|  In removing ourselves from the wholeness of nature we have become rich with power and possessions, but we have also impoverished ourselves. We can only observe the beauty we once belonged to, the wild matrix that gave birth to us and sustains us even in our distance and contempt. We won’t be members of the wild again, but the wild was our first teacher, and if we could stop ourselves from destroying it and approach it with humility, it could again be our teacher. There is much we could learn from old-growth forest, how its diverse and vigorous community conserves and recycles its wealth, balances its growth and death, and so sustains itself through time. Much we could learn from wild salmon, who leap the rapids with a faithfulness to home we have scarcely begun to imagine for ourselves. We might learn patience from the bristlecones, fortitude from monarch butterflies, the dignity of space and breathing room from ponderosa pines and saguaros.
— John Daniel Campcraft is kind of an old-fashioned notion, and many of the books in this section are in fact relatively old. The term covers both the survival and living skills of what used to be called a woodsman – the sort of person Tom Elpel neatly describes as the engineer of the wilds, who can build absolutely anything with an axe, a saw, and a knife. But the term campcraft, I think, covers more than structural skills; it includes a respect for the wilderness, an ability to use contemporary tools wisely, a sense of the wilderness as home. The books listed in this section should illustrate that idea.
 Mark Baker, A Pilgrim’s Journey (Texarkana TX :Scurlock Publishing, 2004), ISBN 1-880655-15-2. Mark Baker is widely recognized as one of the foremost authorities on 18th-century woodsmanship. He is an author, living history re-enactor, and a longtime contributor to Muzzleloader Magazine. His columns dealing with the way of life of the Colonial woodsman covered flintlocks, moccasins, shooting bags, knapsacks – all learned from his own wilderness experience, extensive research, and partners and mentors along the way. This book collects the first ten years of his column in 300 pages of treks, scouts, hunts, and how-to information, along with 250 illustrations and photos. This is an outstanding source for learning the clothing, accoutrements, food, and skills of the 18th-century longhunter – skills that still find their place in the wilderness.
 Joe Dart, Alaskan's How To Handbook (Fairbanks AK: Alaska Trappers Association, 1981). This how-to book was the brainchild of long-term Alaska Trappers Association editor Joe Dart, who wanted to preserve some of the skills necessary for life in the Alaskan bush. He interviewed the experts and put their thoughts into words and pictures. You can learn how to make snowshoes, a fish wheel, a dog sled, and many other useful tools. This book is fascinating reading even if you never plan to actually construct the items described. Available from Alaska Trappers Association, PO Box 82177, Fairbanks AK 99708, 907-457-1774.
 Bruce Hampton, et al., Soft Paths: How to Enjoy the Wilderness without Harming It (Harrisburg PA: Stackpole Books, 1995), ISBN 0-81173-092-1. Traditional campcraft developed long before the wilderness was threatened by . . . well, by campers. Forty years ago it was probably hard to foresee the incredible traffic that now goes through much of the more accessible wilderness areas, and new campcraft skills have become necessary to keep these areas – and even the less traveled places – from being overwhelmed. This book is the National Outdoor Leadership School's highly regarded classic on minimum-impact or leave-no-trace hiking and camping. While there are legitimate disputes about when and where the more stringent rules should be applied, there is no question that this book provides the basis for a thoughtful consideration of our often unintended effects on the wilderness.
 Stanley Hawbaker, Trapping North American Furbearers (Fort Loudon PA: S. Stanley Hawbaker & Sons, Revised 15th edition, 1974). This book is long out of print and hard to find, but do what you can to find a copy. Profusely illustrated with photographs and drawings, it contains the accumulated wisdom of an old-fashioned professional trapper. Chapters include red fox, mink, muskrat, raccoon, coyote, wolf, otter, wolverine, and black bear; for each animal, the author discusses tracks, trails, scents, sets, and placement. There are chapters on traps and their care; derusting, coloring, and waxing traps; tools for the trapper; lures and baits; proper trap sizes for each animal; and skinning, fleshing, and drying furs. The book sets out the favorite sets of America’s best trappers, gives tips and hints, and tosses in chapters on hunting deer and turkey, building cabins, bee hunting, and finding summer work as a trapper.
 Ellsworth Jaeger,. Wildwood Wisdom (Bolinas CA: Shelter Publications, 2000), ISBN 0-93607-012-9. This historical guide, originally written in 1945, is 475 pages of everything you could possibly want to know about nineteenth-century woodscraft. In chapters on clothing, packing horses, beds and blankets, shelters, firemaking, axes and knives, outdoor sanitation, cooking, animals, birds, plants, canoes, tracking, stalking, calling, wayfinding, Indian skills, camp furniture, and winter campcraft, the book teaches how to make blanket coats, buckskin leggings, lean-tos, adobe huts, camp bread, birchbark containers, bolas, and a rawhide couch. Want to know about dog teams, edible fungus, hot-stone cooking, packsaddles, and what plants make good soap? This is the place.
 Horace Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness (Knoxville TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), ISBN: 0-87049-556-9. First published in 1917, this collection is a repository of the sort of woodcraft that is virtually lost today. Kephart lived for years at a camp in the Appalachians, and he distilled his experience into two volumes, now published together. He discusses every aspect of living in the wilderness – how to cook without utensils, make insect repellant, sleep in a bed made of boughs, make soap. This is how it was done in the days before Gore-Tex and polypropylene.
 Mors Kochanski, Northern Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival (Lone Pine Publishing, 1991), ISBN: 0-91943-351-0. The author – a teacher of outdoor skills in northern Canada for more than 35 years – is in the direct lineage of such classic woodsmen as Horace Kephart and George Sears. The book begins with lengthy and detailed chapters on building and maintaining fires, the use of the bush axe, knife, and saw, cordage techniques, and building shelter. It has separate chapters on the uses of both trees and animals found in the north – the birch trees, conifers, willows, shrubs, moose, and hare. Along the way it covers such topics as the bowdrill, tinder fungus, felling, trees, how to make cooking implements, and crafting baskets, including birch bark containers, splint baskets, and split twig baskets.
 John J. Mettler, et al., Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game (Pownal VT: Storey Books, 1986), ISBN 0-88266-391-7. The author is a large-animal veterinarian, and his book – with its 130 detailed illustrations – shows just how to go about slaughtering and butchering anything you might want to eat, including beef, veal, hogs, poultry, deer, rabbits and small game. The book gives detailed instructions on how to slaughter, skin, and butcher; dress out game in the field; and salt, smoke, and preserve the meat – and it even gives recipes.
 Kathleen Meyer, How To Shit In the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (Berkeley CA: Ten Speed Press, 1994), ISBN 0-89815-627-0. The title says it all. This is a well written, humorous, comprehensive, no-holds-barred discussion about shitting in the woods, with additional useful information on peeing, especially for women. It was the first to open a subject often treated with undue delicacy in prior wilderness books, and a moment’s thought is enough to realize the importance of the subject in any discussion of campcraft. Absolutely definitely a classic.
 Nessmuk, Woodcraft and Camping (New York NY: Dover Publications, 1999), ISBN 0-48621-145-2. Beginning in 1880, George Washington Sears wandered the Adirondacks, canoeing its lakes, climbing its mountains, and writing a series of letters about his experiences, commissioned by Forest and Stream magazine, under the pen name of Nessmuk. This slim book – a little more than a hundred pages – is his account of the skills he used on his journeys, and it covers basic campcraft at a size you can easily slip in your backpack. The book is written with charm and grace, and can be read with pleasure not just for its content but for its picture of what nineteenth-century wilderness living was really like. A collection of the Forest and Stream letters can be found in Dan Brenan, editor, Canoeing the Adirondacks With Nessmuk: The Adirondack Letters of George Washington Sears (Blue Mountain Lake NY: Adirondack Museum, 2nd edition, 1993, ISBN 0-81562-594-4.
 Calvin Rutstrum, The New Way of the Wilderness (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), ISBN 0-81663-683-4. Cal Rutstrum was born in 1895 in Indiana, and he died in 1982 in Wisconsin. In between, he lived an unconventional life in the wilderness of northern Minnesota and Ontario and was, from the 1920s through the 1950s, one of North America’s most important wilderness writers. This classic guide, first published in the late 1950s and now republished, with an awful pink cover, by the University of Minnesota Press, deals with the key elements of old-fashioned campcraft. Chapters cover canoe travel, packhorse methods, and winter travel by dog team and hand toboggan; the author discusses wayfinding, camping equipment and clothing, wilderness recipes and cooking methods, and fishing and hunting for food. The book is filled with helpful information on just about every aspect of wilderness travel; it is a pleasure to read, and not just because the author says things like “Skirts are an abomination in the woods. Even for the ladies there is no substitute for the felt hat.”
 David Wescott, Camping in the Old Style (Salth Lake City UT: Gibbs Smith, 2000), ISBN 0-87905-956-7. The author, a founder of the contemporary primitive skills movement and long one of its foremost practitioners and advocates, here moves in history all the way into the nineteenth century. The book is an attempt to recapture the skills and ethos of old-fashioned campcraft, and interwoven in the his discussions of old-style camping is his critique of the synthetic type. ”If one buys or makes gear,” he writes, “it should be done from renewable resources, or recyclable materials, such as wool, cotton, wood, army surplus, and tin cans. If the resources are not renewable, one should be honest about it and take responsibility for the impact they create.” It has sections on furnishing the camp, canvas shelters, fires, camp activity, and walking a trail, and it provides tips on cooking over an open fire, story telling, canoe-camping, and selecting a campsite. Throughout the book are large old black-and-white photographs and quotations like the following: ”It is not he who praises Nature, but he who lies continually on her breast and is satisfied who is actually united to her.”
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