Bush Craft at Stramash
On Tuesday the 25th September p6/7 from the Islay and Jura schools went on an outward-bound trip: Stramash.
One of the activities that we done was bush craft, I really enjoyed that. Excitedly I walked up the path towards the woods with my group and at last we arrived. Our instructor, (Rich) told us to go and find somewhere comfy to sit and listen to everything around us. When we came back down we listed everything we heard; cars, wind, leaves etc.
Later on Rich showed us a feather stick he made because he wanted us too have a go and try making one. All of us were told about the triangle of death, the triangle of death is in between your legs where your arteries are, we were told TO NEVER! cut in-between your legs because if your knife slips out of your hand it could hit your arteries and that could kill you. So that is why you have too always cut at the side of you and away from your body. Soon enough Rich handed out knifes to each one of us, we were all pretty psyched to get too use a real knife by ourselves. When I had a go at making my own feather stick it took me quite a while to get the knack of it but when I did I was all right at it.
Now it was time to make a fire. My partner for making the fire was Ciaran, our fire was the first to get going and I think that surprised both of us. Too make the fire we had too collect sticks, (number ones) and (number twos) were the kind of sticks we had to collect, number ones are small thin twigs and number twos are thicker and a bit bigger. Too test if the twigs were dry on the inside we would snap them and if they made a good noise then we were able to use them.
Finally we were ready to create our fire. Ciaran lit the fire and carefully I laid the number ones on top of it and the number twos width ways, we both also used our feather sticks. Whenever our fire started going out we would use the mats we sat on and blow on the fire with it and me and Ciaran would start shouting “LIFE SUPPORT” whenever our fire died down a bit. As well as making a great fire everyone got marshmallows and got to toast them over the fire and me and Ciaran got one more each than everyone. I felt pretty sneaky about that…
By now it was the end of our bush craft session and I would be able to tell my friends all about my great time building fires and making a fire stick.
By Holly
