Thank You to All My Readers

The author writing a post while in Deep Creek, VA.  Picture by the author.

  

It has been an exciting six months here at The Woodsman’s Journal Online, and I would like to take a moment to thank all of my readers for their support.  Thank you!  The Woodsman’s Journal Online is growing and we have surpassed 1,000 page views during the last month, so thank you again for all of your support.

I thought it would be fun to imagine being interviewed and answer the questions; I thought I would be asked.

“Why did you call your blog, The Woodsman’s Journal Online?”

During the late 80s and early 90s, I use to enjoy reading “fanzines” and other home-based magazines and newsletters, which had been written, typed and printed in someone’s kitchen, before being put into the U.S. Mail for distribution.  Fast forward to 2018, when I started The Woodsman’s Journal Online, as much as possible I wanted my blog to be similar to those “zines” from the 80s and 90s that I had enjoyed so much.  Obviously, the internet has radically changed every aspect of life in the modern world, and home-based publishing is no exception: everything is now faster, quicker and much, much easier!  It is hard to believe how much easier and faster it is today to research, type, publish and distribute your home-based magazine: no more cutting, pasting and photocopying pictures to create graphics.  Today the world is your oyster and you don’t need the U.S. Mail!  So the name, The Woodsman’s Journal Online, is a nod to all of those home-based “zines” of the 80s and 90s and with a wink at our ever expanding, worldwide, online culture.

Oh and I find that I do some of my best writing while I am sitting at the kitchen table.

“In your videos you call yourself The BandanaMan, why?”

There are two parts to that answer; first, as I have gotten older I have found that I have grown past my hairline.  I hate getting sunburned on the top of my head, about as much as I hate getting bitten by bugs there; and so, I always wear something on my head when I am in the woods.  Sometimes, when I am canoeing or hiking, I wear a brimmed hat, but I find it difficult to wear a brimmed hat when I am carrying a large pack or portaging a canoe, and so I usually wear a bandana tied around my head.

A picture of the author wearing his usual headgear, picture by the author.

And for the second part, in 2015 I taught a Birchbark Expeditions Shakedown class to a group of scouts, who I later met in Algonquin Park as they were coming off the water and finishing their trek.  One of the boys said to me, as I was uncharacteristically NOT wearing a bandana, “Hey! I know you, you are the bandana man”.  This is why I call myself BandanaMan and why I named my YouTube channel BandanaMan Productions.

“How and when did you become interested in the outdoors, bushcraft, survival and the history of the Old Northwest Frontier?”

I have always been interested in the outdoors, and when my brother, sister, and I were little, my parents took us tent camping often.  My favorite book, even before I could read, was my Father’s 1953 edition of the Boy Scout, Handbook For Boys.  I used to get up at first light, and during the summer, I would take this book off my Father’s bookshelf, take it to my tree fort and look at the pictures.  Later in July 1978, I went to Algonquin Provincial Park for the first time, with Boy Scout Troop 131, see “…First Time In Algonquin…” found HERE.  While I was there I became fascinated with wilderness survival, in fact when we stopped at Algonquin Outfitters to buy souvenirs, I bought my first two wilderness survival books: Wilderness Survival, by Berndt Berglund and Survival in the Wilderness, by Life Support Technology, Inc.

  

The Handbook For Boys, June 1953, Fifth Edition – Sixth Printing, by Boy Scouts Of America.  Picture by the author. 

Wilderness Survival, by Berndt Berglund, picture by the author.

  

Survival in the Wilderness, by Life Support Technology, Inc., picture by the author.

I have always been fascinated by American history, having heard tales of my Great Grandfather⁶ Daniel Ogden, who was a scout and a ranger in the Tryon County militia and his son, David, who was captured by Joseph Brant, who had been a family friend before the war, near Fort Stanwix, NY and marched to Fort Niagara, NY.  When I was about 16 years old, at a garage sale, I bought a copy of The Frontiersmen, by Allan Eckert, and from then on I was hooked and I have wanted to learn everything I could about life on the Old Northwest Frontier of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  In addition, when my oldest son turned eleven, we went to Fort Niagara to see a reenactment of the fort being captured from the French by the English.  He loved it!  He thought it was adults playing dress up, which in some ways it is, what he didn’t understand then, was how much research and learning is required to portray, accurately, what life was like 250 years ago.  He didn’t understand this, but I did and since I said I would help him with this, I dove even deeper into the world of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, specifically the history of what is today the northeastern United States.

Captive! The story of David Ogden and the Iroquois, picture by the author.

The Frontiersmen, by Allan Eckert, picture by the author.

“Why, when you are writing about history, do use really old sources, instead of more modern one?”

The answer to this question also has two parts.  First, I always try to use sources that are close to or current with the time I am writing about, so that I can understand how people of that time thought and acted.  Also, whenever I can, I try to use sources that were written by people who lived through an event that I am writing about: these type of sources are called ‘primary’ sources.  Primary sources are better than ‘secondary’ sources, which were written by people, usually a long time afterwards, who didn’t actually do the thing they wrote about or live through the event in question.  As Christian Cameron noted “reading primary sources is research … reading secondary sources is learning”¹.  These two distinctions are very important to me, since my mission for both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and BandanaMan Productions is to be the best researched resource available to the online user (for more on this see “The End of 2018 and the Beginning of 2019” HERE).

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and my videos at BandanaMan Productions and thank you again for reading and watching my content. 

Don’t forget to follow me on The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and if you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.

Sources

¹  The European Experience of Partisan Warfare, A Treatise for the Fort Ticonderoga Command Conference, March, 2008, Christian Cameron, https://www.academia.edu/839474/The_Eurpean_experience_of_Partisan_Warfare--a_lecture_for_the_NAM_Chelsea, accessed 6/15/19