Awareness

What do I consider the single most important survival skill  I'd have to say that awareness, the simple state of consciousness of your surroundings, potential opportunities, actual or perceived threats and your own physical and mental condition and levels, is, without a doubt, the one thing  that can contribute the most to one's success.

In a survival situation you must be aware of a host of different and ever changing conditions and possible situations. When to build a fire, the best shelter, whether to travel or hunker down, drinking water and food needs - the list is almost endless - and your decisions and actions may mean life or death.

Survival situations demand the ability to remain calm, flexible and to make rational decisions even while under very stressful and unfamiliar conditions.  When pushed to the limits and totally outside your comfort zone it can be very difficult to make quick decisions that may have such grave results. It's at times like these that awareness can contribute the most.

Is awareness a skill that can be learned?  Absolutely!  Awareness can be developed by training and practice just like any other skill. Once you recognize the need, that is - become aware of, its importance and how it can effect or even direct your decision making you'll be on your way to learning this as a skill. It's an important and essential skill that can aid you in everyday life whether functioning in the modern world or in the wild.   

Here's a simple example what I mean: Let's say you are totally lost, no hope of finding your way back to camp before dark and have decided to hunker down for the night. Right then and there you are faced with a number of quick decisions you'll have to make. Do you need to build a shelter? How about a fire? Where's the best place to spend the night and why? If - during all that time leading up to and previous to this exact moment in time, you were paying attention- that is: aware of: your surroundings, the environment, weather conditions, your physical condition  etc., etc., the decision and next course of action would be easy. 

You'd already have it figured out and know exactly what to do. Why? Because you were aware. You had already made a mental note of the weather conditions, what materials you had available for a shelter, how much time you had to accomplish the tasks and the best possible course of action. In other words: You were practicing awareness.

Can you take this to higher levels. Most certainly and, again, it's by training and knowledge.  Ethnobotany and Primitive Skills are two perfect examples of skills that will help greatly in developing awareness.  The more you learn about nature: plants, trees, animals and their uses the more aware you will become of not only your surroundings but of their many survival uses. If you are hiking through the woods and know that certain plants can be used for making fire, others are great sources of food, others for shelter, cordage, etc. the more awareness you will practice and develop.  When you walk through a forest and can't see the forest for the trees as the old saying goes - you can't really " be aware" of anything but the most basic - Yep, duh, I'm in the woods. Your goal should be to be aware of and be able to make use of  all that nature can provide. That Willow Tree you passed - that's medicine, fire, shelter, baskets, cordage, all there for the taking. Those Cattails next to the pond: more food ( lots of it), shelter, fire, medicine. Those rocks you tripped over: fire, heat, weapons, tools.

Once you become aware of what nature can provide and just as important - how to use it,  then the more aware and better prepared you will become.

Garbage Bag Emergency Shelter

Garbage Bag Shelter Field Test

This is the last night of a 2 week visit to my favorite State: Colorado, and tomorrow we drive into Denver, spend the night in a hotel and fly back to Florida. I'm hoping the temperatures are below the boiling point as it's now mid Oct. You know, Fall, leaves turned to gold, a crisp to the air. Everywhere except South FL that is.

The first night out here we woke to about 3 inches of snow and temperatures in the mid 20's. The high that day was 29 degrees and when you factor in the wind chill that's made it around 10 degrees, give or take. A long way from Florida weather.

Luckily it warmed up to the high 60's the following week and the wife and I got to do a lot of back country hiking and a little gold prospecting. Actually, we were looking for areas where we good do some gold panning and run a small sluice box when we come back next spring.  We found lots of very promising high country creeks in the Pike Natl. Forest and my research shows that they were all gold producers back "in the day". We also did a little gem hunting and found some nice feldspar, milky quartz and a very nice topaz crystal. These little gems didn't come easy folks. I'm talking 2 miles straight up, both ways, and at 10 thousand feet plus altitude that's a hike.

Enough of the vacation slides, (anybody remember those).  This blog is to report on some field tests I made using a 3 mil, 55 gal. garbage bag for a quick emergency shelter. My test conditions were with temperatures at 30 degrees F. and a north westerly wind at about 15 knots. Factor in wind chill and we're talking 9 degrees.  My first exposure was wearing just a pair of jeans and a thin tee shirt. Standing directly in the wind I lasted about 5 minutes before I started to shiver. BTW - this was at night, no sun to help with the warming. 

After warming up inside the camper I cut a small hole in the garbage bag to peak through, pulled it over my head, set my timer and stepped outside.  After about 30 minutes of star gazing I started to get a chill and noticed myself trying to avoid contact with the cold plastic. Remember, all I had on my torso was that tee shirt.  I didn't actually start to shiver.  I was just starting to get uncomfortable and supper was ready so I called that test and went inside.

After eating a warm meal and warming back to normal I decided to try another test, this time wearing a light fleece jacket over the tee shirt. Same drill - I slipped the garbage bag over my head, set my wrist watch timer and resumed my star watching.  By now the thermometer was reading 29 degrees and the wind was what I'd call "very sharp". One hour later, and approaching my bed time, I called it quits. I was just the slightest bit cold. Could I have made it another 12 hours or so? I think so but it would certainly have been a long night.

These tests were out in the open, fully exposed to a very brisk and cold wind.  Doing nothing else besides getting myself out of that cold wind made a huge difference. I tested this by simply moving to the lee side of my camper, out of the wind.  Almost immediately I could tell the difference.  My body was now able to produce enough heat that I could feel it warming up inside the bag.  Adding a big bed of leaves or pine boughs to nestle down into would have made a huge difference, maybe even a life or death difference.

Obviously there was nothing scientific about that test and you have to take into account individual tolerances to cold and also the clothing one would be wearing.

Regardless, that simple, inexpensive garbage bag could easily prove to be a life saver and I plan on carrying one in my personal survival kit.

Snares

Why use snares to procure food, fur and hides rather than the steel  leg hold and body gripping traps? There are many valid and compelling reasons, especially for those that are on a limited budget, have limited and quite often little free time to devote to making and setting somewhat complicated trap sets that are required by standard trapping methods and equipment.

Snares were probably one of the first tools that early man utilized. By 15,000 B.C. snaring was already a sophisticated and commonly practiced art. Cave art in Europe and Africa show ancient hunters using snares as tools to gather food.  Of course, there’s a big difference between the snares used by our ancestors and today’s modern steel snares. Likewise, the techniques are much different, and in my humble opinion, much improved.

Snaring is quiet, very efficient, low cost and very simple to do once a few very basic guidelines and basic methods are learned. The tools required to set a snare are simple, lightweight, inexpensive and easily transported in a small backpack or possibles bag and in most cases can be found and collected right at the site.

Unlike steel leg hold and body grip traps, snares are easily made as needed by the trapper and can actually be made up while in the field to suit specific situations and/or target animals.

Just like steel traps, snares are out there working for you 24/7. Once the simple basics of properly setting traps are learned a survivalist can set dozens of snares in a fraction of the time it would take to make and set the common leg hold type sets,  and with much less effort.  Meaning much less time expended, fewer calories burned and much less energy wasted.

Of course the big difference, especially for someone thrust into a survival situation, is that you can make your snares from natural materials. Try making a steel  leg hold trap from scratch!!  I know of no where on the globe, the source being plant and/or animal, that one cannot find some natural material to make a snare.

Wants and Needs

In true survival situations, as well as in life, it is very difficult for anyone to completely separate themselves from their “wants”.  From years of habit, conditioning and self indulgence, we have come to think of our ‘wants” as our “needs” and now-a-days, we all have a lot of self perceived “needs”.  If we find ourselves in a situation or circumstance where we are denied these “wants”, our lives can completely unravel or at least, become very uncomfortable to the point that we are thrust into a survival mode.

What are our actual wants and what are our actual needs? Let’s kick this around being as pragmatic and reasonable as possible. Our actual “needs” have not changed since man first walked the Earth. Not in the least.  Two million years ago our “needs” were the same as they are today. To survive, man, and all animals, has three basic requirements. Please keep in mind that I am talking individuals and short term.  Not propagating the species, reproduction and not long term survival of the species. Just the most basic needs someone surviving in the wilds would need. Those three requirements or “needs” are:  shelter, water and food. That’s it. That’s the way it has always been. That is the way it will always be.

That order, shelter, water, then food, is not carved in stone. There are a lot of factors that can effect and switch that order of importance.  If the weather and surrounding ambient temperatures happens to be perfect, then shelter is, for the time being, of lesser importance.  If there is an abundance of clean, pure drinking water, but it’s snowing and cold as a ditch digger’s belt buckle, then obviously, that order has changed.  Regardless of the order, those three specific needs have to be considered and complied with fully, or we die. A lack of one, or more likely a combination, of those three basics will result in death.

What is a shelter?  The answer is anything that will maintain our core body temperatures at 98.6 degrees F. That’s it. Whatever satisfies that very basic and simple requirement?  End of discussion.  What is water? What is food? Of course we all know those answers and I do not intend to enter into that long, never ending discussion on calorie in-take, daily water consumptions, proteins verses carbohydrates etc. Those issues have been beaten to a frazzle and for the most part, never fully address, and sometimes cloud or ignore the basic and core issues.

So what about our wants?  All those things we confuse with, actually consider as needs.   I want a hot meal and a cold beer.  I want a soft bed and my TV.  I want to be surrounded by four strong walls, with family photos hanging on them. I want a fridge filled with food. I want to push a button and get ice. I want, and I now expect, a hell of a lot of things.

What do I actually need?   Very little. Just those three simple aforementioned things. Are those things easily obtainable?  Maybe, maybe not. It may well depend on your training, knowledge and ability to cope.

If your training,  basic skills and knowledge is limited to “modern”  techniques, materials and tools – plastic for shelters, chemicals for water treatment and fire steels to make a fire, as examples,  then you’d better hope that those things are at hand, and maybe even in abundance or else you are going to find yourself  “out in the cold” (pun intended).

If the only way you know how to start a fire is with a cigarette lighter, matches or a fire steel – modern implements - there is only a slim chance you’ll be able to build a fire using a friction method.  If you have never considered or practiced filtering and/or purifying water using only natural materials and methods and you find yourself without fire or chemicals, how are you going to do that? 

How about natural shelters?  Think you can just throw one of those together?  One that can maintain that core body temperature  around 98 degrees?  Not very likely folks.  Especially if you cannot make a fire.

So the point here is simple.  If your training and skills are limited to basic,  modern survival methods than it would be a smart thing to make sure you are never caught  in a true survival situation without modern tools and materials.  If the only thing you have ever made an emergency shelter from is a piece of plastic, you might want to make sure you carry that. If you have only started a fire using fire steel and a cotton ball soaked in petroleum jelly,  you’d best have one in your pocket if and when you need a fire.

I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. To be truly prepared for any survival situation you need to learn and become proficient in primitive skills.   Those skills that our ancestors used daily for  thousands of years. The only skills that can get you through any and all real survival situations.

Tinder -Many Choices

Most all of us where taught that the primary requirements for fire were oxygen, heat and fuel. Those are, without a doubt, things that must be considered by everyone attempting to build a fire. Lets take those three requirements just a little farther, separate them and then discuss how each must be addressed.

Oxygen, of course, we have all around us yet few pay enough attention to this key ingredient when they build their fire lay or tinder bundle. A tightly packed fire lay, let’s use the familiar tipi tyle as an example, will not burn as readily as one that is a little loosely  build so that air, i.e. oxygen, can circulate through and be drawn into the fire. One way to demonstrate  this is by lighting a match, holding it in a horizontal position and let it burn. The match will burn  until it’s totally consumed. If you repeat this process, light the match then place it down on a flat surface, what will happen? The match will go out. It simply can’t get enough oxygen to burn. Time and time again I’ve watched as students (and even experienced “old hands”)  fire building attempts failed, their fire just slowly dying out, simply due to lack of oxygen. The common solution, and a very good one, is to get down and blow life back into the fire. This does two things.  First it provides much need oxygen, force feeding it essentially, which in turn produces the next of the 3 essentials : heat. Get enough heat built up and you’ll have fire.

Now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty, the practical, controllable elements and the part where decisions can be made. How we apply heat;  whether it be flame, sparks or ember, also dictates what the third essential ingredient will be, that is the fuel. Aka known as tinder.

We’ll get to a discussion about tinder soon but first let’s talk about our heat source. We’ll start from the easiest to hardest – flame, spark and then ember. The best choice, and by this I mean the one that’s the easiest to start a fire with, is a flame. The flame can be supplied by many methods with a match, cigarette lighter or candle being the most practical.

The next source of heat to be considered are sparks. Fire steels are a very popular means to generate sparks and many consider carrying one an essential survival item. These babies generate very hot sparks, somewhere around 5000 degrees and with the correct tender  ( fuel) it’s easy to get a fire growing- first try. Just move a metal blade slowly down the length of the magnesium rod and you can throw a shower of sparks onto your tinder. Fire Steels can be used in any weather, even wet and are the favorite of many survival experts, hunters, campers and the military.

That other common source of sparks and the method favored by many mountaineering and early history buffs and practitioners is flint and steel. A good combination of flint or flint-like rock: jasper, chert etc. when struck by a high carbon piece of steel, produces some very nice sparks. Take note - these sparks are no where near as hot as those from a magnesium rod.

Now to the third, and most difficult method of making fire. The ember. An ember used for fire building is most commonly produced by a friction method. The Bow Drill and the Hand Drill being the two most obvious and the most practiced.

So there we have our three most common methods of ignition, or the source of heat that we use to start our fire - flame, sparks and ember. The next part of the equation is our fuel or the more common term used for the fire building process – tinder. ( Wikipedia lists over a dozen definitions for tinder but none of them pertains to fire building. The first edition of Noah  Webster’s Dictionary published in 1806 ( and no – I wasn’t around then)  defined  tinder as:  “Tin’der, n, burnt linen, what easily catches fire.)  Times are  changing. For this discussion, tinder, will be what we use to turn our heat source into fire.  The key word here, of course is  “correct”  tinder. There is no one tinder that works for all three of our selected heat sources. A tinder that works great with a Fire Steel  may not work at all with a ember. Likewise, and here’s where it gets confusing for many, a tinder that works great with an ember, will not work with a Fire Steel.

Let’s continue by talking about the best tinder to use with a flame. If you have a source of heat like a Butane lighter or candle that can provide  steady heat to your fuel there’s a wide and usually readily choice of tinder available. Grasses, leaves, small twigs, even some that are slightly damp can usually be coaxed into fire with a sustainable flame.  Hold that flame on there long enough and something is going to burn. Paper, rags, cardboard, the list of materials you can light with a flame is many and varied making it the first choice for most all folks needing a quick fire.

Our next choice of heat was the Swedish Fire Steel. There’s been a  lot of misleading information written and taken as gospel about what makes a good tinder to use with fire steels.  Remember now, I’m talking about fire steels,  not flint and steel. Even though these simple devices can throw out sparks as hot as 5000 degrees F  you cannot hope to ignite natural materials like pine needles, shaved sticks, dry leaves,  Spanish moss etc. Don’t waste valuable time in an emergency even trying. They won’t work. But don’t despair,  there are many natural materials that a fire steel will work with. Cattail fluff, any dry plant down that looks like cotton:  thistle, dandelion comes to mind. Cabbage Palm trunk fibers makes excellent tinder, also some dry inner barks if first they are finely shredded to almost hair like threads. Obviously, some of these work better than others. Cattail fluff and cotton-like plant fibers will catch a spark and burn but they burn very fast, like in a flash, and unless you have a very well constructed tinder bundle with some very combustible material right next to that little burst of fire, you’ll come up ended handed. Lots of people carry small balls of Oakum fibers or jute string  to use with their fire steels. Although these are  natural fibers ( called tow by old timers)  you’re not likely to find any growing in the field. (Try your local hardware store.)

None of the natural materials listed above that can be ignited with a fire steel will work with flint and steel. You can take that to the bank. There’s only a handful of natural materials that will take a spark from flint and steel and even then, those need to be prepared first. The only  natural materials that I’m familiar enough to talk about is punk wood. ( I don’t consider that old standby and the material most commonly used with flint and steel -  charcloth, as being natural)  Punk wood is fairly easy to find. Just about anyplace there are trees and/or large woody plants, there will be some form of punk wood.  By definition, punk wood is any wood that has rotted to the point where it feels spongy. It can be a limb on the ground or even pieces of trunk wood up inside a hollow tree. Anything that looks and feels close to a cork-like consistency is the best I can describe it. Will all punk woods that fit that description work. Of course not. Nature just doesn’t work that way. I once picked up two branches that were lying side by side and looked like they came from the same tree,  one worked like a charm, the other didn’t. That’s just the way things are folks, which means you’ll have to experiment, try different woods from your neck of the woods and see what works.

How do you process punk wood? Just like making charcloth. Put small pieces in a small can that has a 1/16 inch hole in a tight fitting lid and slowly cook until smoke no longer comes out the hole. When done it should look like just what it is, a piece of charcoal. This can be done over an open campfire also. The best method I’ve found is to place your punk wood in white hot ashes along the outer edge of the campfire and let it slowly burn. Once totally consumed and blackened, gently rake the hot coal out of the fire and cover with about 2 or 3 inches of dirt. The dirt will smother the coal. When it’s completely cool to the touch you can  uncover it and hopefully you now have a piece of char that will take a spark. As always, before betting your life on starting a fire with this fragile little piece of burnt wood – try it. Make sure it works, then carefully cover it and stow it safely in your strike-a-light bag.

There is another natural tinder for flint and steel that’s actually prized and was considered a trade item by early Native Americans and then later frontiersmen.  That’s tinder fungus. It’s a fungus that grows almost exclusively on Birch trees.  I have yet to have any of this material in my hands to play with and test, but I do know this – it also has to be processed. It’s not something that you just peel off a tree, strike a spark and bingo – fire. Obviously, any tinder that will work with flint and steel will work even better if you use a fire steel, but, like I stated previously, not the other way around.

That leaves us with that truly primitive fire starting method – the glowing ember. Stuff of legends and images of aboriginals twirling a stick between their palms and then gently blowing life into a small bundle of grass and twigs. One of the best tinders to use with an ember is cedar inner bark that’s been twisted and shredded and made into a small bundle. Place your small ember into the center of the bark bird’s nest and start slowly  and gently blowing on the ember. You’ll have to watch carefully so as to not blow so hard you blow the ember apart and then carefully nurse the coal and make it grow and slowly spread it’s heat into the surrounding bark. It take a little practice to get the technique down. There are other barks that work almost equally as well as cedar: grape vine, honeysuckle and Juniper are three I’ve had luck with. Dried grasses, crumbled leaves, pine needles also work as do jute and hemp fibers. They have to be dry. Moist or damp tender just won’t work. Here in Florida just the humidity can keep you from working  up a flame.

One would think, and many do, that any tinder that could be turned into fire from a small ember could surely work with a fire steel. And, logic would seem to make this true. It just doesn’t work  that way. That bird’s nest of cedar bark that works so well with an ember – no way with a fire steel. The same goes for most grasses, pine needles and crumbled leaves. You can shower them all day with a fire steel and never get a flame.

Keep in mind that there are exceptions to all rules and who knows, maybe one day I’ll find that perfect natural tinder, one that grows just about ever where, and can be ignited with any and all heat sources. Anything  I find while wandering through the woods that looks like a likely candidate as teider I pick up and tote home to test. Most don’t pan out but in the  process, whether failure or success, I learn a little.

The point here is that anyone that decides to depend on one particular fire starting source, flame, sparks or ember would be wise to practice a bit and make dang sure that their technique, the equipment and most importantly, that tinder they may be betting their life on will actually work, and I mean work ever single time under the harshest conditions they may encounter. That’s a tall order for any single fire starting method or materials and the primary reason that we recommend a minimum of three separate fire starting methods are carried. Unless, of course, you are truly confident in your abilities and choice of materials.

Wilderness Dining

Eating Out

I always seem to get a slew of questions asking what are people’s best options for survival food. If you really think about this question then you’d have to realize that there can’t be  one single  answer. The only true answer is that it’s entirely dependent upon a bunch of factors. Factors that are constantly changing, just as nature itself does. Location,  seasons, weather, climate conditions, your physical condition and skill level and even time of day  are just a few factors that could impact what might be available for food.

If you consider just the time of year – winter verses summer for instance, there’s a huge difference in what’s available to the survivalist foraging for something to fill their belly.
An area that was brimming with delicious edible berries, plants and small game in the summer may turn completely barren during the winter months. For many common and edible plants the difference between being plentiful and non-existence may be just a few months, weeks or even days.  That’s especially true for those old standbys -berries and fruits. That black berry patch that was full of juicy and tasty handfuls in late spring will be barren just a few months later.

So what is the answer?  How can you always count on finding a dependable source of food year round?  The best answer I can give is that you will have to take the time and put in the effort to learn as much about the plants and animals in a given area as possible. You’ll need to learn what edible plants are indigenous to your area and habitat, what times are best for harvesting, what particular part of the plant is edible, how to prepare it safely and how to store it. The same goes for animals. What animals can be found and harvested as a source of meat?  Are they available year round, do they hibernate or migrate during the winter etc? 

Just as an example of what is possible and what I’d consider traveling the high road – I once read that the Cherokee Indians had knowledge of over 600 different plants. Plants that they used for food, medicines, clothing, fire, shelter, weapons in everyday life.. I’m not saying you need to have that kind of knowledge to survive, but quite obviously, the more you know the better your chances. Like the old saying goes – knowledge is power and in a survival situation – this knowledge may be life.

Another point that needs to be addressed and one that many consider their greatest obstacle- just what can, or better yet, what will you actually consider as food.. Will you be able to wolf down rodents – mice and rats? How about those delightful and plentiful insects. Are those on your menu? Snakes, frogs, worms, birds – does the thought of munching down on any of those sound repulsive and trigger your gag reflexes? If you say, or think, yes;  then join the club. That’s the most common response. Few people, that is, few Westerners anyway, consider any of those types of foods as even edible, let alone possibly a main course.

That opinion of food is definitely not true for millions of  people in other, let’s say – less developed countries. There are literally millions of people that eat foods we wouldn’t even touch, let alone put in our mouths. Foods  that you and I might think of as being completely inedible,  disgusting and vile, are eaten on a daily basis. And, you really don’t have to travel to foreign countries to find similar examples. In the Appalachians where I grew up, people still routinely eat opossum,  hogs feet, cow tongue, blood pudding, brains and a host of other foods that you ain’t going to find in your local supermarket.

I’m a fan of the TV show Bizarre Foods, hosted by Andrew Zimmern. On each episode he travels to a different country or region and highlights all the different foods that people prepare and eat. On last nights episode  he was in North Eastern Thailand ( an area I spent about 3 years in) and showed some of the foods and prepared meals that many of those native peoples eat on a regular basis. Silk worms, grasshoppers, dung beetles, raw pieces of meat from a freshly killed calf, whole rats chopped into small pieces ( I’m talking guts, brains, bones) then stir fried, were some of the more popular meals. Just the thought of eating any of those things would make most of us regurgitate last weeks meal. On many of his episodes he’s shown people preparing and eating animal entrails, brains, eye balls etc. and eating them with zest.

When asked if they would actually eat things like eyeballs, entrails, worms etc., a lot of people answer, that yes, if they got hungry enough, then they most likely would. And that would be true – when we get hungry enough, our perception of what is edible and what we will eat, will definitely change. The problem is, and I’m talking from a true, long term survival situation, continuing to be picky about what you eat until you get so hungry you’ll eat absolutely anything, is not your best choice for surviving a long stay in the wild.

There are many stories of people actually slowly starving to death even though they had available,  what by all reasoning, should have been adequate enough food. Early accounts of N. American pioneers and settlers make mention of Whites starving while their Native American counterparts , sharing the same food resources, managed just fine. Speculation is that while the whites would eat only the choice, lean parts of meat, the Indians consumed “all” of an animal, even down to the bones in some cases. They actually thrived eating what the white man discarded as being “inedible”.

 In more recent times, there’s the story of Chris McCandless , a young man that decided in the Spring of 1992 he’d walk into the wilds of Alaska and live off the land. As the story, and the movie; “Into The Wild” goes, he was able to hunt and forage what should have been more than enough food, but still ended up dying from starvation in less than four months time. It was later determined that the major contributor to his death was  lack of nutrition. Although he was consuming enough food, by volume,  his diet lacked the proper nutrients to sustain life. Basically, his picky eating habits caused, or at least greatly contributed too, his untimely and tragic demise.

His journal states that he killed a caribou. Now that’s a lot of meat, but, he didn’t know how to preserve it and the bulk of it rotted. He mentioned killing squirrels, rabbits and grouse. All those are excellent sources of bulk food but very short on some very essential nutrients. It’s a known fact that anyone trying to survive on “lean” meat alone is not going to last very long. Our bodies need that fat, that greasy disgusting stuff, to survive. If Chris had known that and if he had also known how to make something as simple as pemmican, chances are he would have walked out of there in fine shape.

So what’s the moral, or lesson to be learned ? How could you, cast into the wilderness to fend for yourselves, survive a prolonged stay? First of course is to be prepared. You’d be wise to study what our early ancestors survived on, how they prepared their meals, what parts of meat they used, ( just about everything is the answer), how they supplemented what little meat they had with roots ( starch) , homemade breads ( carbs) . A lot of these folks lived completely off the land using only what nature provided. And they lived well.

You certainly better get over that “picky” eater thing. You’d be well advised to seek as varied a diet as possible – roots, nuts, greens along with whatever meat you could find. You’d better learn to like, ( well maybe not actually like these things), things like liver, brains, hearts and fat meat- all the fat you can get, even if you have to scrape it off the hide. And you’d best, and very quickly, come to the realization that you now have a new, and very essential , full time job – finding food.

Surviving the Cold

Rethinking Shelters

My recent trip and subsequent cold weather hiking experiences in the high mountains of Colorado this past April has  prompted me to try and stress the importance of being prepared for an emergency overnight stay in the wild.

When teaching the shelter portion of my basic survival courses one of the things that I try and impress on students is that more often than not, people that find themselves lost and forced to spend the night out in the wild, do not build shelters. This is true even when the individual that’s lost may have  survival training and should know, not only the importance of, but also how to build a shelter.

First let me explain why few people will actually  stop and build a shelter. In most instances it’s simply a combination of  human nature and then the result of circumstances. The first thing a person will refuse to recognize or  admit is that they are actually lost. In almost all cases the individual will be charging through the woods at top speed thinking that around the very next bend or over the very next hill they will walk right back into camp. This is especially true for men – and yes-  I too have been guilty. Men just can not admit to themselves that they are lost. So the result is that they continue on the move, maybe retracing what they think is their trail, until all of a sudden- it’s dark.

So here they are. It’s dark,  in the middle of nowhere and there are no suitable materials or natural shelters in sight. In most cases they don’t have a flashlight, no means to start a fire and nothing with them except the clothes on their backs. So what do they do? The only thing they can do. Curl up on the cold ground and try and survive the night.

So why do people put themselves in that kind of situation? A good question and one that’s again answered by:  it’s human nature. People just don’t think it’s going to happen to them. After all, they are just going for a short walk, the trail is well marked, it’s just over the hill, they are part Indian, any number of excuses, but mostly, it’s just plain and simple complacency and “ it can’t happen to me” mentality.

After several years of research, teaching and harping on the subject and actual dirt time experience myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how well I teach a student to build a shelter there’s a better then even chance they will never actually put that training into practice. Even when faced with the very possible and real prospect of spending the night out in the woods. Even though they have the training and know-how to build a shelter. People now-a-days are just  not wired to think that way.

So what is the solution? How do you train and prepare someone to survive one or maybe several nights out in the wild?  Teaching them to build emergency shelters is still a very valuable skill and, just maybe, might be used, especially by someone faced with their second night caught out in the open. ( I say on the second night because after that first night of lying on the ground without any type shelter people are a little more prone to consider taking the time and effort to build some protection.)  Teaching preparedness is the better option and that’s the method that I’m now focusing on.

Being prepared to spend a night outdoors is, in my opinion, the absolute best and most likely to be actually used, method one can teach. When one thinks about it, the clothes we wear are the single most effective and protective emergency shelter one can find. Modern materials have made it very possible to spend days outdoors in sub zero weather and remain comfortable, even toasty warm. Dressing and correctly using layers of the proper type of clothing  allows one to regulate the body’s core temperature. If you are getting warm and start to sweat,  you remove layers; if cold, you add layers. It’s a very effective and simple technique that is actually quite intuitive. There’s no  learning curve or training required. You do what feels right for your body.

So where is this leading and what does it mean as far as a survival situation? It’s very simple. If you are heading outdoors for a short hike, maybe doing some mountain biking or on a canoe trip there’s one simple and very easy step that you can take to prepare for a night or two outdoors. Always wear or carry with you whatever clothing you would need to spend the night outdoors. If you’re in an area where the temperatures could possibly drop down to below freezing then it’s obvious – you need sufficient clothing for those temperatures. I’m not talking about just enough clothing to keep you warm while hiking along at a brisk pace. I’m talking about being dressed well enough to weather the night curled up on a bare rock on top of a wind swept mountain – in the rain. Now that might seem like a tall order and something that would require about twenty extra pounds of clothing. Not true. It boils down to the proper selection of clothes.

For instance, I have a 100% goose down jacket that weights 8 ounces and packs into a small nylon bag that’s about the size of a grapefruit. I’ve worn that jacket alone  in 10 to 15 degree weather and stayed toasty. I also carry a light weight windbreaker and if I add that over the down jacket I’m good for below zero temperatures. For trousers this last time in Colorado I wore light weight ski pants. They are water proof, wind proof and very comfortable. I could sit in the snow with complete comfort and not worry about having wet jeans.

I don’t have the time or room in this blog to go into a complete discussion about suitable clothing for cold weather. There’s tons of good advise on the web and in thousands of books but if I were to give any advise it would be to look toward clothing designed for skiers. There is also one other little bit of advise that I always give and that is to never wear cotton. In cold weather – “cotton kills”.  Not even cotton underwear folks.

All the reasons outlined above are the reasons I’m now teaching that your Primary Shelter , the clothes that you have with you, are your most important emergency shelter. How you are dressed when you inter the woods may actually be the difference between surviving or not. I can’t stress this enough. I know that you are not going to stop and build a shelter. I know that the majority of  people “lost” in the wild never built a proper shelter. I know that no matter how many different types of shelters I teach students to build, none are as effective as being properly dressed. I know that the energy, calories burned, time and effort required to build an effective shelter are not equal , shelter wise, to the comfort of putting on a single warm sweater.

So here’s my advise on emergency shelters. Take it with you. Wear it. Actually say to yourself: “ I plan on sleeping in the woods tonight. What should I wear? ”  Thinking this way will hopefully also prompt you to tuck that Personal Emergency Survival Kit into one pocket and maybe even a large contractor’s garbage bag or two into another pocket. How  about a knife while you’re at it?

The point is –if you think you’ll just wait until it’s life or death and then build one of those nifty shelters like the Survivor Man does, good luck.  You’re going to need it.