Outdoor Survival

Surviving in the outdoors or the wilderness can be as simple or as difficult as you make it. Many people that have been lost in the wilderness due to a plane crash or some other disaster die of starvation near much food and water. Others in the same situation flourish. What is the difference? A large part of the difference is attitude and the rest is preparedness knowledge. I can teach anyone the preparedness knowledge part of it but no one can teach the attitude part. This is something that you have to work out in your own mind. How bad do you want to survive? What are you willing to go through? Can you think outside the box? All of these things only you can answer. If you feel now that you do not have the mentality to be a survivor, you can do some mental exercises that will help. Spend part of each day thinking about possible scenarios and what you would do if faced with them. You may even want to read up on it and see what you should do. The more knowledge you have the more confident you will be and the more likely to survive any emergency. So, let's look at some things to remember.

If you are going to be lost in the outdoors, this is the time of year to be lost. However, no one gets to pick the time they are going to be in a survival situation. However, here in the north the seasons of spring, summer and fall are all good for finding food to eat. In the spring there are many green plants that are not only edible, but tasty. Things like dandelions, plantain and other early spring plants are an excellent food supply and an excellent source of vitamins. Raiding birds nests in the spring will also provide food for a starving person. This is one of those things that one would not think about doing during normal times, but survival is not a normal time. During the summer and fall there are numerous berries and nuts along with many green plants to keep one alive. Up here in the north, winter would be the worst of all times to be lost in the woods. There is much less food in the winter than at any time of the year. However, even then there are things that can be eaten to stay alive. The inner bark of aspen and willow trees can be eaten, cattails can be dug and the roots eaten and there are other foods. Sometimes by digging around in the leaves and snow acorns or other nuts can be found.

If you are out on a hunting or fishing trip when you become stranded in the woods, you already have a good start on survival. Your gun or your fishing rod will provide you with food. The much more difficult thing is for someone who is in the woods due to a plane crash. You will not have a gun or probably even a knife with you as you are allowed to carry nothing like that on a plane. You are going to have to scavenge to find tools to keep yourself alive. If you are in a car that gets stranded in the wilds, you will at least have all of the tools that are in the trunk, tools for tire changing etc. All of these tools will help you to do the many things you need to do to survive.

Next week we will go a lot deeper into things that you should do and things that you should have if you travel. I am also going to start the building of a medical kit. This will be a complete home medical kit and not a first aid kit. Each week we will add to it until we have enough medical supplies to take us through any survival situation. We will add to it each week to keep it from costing us too much money all at one time. I am on a tight budget and I know many of you are too. One of the reasons for doing this is the fact that I no longer have a medical kit and need a new one. My medical got misplaced somewhere in the last move we made and I have been without one for several years. So each week the final paragraph of my blog will concern this kit.