A Beginner's Dreams

[WatcherWraith]

Hi! I'm Wraith, and very new to the forum. Have done some reading of various forum channels and have some hopes of learning from you guys in whatever ways I can.

I'm extremely obsessed with Tolkien's world and have my own projects on it, but have in recent months acquired a desire to gain outdoor survival skills and abilities to live in an environment closer to what is generally found in Middle Earth life. However, my financial situation only allows for the life I live in a simple neighborhood with my job and my needs from day to day.

Does anyone have any tips for how to gain these skills without spending a lot?

[Peter Remling]

Duplicate post

[Peter Remling]

Hi and Welcome!

There are many skills that cost little or nothing to learn. I'd recommend starting with fire building. You can use a ferro rod to start as it's basically flint and steel and costs next to nothing. First go online and look up fire starting, you'll learn a number of ways to pick tinder materials and building a bed for the fire and material placement. Each method is a little different and used for different purposes. Things to look for are Dakota fire pits, Dutch stove, extenders, pine sap, fat wood. Practice more than one style until you're comfortable with several.

After starting a fire, the next skill set would be water purification. I put water purification after fire starting as you'll want to boil water to purify it and charcoal production. First though, is filtering. Start with cloth as the top layer, then gravel, crushed charcoal, sand and another layer of cloth. You'll need some sort of tube or funnel to hold the filtering material. You can even use a thick bone, hollowed out and the material placed inside with the cloth on either end. Afterward, bring the water to a full boil for at least a minute, remove from heat and let cool before pouring it into any non-metal or ceramic container. Pouring hot water into something like a bota bag will either damage the liner or soften the brewers pitch and beeswax.

The next skill would be to learn some tracks of local animals and how to set basic traps. There are numerous sites that have tracks that can be printed out and studied. The same can be said for preparing and setting traps.

After that plant identification would be the next thing to look into. Not sure where you live so while there are many plant sites, I'd recommend one of the plant identification apps for your phone. They are cheap and will help you out a lot regardless of if you're in your normal locale or traveling.

These are some of the basic outdoor skills you can learn for next to nothing.

For other skills, like swordsmanship, archery or unarmed combat, check your local sword/archery clubs or one of the martial art studios. Many adult education schools offer one or more martial arts at very low costs as they are generally partially subsidized by the state or federal govt. You may not find the particular form of swordsmanship, archery or unarmed combat locally, but any training is better than no training.

If you've ever gone camping or hiking most of that will cross over easily to basic rangering. Start hiking in your local park. I'm an O.F. (Old Fart) and hate running so I walk at least 3.5 miles a day at one of the parks near my house. Every other day I switch off with a 20 lb. pack so I don't hurt by back.

Most other skills will relate directly to todays' skills; sewing, cooking, sharpening kitchen knives etc.

Good Luck and Welcome. We are here to help.

[WatcherWraith]

Thank you! I will be rereading this a lot as I proceed. I can do a lot of the things you suggested, and this gives me encouragement. :]

[Elleth]

Hello Wraith, well met!

To follow up on Peter's excellent advice, a couple other things you can work on even with very meagre means -


- practice making a nice tight bedroll with what you have on hand. While we play with period woolens in our games, remember that the characters we read about are just working with their everyday, normal clothes and blankets. So do the same.

Practice laying out some spare socks and undies and a hand towel or something in a regular bed blanket, and experimenting with various ways of carrying it. Maybe hook a couple belts together for a tumpline, or make a horseshoe/mule collar, or or or...

There's a good decade of how-to's on youTube at this point from all sorts of groups (I actually think the 11th OVC's video on bedrolls is one of the best, even if Yankee cavalry is a far far remove from Viggo's Strider).



- Find a good spot near your home that holds tracks well. Maybe it's a dusty gravelly spot near a fence. Maybe it's the trailhead to a local park. Doesn't matter - anywhere people and animals go. Go there and note what's there - draw what you see. Maybe even make some footprints, and draw those. Pay attention to where your foot has pushed up earth around the edges, or how one part of your footprint is deeper - and what you did to make those things to happen. Come back the next day and try to find the tracks from the day before. Maybe make some new fresh ones. Do it again the next day, and the next and the next. Get an eye for watching how wind and weather change what's been there a while.

While you're out walking, look closely at the trees. Are the leaves the same shade of green they were last week? Has a branch broken off recently? Are there birds in the canopy, or insects on the trunk? What kind - and do some creatures prefer some trees? What about the grass? Are there disturbed spots that weren't there yesterday? How does it look the day after a rain? If you run across it, can you come back and find places where the grass is torn? What does that spot look like the next day?

Just look, everywhere you go. Make a point of truly seeing what your eyes are showing you. Do that every time you're outside until it's habit.

Do that for a year and you'll be so far ahead of folks who can just buy a nice costume. Do it for a lifetime, season after season and year after year, and you will know the world in which you live in a way very, very few do.



- Finally, if you want some more immersion in Tolkien's world, learn tengwar and/or one of the runic systems. Learn a few Sindarin words and learn to write them. Maybe find some of the elvish songs from the films, follow along with translations on a piece of paper (not the screen) with translations while listening. Learn to write the lyrics out in tengwar. You don't need fluency to get a feel for the language. Just let it become familiar.


And that's all I got today. An internet connection, a pad of paper, and time (the most precious of all things!) - you'll be halfway to being Strider for real.

[WatcherWraith]

Hello Wraith, well met!

To follow up on Peter's excellent advice, a couple other things you can work on even with very meagre means -


- practice making a nice tight bedroll with what you have on hand. While we play with period woolens in our games, remember that the characters we read about are just working with their everyday, normal clothes and blankets. So do the same.

Practice laying out some spare socks and undies and a hand towel or something in a regular bed blanket, and experimenting with various ways of carrying it. Maybe hook a couple belts together for a tumpline, or make a horseshoe/mule collar, or or or...

There's a good decade of how-to's on youTube at this point from all sorts of groups (I actually think the 11th OVC's video on bedrolls is one of the best, even if Yankee cavalry is a far far remove from Viggo's Strider).



- Find a good spot near your home that holds tracks well. Maybe it's a dusty gravelly spot near a fence. Maybe it's the trailhead to a local park. Doesn't matter - anywhere people and animals go. Go there and note what's there - draw what you see. Maybe even make some footprints, and draw those. Pay attention to where your foot has pushed up earth around the edges, or how one part of your footprint is deeper - and what you did to make those things to happen. Come back the next day and try to find the tracks from the day before. Maybe make some new fresh ones. Do it again the next day, and the next and the next. Get an eye for watching how wind and weather change what's been there a while.

While you're out walking, look closely at the trees. Are the leaves the same shade of green they were last week? Has a branch broken off recently? Are there birds in the canopy, or insects on the trunk? What kind - and do some creatures prefer some trees? What about the grass? Are there disturbed spots that weren't there yesterday? How does it look the day after a rain? If you run across it, can you come back and find places where the grass is torn? What does that spot look like the next day?

Just look, everywhere you go. Make a point of truly seeing what your eyes are showing you. Do that every time you're outside until it's habit.

Do that for a year and you'll be so far ahead of folks who can just buy a nice costume. Do it for a lifetime, season after season and year after year, and you will know the world in which you live in a way very, very few do.



- Finally, if you want some more immersion in Tolkien's world, learn tengwar and/or one of the runic systems. Learn a few Sindarin words and learn to write them. Maybe find some of the elvish songs from the films, follow along with translations on a piece of paper (not the screen) with translations while listening. Learn to write the lyrics out in tengwar. You don't need fluency to get a feel for the language. Just let it become familiar.


And that's all I got today. An internet connection, a pad of paper, and time (the most precious of all things!) - you'll be halfway to being Strider for real.

This gives me so much to work with! Thank you! I have ways of doing all of these, so this makes me very happy. Thank you very much! :]

[Taylor Steiner]

Welcome!

[WatcherWraith]

For the past week, I've been walking in the Urban Wilderness near my home, observing. Not many creature tracks besides dogs to be found here, but plenty of human ones, and I have had many opportunities to observe and study them. I've done some exploring. It's inspiring to see how quickly the familiar woods can turn into something strange and very new when you go down the right trail, especially the little-trodden ones!
Thank you guys for the tips! I will continue learning and listening in here :]