At Home in the Wilderness

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Take care, however, that you don't use a variety of tree that's potentially poisonous. I try to utilize pines, cedars, hemlocks, firs, oaks, hickories, and sassafras for my cooking utensils and containers. And remember: Hardwoods take more time and effort to burn out, but they're better than softwoods at holding foodstuffs without allowing liquids to seep into the container walls.

Once you've selected a suitable chunk of raw material, chip away the bark from one side until you have a flat surface, or platform. Then place hot, glowing embers from your fire in the center of the level spot and blow on them, causing them to burn slowly into the wood.

Because the coals will tend to burn directly down, you'll find that the process creates a natural bowl shape. Using this technique, you should be able to fashion a one- to two-quart pot from a cedar log in a little less than an hour. (Harder woods like oak can take two hours or more.) With a bit of patience and practice you'll find that containers of several sizes can be fashioned fairly quickly and adapted to a wide variety of uses in your wilderness kitchen.

After charring the depression to the size and shape you want, use a sharp stone to scrape out the burnt, flaky residue inside the bowl. Then find a rounded rock and use it as a sanding stone to grind out and finish your work. The result will be a vessel that's very effective for cooking and holding foods.

Fashioning a spoon involves a similar operation. Simply take a piece of wood about 1/2 inch thick and 6 to 7 inches long, and place a single hot coal close to one end. Blow on the ember steadily until a small, dish-shaped depression has been formed. Then scrape out the burned area, and use a rock to sand or carve the rest of the wood to a shape that suits your hand.

Actually, you'll find that stones are useful for more than merely scraping and carving utensils. In fact, they're among the best all; purpose tools available to the survivalist. A rock can do just about anything that an axe, knife, or piece of sandpaper can, and the earth provides us with a wide assortment of stone shapes and textures from which to choose.

Rocks can, for example, be struck against one another to form sharp fragments or edges good for scraping and cutting a variety of materials. (As your proficiency grows, you might want to learn to work rocks with simple knapping or abrading techniques to create sharp, long-lasting edges.) They can also be used for grinding and whetting, since their many variations in grit and texture make them fit for a number of such tasks. You can even form a rock into a dish or metate, for grinding wild grains, by hitting it with a hammer stone (a small, easily held rock that's harder than the one you're shaping) in a circular, pecking motion. True, the procedure will take a long time . . . but any tool that you can make of rock is likely to improve your chances of getting out of a survival situation alive and in good health.

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