If you’d like to feel more confident in wilderness or survival situations, raise your awareness and understanding of the natural world, and reconnect with the skills of your ancestors, there’s a growing outdoor sport you’ll want to explore. It’s called bushcraft, and we’ve got a great instructor right here in SW Washington named Mike Lummio.

Professionally trained as a biologist, Lummio has practiced bushcraft skills since childhood while camping, backpacking, bowhunting, and stalking trout with a fly rod. Knowing how to make camp wasn’t really called bushcraft while Lummio was growing up in SW Washington. It was more like a set of life skills that he now shares through his Goldendale, Washington-based company, Bushcraft Northwest.

My own interest in living more comfortably in the wilds recently led me to spend a day with Lummio at his bushcraft workshop in the Columbia River Gorge. He likes to keep his class sizes small — about five students — so each person gets plenty of one-on-one attention. Surprisingly, three of the day’s five students had to back out the evening before the workshop. So Lummio’s charges for the day included only two, myself and Rick Sexton, a physician’s assistant from Goldendale, Wash.
After brief introductions, Lummio launched right into knots. He told us that a few simple knots could take care of our needs not just in camp, but in life as well. I was a little skeptical when he suggested that just four knots could get you through almost any tying task, but my disbelief faded as he demonstrated each.

Lummio started with the bowline hitch, which puts a stationary loop in the end of a rope. Then he created a tensioning hitch, which allows you to adjust the amount of tension on a rope. Next came the power cinch, or “trucker’s knot,” which really blew my mind. The power cinch lets you pull your rope down super tight, helpful for getting your load tied down right the first time. For me, it’ll mean my hammock never sags again. Finally, Lummio showed us the Siberian Hitch, which lets you attach a rope to any object. In bushcraft, that’s usually a tree.

Next came the part of the workshop I was most excited about — knives! I’ve long been a huge fan of knives, and assumed a foot-long, Rambo-esque survival knife would be the best bushcraft tool. Lummio showed us why that’s not necessarily true.
For standard bushcraft tasks like making “feather sticks” as fire starting fuel, or creating notches for tent pegs, an overall knife length of six or seven inches beats a large knife, hands down, because smaller knives are easier to control. That’s especially important during precise and nuanced cutting work. Some of that nuanced work showed up in the next part of the workshop, which focused on how to start a fire with nothing more than a knife.

This is something you hear a lot about, and have probably seen on television, the ability to “rub two sticks together” to make fire. I’d never seen it personally, and was very excited to learn I’d be creating and keeping my own fire making tools this day.
Lummio pulled a bowdrill setup from a duffel bag and explained how it worked. The photo accompanying this story shows the bowdrill in action. It includes five parts, all of which you can make with a knife.

We first made handholds and bows, then spindles. Finally, we carved a depression in our hearths for the spindles to sit in. For the fifth part, the bow string, we used parachute cord to save time. Cordage made from trees such as willows would have worked just as well.

After our fire making instruction, Lummio moved on to discuss plants found in the Columbia River Gorge, and how to make use of them as food, medicine or building materials. He also did a mini workshop on navigation. We wrapped up the day’s instruction with a demonstration on how to make rope, or cordage, from the bark of a willow.

All the tools and training needed to engage in bushcraft are available at Lummio’s Web site, www.bushcraftnorthwest.com. Visit the Web site to learn about and register for upcoming workshops.
Mike Bitton is a contributor to The Voice.