Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.

Here’s a little confession about me — I’m a bit of an outdoors nut.

I like being outside, whether it’s hiking, fishing or hunting. About the only thing I refuse to do is mountain climbing, although I will go through spells where I’ll binge-watch documentaries about those whackos who will scale the side of a cliff with no ropes at all.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gravitated towards the bushcraft scene — the idea being, how well can you get along with the least amount of gear. You know, starting fires with little sparky sticks, camping out underneath a tarp (I almost have my wife sold on that), drinking water one treated from a creek.

Basically, if you’ve ever seen “Alone” on the History Channel, that’s what I’m going for. Some real Mountain Man madness.

“The more you know, the less you have to carry,” said Mors Kochanski, the great granddaddy of all things bushcraft.

Kochanski was an O.G. survivalist — he got kicked out of the boy scouts as a kid because he was too good at surviving in the woods. Being Canadian, Kochanski was an expert at cold-weather living, teaching the army and rescue teams how to survive in the bush.

And his advice is sound — I keep a bootlegged PDF of one of his manuals on my cell phone.

Despite the stated goal of being able to survive in the woods with the clothes on one’s back, a toothpick and a piece of dental floss, bushcraft is rife with gear fetishism, just like any other outdoor hobby.

You know what I’m talking about — every fisherman is secretly yearning for the next lure, every hunter is eyeballing the next scope, every hiker the next set of boots.

Sure, we’re happy with what we’ve got, we make it work, but what if there’s something better out there, you know?

Of course, paying full price for it is out of the question — at least if you’re me.

Over the last few weekends, I’ve been doing this thing where I get up early with Dolly Parton (my dog) before the sun gets too high and traipse out into the woods with some food and a cheap little Walmart backpacking skillet.

I make a little fire, cook my food and then we eat.

What I’ve been using to get it done is a little Walmart backpack. It works great — I can’t say enough good things about it.

But then the gear fetish kicked in — what if I could accomplish the same thing, but with a haversack?

If you don’t know what a haversack is, it’s a man purse for the woods. Like anything else, there are high-end ones fetching $350, and then there are the flea market finds.

Me, I’m a flea market type of guy.

Being hung up on the haversack hunt, I slipped out for a minute Thursday to hit up the Hillbilly Flea Market, to see what the Army Surplus guy had. Having nothing to fit the bill, I left $7 poorer with a canteen (even though I have one at home), a radio bag (that can totally be used for ramp foraging next spring) and a shovel pouch (hey, it was a dollar and the dude ended up throwing it in for free).

On the way home from work, I stopped at the Peddler’s Mall on the West End of Huntington, where the Big Lots used to be.

While it pains a West Virginian to say it, that Peddler’s Mall is the best thing Kentucky has sent us since Ale-8.

In there, I found me a bag for $10 and took it home. It took me about 10 minutes, but I eventually lined out how each thing would fit in my bag, what would go where.

Now the first instinct after getting it lined out was to stick it in the back of my closet, away from the wife who might raise a concern about how collection of outdoor bags has grown from two or three to like four or five, with a few pouches, to boot.

Sometimes writing something down, confessing to the world makes you realize a couple of things.

The next time I even think about rolling my eyes when my wife comes home from Target with some soap and a new set of plastic bowls, I better remember those pouches chilling in the back of my closet ready for the woods.

Reach HENRY CULVYHOUSE at henry@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.

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