What a waste!

[wentworth]

Yesterday I had set up my hootchie in the back yard so I could practice firemaking in wet conditions. I spent quite a while making feather sticks and collecting all the shavings for tinder. However, I just couldn't get it to light.

My younger brother walked out to where I was, so I explained the problem. He looked round the yard and walked over to a tree which was shedding its fibrous bark. He took some of the bark from the side of the tree sheltered from rain, rolled it up into a ball and used it to light my fire first go!
To add insult to injury, the day before, I had been showing him how to make feather sticks. He decided to have a go, and it turns out he's a natural with a knife too! He was able to get longer, thinner feathers on his stick than I was, and I have been whittling for years.
The problem is that he has absolutely no interest in the bush at all.

Has anyone else come across this kind of wasted talent before?

[Hellz]

It's frustrating when that happens.

Not a bushcraft senario but... Quite a few years ago I was into dj'ing and at a "back to mine" party got a friend having a go... "what, like this?" cue jealousy inducing natural rythm and skill... "you could do this for a living" I said....


"nah... can't be bothered"


Annoying aint it?

Hellz

[bombadil]

My ex-girlfriend is an artist, and when she finished her degree she made as her final project a low table from beech and smoke-fired clay. She sold it for a four figure number at a new designers exhibition to one of the most prominant and prestigious people in the art world, and got comissions to make more by a Bond street jeweller who wanted one for his house in the south of France. Being a timid girl, she never followed it up because she didn't want to harrass the guy.
How's that for a waste of talent

[Kim]

My parents! My father is fantastic with wood and used to make wonderful things for us when we where young, chairs, a stable for my sindy horse..! , and my mother a painter. But in differing ways, both suffer from an incredible lack of self esteem, are insecure about what they can do, are highly self critical and afraid of failure, so don't pursue their natural talents.

It's a crying shame too, because they're both completely brilliant. And my dad would be cracking at bushcraft

[greg2935]

My father: he was obsessed by history, one of those people who have a natural talent to talk on anyone's level, finally getting offered his dream job as curator for the british museum 2 months before he died of cancer.

Greg