be thunder” she tells my mom. “Look into the water” she continued. “When the bottom swirls up like this, and the water becomes turbid, it’s going to be thunder”.

We looked into the water and it was indeed turbid, as if someone had just walked through it and swirled up the sand from the bottom. Except no one had.

I don’t know how the lady saw us, but I remember talking to my mom about her like she was a bit crazy. It was a clear blue sky, there wasn’t a wind and the sun was shining. Nothing, and I mean nothing indicated that the weather was about to change. We swept it away as an indifference and stayed at the beach for a little less than an hour or so.

Thunder
We drove back to our house which was about 5 minutes away from the beach. My mom went to make us some late lunch, when the impossible happened; a thunder in the distance! We looked at each other with disbelief. And then there was another one. The lady was right. Our view on the her had put us to shame. And since then we talked about her with admiration instead.

Since then I have actually experienced it myself. One time swallows were also flying low and it was much more obvious, looking at the sky, that the weather was about to change. And the water was turbid.

Have you heard of this?
I wonder however, has anyone else heard of this? Please comment or email me if you have. I have looked, but I haven’t been able to find anything about it on the internet yet. Maybe it’s a local thing? Or maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there? In that case the lady was crazy, and it was all a lucky strike. If I’m right however, maybe you should try looking into the water the next time you’re on a sandy beach.

20 okt 2014

Sailing the fjord of Viking king Harald Bluetooth

by Tim | posted in: Bushcraft, Fishing, Knowledge, Survival, Wild food | 0

Some pics from our fyke net fishing trip at Roskilde fjord this weekend.

Roskilde fjord is probably best known for it’s association with the Vikings. From here the longships took off on trips to distant parts of the world in order to both trade and plunder. This weekend was less dramatic. I took my sons to visit my uncle who is a fyke net fisher. He was going to haul the nets, so we arranged to go with him. A great experience for the kids and a nostalgic trip for me, since I used to do this with my grandfather when I was young. In spite of a very rainy day, the weather was great. 16° C and hardly any wind. The catch wasn’t impressive. A few flunders, some European eelpouts and a couple of fine eels – oh and tons of crabs. You can eat them but there’s hardly any meat on them. Some people use them to cook soup on however. It was a great day

13 okt 2014

Sunday morning’s bushcraft pursuits.

by Tim | posted in: Bushcraft, Knowledge | 0

This Sunday morning my kids and I went to a local area, to collect some different bow drill materials to experiment with. Coming across a Sambucus nigra, we also ended up carving a tap for collecting birch sap.

1 okt 2014

Mushrooms, snakes and cattails

by Tim | posted in: Bushcraft, Knowledge, skills, Survival, Wild food | 0

Just another day in the woods. No camping out for once.

This Sunday we had a great, sunny autumn day in the local wood foraging for mushrooms and, as you can see, some cattails. Although we only collected a few seed heads to use later for fire lighting. We didn’t harvest any of them for eating.

We also came across two non-poisonous Grass Snakes. The first one escaped into a hole in the ground really fast. The second one however kept it’s ground and allowed me to take a few pics of it. No, we didn’t attempt to hunt and eat it :) It’s also a protected species here btw.