Page 16 - Buck Tilton - Outward Bound Ropes, Knots, and Hitches 2 ed.

INTRODUCTION

Looking back now over thousands of miles of trail and river,
over hundreds of campsites, over the teaching I’ve done on

Outward Bound courses from Maine to Florida, the list of
skills offered by instructors to students seems endless:

paddling a canoe, hoisting a sail, packing a pack, reading a
map, treating a blister, picking a tent site, firing up a stove,

cooking dinner—to name just a few. If, however, one skill
stands out as universally useful, a skill you might use in any
situation, in any environment, on any trip, it is the tying of

knots.
Knots hold the outdoor world together. Properly tied, they

prevent the boat from drifting away, the tent from lifting off
in a high wind, and the bear from reaching the food bag.

The right knot turns a length of rope into a clothesline, an
anchor line, or a zip line. A good knot holds the sailing ship

on course and the canoe to the top of the vehicle. A matter
of life and death, the climber is secured to the rope and
from falling off the end of the rope by knots.

To tie a knot is to add your name to a rich history. Long
before mallet and peg, hammer and nail, glue, duct tape, or

Velcro, there was cordage—and the knots that made it
useful. Beside the unknown inventor of the wheel and the
forgotten discoverer of fire making, I rank equally as a

genius the man or woman who figured out how to entangle
the ends of vines and plants’ fibers in ways that would keep

them from untangling. The tying of the first knot may have
occurred more than 100,000 years ago. How else were

prehistoric stone ax heads attached to prehistoric ax
handles? No evidence, however, remains. But off the coast