‘It’s given my mental health a massive boost’: Why everyone should hone their bushcraft skills

The Bushcraft Bus is reconnecting Europeans with nature. If you’re not a military green-clad survivalist or a forest-bathing wellness enthusiast, you might feel “a little bit lost” in the great outdoors, says bushcraft instructor and conservationist Jim Todd. It’s a problem the brightly coloured Bushcraft Bus – the mobile home of wilderness and nature education – aims to solve. “We’re trying to fill that gap in the middle, where you don't have to identify with anything. You just need to have a little bit of kit, and just be up for it,” says Jim. Jim, 39, and Bushcraft Bus co-founder Tom Young, 37, met in Dorset five years ago while qualifying to be bushcraft instructors. Now they host foraging walks, wilderness skills workshops and fire-roasted woodland dinners in the south of England and beyond. In the UK – which ranked 55th out of 61 nations in a global study on “nature connectedness” – some of the people who join them have never even set foot in the woods. It doesn’t take long for them to realise what they’ve been missing. “The excitement builds through the day,” Tom tells Euronews Earth from their camp in the Cotswolds’ Voltaires Wood. “Some people are quite timid at the start but they’re often the ones who get the most out of it,” adds Jim. King Alfred’s Cakes or ‘cramp balls’ are a particular crowdpleaser. Resembling round lumps of coal, this fungus is commonly found on fallen ash and beech trees, and can be used as a fire lighter – a discovery that left a recent participant of their woodland cookout “just ecstatic”, recalls Tom. What’s the most essential wilderness skill? Being ‘apocalypse-ready’ isn’t a focus of the Bushcraft Bus – but the skills it teaches feel increasingly important. The UK government recently advised citizens to prepare for threats from the climate crisis and hostile states, including by stocking up on tinned food. It came after a record-hot summer placed swathes of Europe under heat and water stress – compounded by soaring household bills resulting from tensions in the Middle East, not to mention the looming threat of water- and energy-hungry AI. Jim says these factors are a motivating force for some participants who join their courses, and many leave less fearful, more confident and better connected. “When you start thinking through that lens, you realise how little you actually know to defend yourself or survive in that situation,” he says. “We’re so reliant on all of these big systems working. And if any of them collapse, we’re back to basics really quickly… Like, what if there was no heating and it was the middle of winter? Or how do I find water and purify it?” Fire-making is “instrumental” – not only for survival but also for “how much you can enjoy the time that you have in the woods,” says Jim. “Fire ties everything together”, agrees Tom – from “learning about tree identification, so you can burn the right woods, to learning about what to forage and how to cook it”. For this reason, Tom always carries a ferro rod (a metallic fire starter stick) – a tool that was indispensable on his 66-day solo hike through the European Arctic in 2018. But bushcraft skills only go so far – and the biggest lifeline often gets overlooked: community. That could mean curating your friendship group: “Making sure you’ve got a friend who’s a nurse and who would know how to treat an injury, and someone else who’s got a mechanical mind who could help turn a dead car into something useful,” says Tom. ‘When you pour energy and curiosity into nature, you get it back’ This collaborative spirit is something off-grid living seems to nurture – not only between fellow humans, but with the land itself. “A lot of people don’t learn about the woods anymore. So from a very young age, you’re already disconnected,” says Tom. There are signs that this is slowly starting to change: the UK government recently approved a new Natural History GCSE (an exam subject that can be chosen at 14-years-old) for secondary school students, which it hopes will “grow the next generation of green careers”. “I think if you can teach people and give people some of that knowledge and awareness, they’ll naturally start caring and appreciating more about those spaces,” says Tom. This can look like conserving precious resources: “We’ve wheelbarrowed all of our water up a 15-minute steep, bumpy track,” says Jim, sitting in their woodland camp. “So we’re not splashing it around when we’re up here… Instinctively it does reset your brain to be way more conservative with your usage.” Or being mindful of what you take from the land: “You need to leave some of whatever you’re foraging for the animals,” says Jim – and in the case of mushrooms, for the fungus itself: “The reason they fruit is to spread the spores,” adds Tom. Connecting with nature is “like a relationship”, muses Jim. “You have to build it – you can’t just expect it to give you everything. You have to pour energy and curiosity into it, and then you get it back. That’s when it starts providing real value to you.” ‘Exploring the outdoors has given my mental health a massive boost’ Both Jim and Tom admit that in their younger years, they were more interested in going to the pub than on long country walks. These days, it’s more often screens that are keeping teenagers indoors. Both also think Europe has a lot to learn from other cultures about connecting with nature. During time spent in New Zealand and Canada, they found outdoor skills are embedded more deeply into everyday life. Vast landscapes make the outdoors harder to ignore, while activities such as kayaking, hiking and camping are familiar from a young age. “The outdoors is all around you all the time,” says Jim, contrasting that with the UK’s denser landscape, where farmland and privately owned woodland can make natural spaces feel surprisingly inaccessible. As a result, “we almost see ourselves as separate from the natural world,” reflects Jim. “But I think if you do get out into it, most people very quickly feel this connection to it. And when you add in skills that you can use outside, you are just building that self-reliance and confidence.” Tom’s experience stands as testament to this: “Exploring the outdoors has given me what feels like a purpose,” he says. “It’s given my mental health that massive boost. In life as well, just talking to people with more confidence, and that’s developed through the years.”