Cordage

Many of these techniques come from my Field Guide To Wilderness Survival by Tom Brown.  I'd recommend checking out a book or two of his, he's mastered nearly every survival skill and has some very interesting stories as well.

Cordage is one of the most important items to have in any survival situation.  It can be used for bows, traps, fishing and shelter building, among others.  To make cordage a number of different materials can be used, just try to stick with strong, fibrous material.  For my attempt I used a type of dried sedge I found in my yard.

There are a few different ways to make cordage, but I went with the simplest method.  First I took a dozen or so of the sedge blades and rubbed them back and forth in my hands to loosen up any extra material.  One I trimmed them all to an approximately equal length, then tied a knot in one end and bit on to it, pulling the material tight as I rolled it.

Once this was finished, I simply bit the middle, and tied the two ends together.  It twisted naturally into something resembling an oblong pretzel, but it was strong.  Splice a few of these together and you can have any length of cordage you'd like.

This was a fairly straightforward procedure without many complications.  The most difficult part was finding the proper material.

My next post will focus on the author Bill Mckibben and the South American town of Curitiba.