Tag: survival quest

Still preparing for this summer!

Survival Skills

Hello all!  Happy almost summer . . .

 

Above are a couple photos from my Advanced Standard Class at Tom Brown Jr’s Tracker School in New Jersey.  These were taken a few years ago, but I’m gearing up for this survival experiment in Oregon so I thought I’d share a couple photos with you.  The top one is of me from our camouflage practice, and the bottom one is the inside of the debris hut I built for sleeping in.  It’s built like stick and leaf and debris cocoon that you wiggle into and plug up after you’re in.  It did keep me warm at night, without a sleeping bag, but I learned not to use moldy leaves!

I’m still in Florida, in the process of recovering from a minor surgery, but enjoying the silver lining of READING and lounging around, spending time with the kids and relaxing.

I’m re-reading “Tom Brown’s Field Guide To Nature And Survival For Children” which has some similar information as his “Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival”, but with a slant for children to give us adults some ideas for teaching this to them, including games to play!

As the time draws near to go to Oregon and quest for survival, I realize more and more how ill prepared I am!  I was grateful when I read in his book that it is important to prepare through the honing of wilderness skills BEFORE going into survival.  That makes good sense.

Will I actually go into full survival this summer?  I think it’s real to say that working toward that goal is the only thing that will actually push me enough to practice the skills like I should.  Set a date and work toward it!

I am also considering running a vision quest class this summer as well.  If I do it will most likely be the last week of August, but that could change at this point.

I’m excited to get to Oregon and spend time with family, and play some survival and awareness games with my grandchildren!

Oh, by the way, Tom has been teaching a lot of classes online lately.  I think he may continue to do so, which really enables more people to learn from him, especially those who can’t go to a physical class.  I have taken many of his online classes as have many of my friends.  We find them to be excellent.

Here’s the link to the school for anyone interested in his classes:
http://www.trackerschool.com/

Back to Nature . . . Sleeping Outside!

Uncategorized

Hey everybody!  Welcome to my blog!  Again!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here!  But now I’m gearing up for a new adventure: SURVIVAL QUESTING THIS SUMMER!  I have a lot of work to do in preparation for this!  How many of you could walk into the woods and survive lavishly?  I know I couldn’t, so I’m focusing my attention on preparation right now (along with kids and house, etc!).

I took a class last month at Tom Brown Jr’s Tracker School called Temple Spirits and received such a strong vision to work on skills, to become a child of the earth, and I don’t want to lose it!  I want to preserve that feeling, that inspiration.  There is a vibration that can be had only by living close to nature and by going to Tracker classes.  I want to preserve the vibration I came away from that class with, so I have begun sleeping outside on a regular basis!  So far it has been wonderful, and the weather has actually been perfect.  Hopefully when the mosquitoes come I can practice using the wild plants to ward them off!  We’ll see how that goes!

In the Temple Spirits class we learned some techniques for asking questions and getting answers when it comes to our personal vision in life.  I was surprised and shocked at the answers I received, through vision, telling me the biggest demons I face that will try to knock me off my path of light are the distractions of comfort and attractive things!  WOW!  That was an eye opener!!!  I always knew the dark side was alluring, but I never suspected that the little pretty things I fill my house with are just such lures.  I spend too much time on acquiring them, taking care of them, and housing them!  Time I should be spending living my vision!  When I asked how I can heal it, I was told I can choose to turn away from the comfort, the stuff, the unimportant things that clutter my life, and focus on my family, the earth, and survival.  It shifted me at a core level and I walked away feeling such a purity of purpose.  I am ready to let go of the tawdry baubles of life and live simpler, closer to the earth and closer to family.

Priority #1:  Learn the plants–the medicinal and edible qualities.  For starters I’m reading “Botany in a Day” by Thomas Elpel from start to finish.  I am learning to recognize the different plant families and the terminology.

I’ve also been attending wild weed walks by Green Deane (see eattheweeds.com ) in central Florida, and also Emily Ruff (see Florida School of Holistic Living) also in central Florida.  I’ve found out that most of the weeds growing in my yard are either edible or medicinal or both!  There are also two highly toxic weeds here as well, and one very hallucinogenic!

When I think of survival, I know that based on the teachings of Grandfather Stalking Wolf, shelter is number one and water and fire are numbers two and three, but I can’t help but think, “What am I going to eat?  What can I feed my kids?!  It’s very important to learn the plants if you want to have easily obtainable survival food and medicine.  After all, you don’t have to set a snare for a plant.  But you should always be respectful and caring of them, and make sure to forage in a way that benefits an area, and does not decimate the plant population!!  Always think of the future generations!

By the way, I know I set this site up for teaching, and I will probably teach again in the future, but for now I am focusing my time on learning again.  I would be open to running a vision quest again this summer in Oregon, though, if someone were interested.  I would also be open to teaching a group some of Grandfather’s Philosophy too, but I am just not organizing it myself right now.