Bushcraft

Just back from four days/three nights living under a basha in private Kent woodland.  I help out on Natural Pathways bushcraft courses.
These events really bring out the best in everyone, in five years of going to these courses I haven't met a single unpleasant person.  Many have not been the sort of person I'd normally want to associate with, but they've all had something to contribute.  This last weekend I've had discussions on anything from the weather to the possibility of a universe with a second time dimension.
We also had the owner of the woodlands grandson doing the survivalist bit in another part of the woods.  The disturbance he and his two friends caused alerted us to their presence, so we wandered down and found their camp.  They weren't there and a bow and arrows, machete, food and various equipment was scattered around.  their shelter they'd built was pretty poor (they also had a tent) and their fire was uncontained and built among pine trees - risking a forest fire!  This somewhat shows the need for a bit of training before being let loose in woodland!  We hadn't been told he'd be there, so phoned the owner assuming they shouldn't be there - somewhat of a relief to find they were legitimate.
During our course we ate some delicious tender young rabbit, shot the day before and prepared by our group.  Another wild delicacy was some jelly ear fungus, fried with wild garlic and herbs.  I must say I eat more and better than I do at home.  The variety of dishes (not all woodland sourced) that I wouldn't consider preparing at home that I eat here is amazing.  The wild cooking expert here blends herbs and spices in the way a fine artist uses colour in a painting.
Everything at a camp like this takes longer and much more physical effort than you'd use in a normal domestic situation, but it's all much more satisfying for that.  You generally don't have a compost toilet at home that needs emptying and the contents burying.
It's a rather tempting option to buy a piece of woodland and live, at least part of the time, a more natural existence.  I've got some good friends from my time doing bushcraft, and a small community of likeminded friends would be excellent.  Living in a real community rather than an amorphous mass of people too big to all relate to each other would be a new experience for me, and I think a good one.  These weekends with a great variety of people provide a small glimpse at how a community rapidly builds from disparate group of people with a common interest.  The altruism shown, with everyone using their better attributes to compensate where others are weaker is wonderful to see.
One of the regular comments at the end of the weekend is "Oh well, back to reality tomorrow".  Before I'd retired, I replied quite spontaneously to this comment "Not really, this is reality here, I'm going back to the hell of commuting, it's just not natural or real".