101–110 of 121 posts
This remind me of the Wilderness Survival merit badge in the boy scouts. We had to survive a night in the woods with no gear except a pocket knife and the clothes on our backs.
Quite topical as Jamboree starts this week. I was flying out of Ecuador late last week and saw a bunch of excited scouts on their way to Jamboree and it made me smile. Are there any other bizarre coming-of-age scouting traditions that other countries follow? This article immediately made me think of USA’s similar tradition, the snipe hunt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt
We had a tradition of sending new scouts over to other camps to ask for a "left-handed smoke shifter" to better control the smoke coming off of the camp fire. No such thing exists of course, but sending off new boys (and receiving similar new boys from other camps) was a hilarious tradition and a bit of light hazing that nobody ever broke. One older scout even crafted a piece of equipment he instructed the newbie to…
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The Hoge Veluwe might be one of the few places where this can happen. And even then, the Hoge Veluwe is 55 sqkm. Worst case scenario you walk for a few hours to reach one of the edges. Just keep walking in the same direction. Hoge Veluwe, one of the few things I miss from my home town. Such a great place to hang out as a kid.
> Just keep walking in the same direction. AFAIK this is surprisingly difficult, many (most? all?) people end up walking in circles when placed in a forest without any clues for orientation. Edit: Some random sources: https://www.livescience.com/33431-why-humans-walk-circles.ht... , https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/08/why-we-walk-circles , https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)... "participa…
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>We also have no natural dangers to speak of Except for the eikenprocessierupsen
For the English speaking folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_processionary This particular caterpillar has seen explosionary growth and when it sheds its copious hairs, they cause extreme irritation.
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> Just keep walking in the same direction. AFAIK this is surprisingly difficult, many (most? all?) people end up walking in circles when placed in a forest without any clues for orientation. Edit: Some random sources: https://www.livescience.com/33431-why-humans-walk-circles.ht... , https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/08/why-we-walk-circles , https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)... "participa…
All Dutch woods have man made paths. Most forests even have some sort of grid of roads for logging. Check a random dutch forest on Google Maps to see it. As far as I know we ware the only country that has this in almost every forest..
Nobody said that that you can get lost in a Dutch forest forever, but I can totally believe that you might not immediately find out if you're dropped in the wrong spot in the middle of the night. After daybreak you'll be out in no time.
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It's really obvious when you cross the NL/BE or NL/DE borders though, signage becomes different, houses look different. So unless you cross the border in a wooded area, you will definitely know.
"houses look different" Really? Just over the border? I would have thought cross pollination over the years would have rendered housing styles identical. Plus aren't there streets where one half is Dutch, the other half Belgian? Edit: Like here for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog
Baarle-Hertog is indeed a bit of an exception to this rule, but generally you can see it quite clearly.
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For the English speaking folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_processionary This particular caterpillar has seen explosionary growth and when it sheds its copious hairs, they cause extreme irritation.
Sounds like it needs a sign. Beware of attack caterpillars!
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Of course in a proper dropping you're not allowed to have a cell phone. There's got to be some challenge in it.
I approve the provision of a cell phone for that age group (early teens). Provided it's a dumb phone with only call service available in case they really need to call for help. I'm much more dubious about giving them GPS. It's a lot of fun figuring out where you are on a map and GPS takes that fun away.
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Are Euro wild boars not dangerous? So much for that Black Forest Ham premium! Boars definitely attack people in the US, and the wounds can be bad to the lower body and gut. Lots of blood loss isn't uncommon.
We have them in Poland and from my own childhood spent around Polish forest I remember the rule being - if it's a single boar, you have good chances trying to scare it away, but if it's a mother with the young......make for the nearest tree and climb like your life depended on it(because she will attack you).