What is Bushcraft?

 

At Mammut Bushcraft & Wilderness Living Skills we are actively engaged in learning and sharing skills that are sometimes labelled as Bushcraft or Survival. Although these terms share a common skillset, a person engaged in survival has a very different set of priorities than another person engaged in bushcraft. What follows is our working distinction between these two commonly confused terms.

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Survival is the process of living through an unfortunate event, whether this occurs along the highway, in our home, office or in a wilderness setting. The goal is simple, stay alive to tell your story.  In general, a survival situation is one that threatens the function of an important body system such as circulation or thermoregulation.  In survival you focus on the absolute essential details of keeping your body alive; 

 

1) Maintain hydration

2) Get adequate sleep

3) Maintain thermal equilibrium.  

 

The necessary information can be easily learned, but must be adapted to every situation and ecosystem in which you find yourself.  You might have noticed that food is not part of survival.  If you can easily meet all the above requirements, and you can gather adequate nutrition you are no longer surviving, as the iconic Steve Watts used to say, "now you're camping."

 

In contrast, the knowledge of Bushcraft begins after we have learned the fundamentals of keeping our body alive and well. This is something we enter into intentionally, or possibly even a daily approach to life itself.  Bushcraft allows us to begin interacting and observing nature with less concern for our immediate welfare. Bushcraft becomes the skill of living, eating, travelling, crafting, building and creating the sensation of a home in the wilderness.  And the most essential tool  in the pursuit of a proficiency in bushcraft is your combined mind and body.