Everything began during the Amhanska (February, time of the Long Drought Moon in the Assiniboini tradition), or as some peoples living in the north would call, the Bear Moon. It wasn’t long before I faced the forest in my early childhood, thanks to my parents moving to a house on the edge of a meadow near the surrounding, ever-rustling and green trees. It was a Polish forest which grows near Poznań; a great forest of adventures soon awaiting me , which flourished to form a forest playground. In it I assembled the first shelters under fragrant resin soaked pines, which were like signposts for me when for when I went for a hike in those forested woods.

Here I gained experience in the field of fishing, in which my four uncles and father participated, and it was them who tirelessly supported me to absorb this difficult and fascinating art. In the beginning, we harnessed very old-fashioned fishing methods, blowing away the dust of history from our bamboo and hazel rods so that I could fish with them in the forest waters. I worked through a series of even more intriguing techniques, immersing myself deeper and deeper into a trapper’s atmosphere.

Around this time, I also faced scouting for the first time, although sleeping alone was not a cornerstone for me. Already the youngest Tomek’s parents admired their trips to the skimming sea and the lake that matched it with blue. They set the time for us to sleep in old canvas tents, shrouded in the aromas of trees and a bonfire pulsing with life. Just contacting the village taught me many useful skills, although the village in which I lived was not the archetype of the village known for agriculture. Nevertheless, the time spent on it, or more precisely – spent with grandparents on their plot, resulted in experience with growing plants and raising animals. Importantly, the sight of slaughtered animals that accompanied me since my childhood did not suppress my sympathy or respect for the inhabitants of the vast forests.

In fact, I couldn’t do it any other way. It was like a thunderbolt that sparked an instant decision; I just suddenly packed my backpack one morning, dropped a kitchen knife, a mess tin, a piece of foil for the roof, maps and string. This hastily folded gear was my only companion on the instinctive path to the same forest which remembered me as a teen walking with my grandparents. The purpose of this madness was the lack of a point or goal, namely it was about going so far into the forest , just to get lost in there.

Apparent madness contained an unconscious method to challenge yourself: awakening an even more intense need for communing with nature and related experiences, brushing against the extreme. The goal was achieved, and with considerable vigor. In returning to the forest which connected me with old memories gave me a vision of my own school of survival, and the idea became a reality. A place was created where I trained young people eager for survival knowledge, not avoiding either rock and high mountain climbing. It was a large group, among which the most numerous were members of paramilitary organisations.

Without abandoning my position of a military survivor instructor in the Sagittarius Association, I simultaneously organized many trips under the bushcraft umbrella, as well as several get-togethers, which were attended by people from the entire land carpeted with green forests, cut by a blue ribbon-like river. Then I realized that not only do I want to get to know my country better, instead of just praising other people’s but thanks to perseverance in passion, I was able to unite more and more countrymen around the lush, spontaneous concept of bushcraft. The love of staying in the forests, fueled by a beautiful, though inconspicuous turn of Slavic nature towards its roots, has grown to a much larger size.