Thoughts about reliance on technology in the wild, Ideas and a thought for a mini-lab Options

[Tom_Crumrine]

2 May 2005

The muzak in the Fairbanks airport is making me dumber. It is 4:30 am and I’m waiting for my flight out. No one is in the airport yet and I have already gone around and looked at all the mounted bear and moose and caribou heads. There are several large brown bears and a polar bear. I can’t remember the last year they could hunt polar bears but the few mounted ones I have seen are from the 60s. The size of these bears mounted is incredible. I can’t even imagine trying to take one down. If you think of bears as lumbering you are wrong. The few I have seen in New Hampshire move like gigantic fast dogs. They do not slowly move along. I don’t know but it doesn’t seem like you would get too many shots.



Yesterday Brian Horner from Learn to Return told us of some training he has done with polar bear guards. These people would stand watch for people who are doing work and make sure that polar bears aren’t coming in. They had to practice shooting targets that were coming towards them and ones that were moving towards someone else.

I’ve been thinking alot of Brian’s tales of spending 3 weeks out in the wilderness. Yesterday he was showing us some fire building techniques and it felt so easy. But having been out for just 5 days in the winter, I know it gets tough. Lighting a cotton ball in a parking lot is easier than trying to do the same thing when it is 20 below and your hands are freezing. It does make me want to get a metal match system though. These are devices that contain flint, steel and magnesium. They produce a 5000? degree spark. (I forget the exact number but it is really hot and it works well.) At any rate 3 weeks out in the winter would be a real task.



He had quite a few good tips that I want to try out on the next camping trip with students. (I take 8 student trips a year. 4 winter camping, 2 rock climbing, 1 fall camping and 1 300 mile bike trip.) Since our next trip is one where we build fires I want to try the chapstick cotton ball candle.

This system is made by pulling off a bit of chapstick and rubbing it through a cotton ball. [I came up with a little activity for my class—you can see it in the experiments sections of the virtual base camp.] Cotton alone burns a little but cotton mixed with chapstick burns amazingly well. I couldn’t believe how long it burned—several minutes at least. I also can’t believe I have never tried doing it before. I now feel too reliant on lighters even though I have never been in a situation where they have failed me in the past. One thing that has happened is that the flint gets wet and you have to wait for it to dry out. I have always been able to use the backup or borrow one from another group on a big trip. The thing is that I really need to incorporate some of the small suggestions Brian made.

For instance I don’t know why I have carried lighters with the little wheel for all these years. They are always a little hard to light but in the winter when your hands are cold and not wet but damp from being in a glove, they are almost impossible to use. They also tear up skin that is normally calloused but weak when soaked with dampness. For about 30 cents more you can buy the kind where all you do is push a button. How did I go so many years with that possibility right in front of my face and not think of it.