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By Owen Budd
The realm of the living skills used by our ancestors, and survival in general, can seem like a daunting and overwhelming place, fraught with hardship and discouraging moments that all too often lead to a "this just isn't my thing" mentality. On a regular basis when I mention the primitive living skills I practice and teach, I am greeted with the all too familiar retort "I would die if i got lost in the woods."
This mental barrier of doubt gets in the way of learning fun and rewarding new skills. The ridiculous thought that leaving the entertaining TV and food producing electric stove behind to watch and cook meals on a fire is some how an extremely difficult and painful way to get by, or live, will slowly disipate with some guidance. The purpose of this article is to give that guidelines and direction to those who are interested, but have no idea where to start when it comes to learning these skills. It all boils down to finding teachers and practice, practice, practice.
First, locate a teacher or mentor if possible nearby. When I began, I managed to get by for a short while by teaching myself to sew leather, knap small arrowheads, and generally spend lots of time in the woods making various odds and ends. But when it came to the desire to learn the hard skills like fire making, shelter building, finding water, or more advanced knapping skills, I realized I would need a teacher (or teachers) if I wanted to progress to a proficient level. My answer at the time was the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills (MAPS) Group where I attended many gatherings and learned many of the skills I know today.
Other teachers seemed to find me. My friend Bill Ewing happened to have extensive bow drill knowledge and had a very natural way of teaching me what woods to use and how to adjust the set to make it work. I was also taught knapping by my friend Joshua Brown who is a phenomenal knapper and produces great work.
Look up nearby skills group or tracking groups. Some are hosted by university anthropology departments that also are a great place where you can find knapping experience, or at least have someone on staff who has knapping knowledge.
If you are on the east coast in the Mid-Atlantic region there are several schools you can take classes from such as Ancestral Knowledge, Earth Connection and Living Earth School. MAPS Group also has people who can offer advice on certain skills that you can find on the website's community page.
Which of the skills should I learn first?
Good question. Perhaps a good way to decide is to put the skills into perspective. Eventualy you will hear details describing the Order of Survival. No, its not some mysterious cult dating back to a group of 15th century survival monks, the Order of Survival is the four things you need to live on a day-to-day basis, which are:
Shelter -- Water -- Fire -- Food
The Order of Survival skills are based on basic human needs. Shelter is first because you can succumb to exposure pretty rapidly in the right conditions if you are not protected from the elements. Water, second, relates to dehydration and death within a few days when you are without. Fire, being man's first basic tool, provides warmth, protection, companionship, and service in cooking food and purifying water. Food, last in the order, because you can generally survive without food for a few weeks with nothing more than a very angry stomach.
This order is not set in stone, however, since your current situation will dictate which is most important, but this is more or less the order of importance of these four things in a normal situation.
That being said, I personally consider fire making one of the first things you should learn and become proficient. Fire making can be learned anywhere you are, there are any number of ways to go about it, and fire provides a lot of your physical and mental needs. Being able to make fire can dramaticly increase your chances of survival. So, it is always a good thing to have a number of ways to do it on hand (like flint and steel or a lighter) and particularly the knowlege of how to use nature's materials to make a friction fire like bow drill or hand drill. It is important to have some level of mastery of those ways as well.
In order to master fire making skills or any skill, I'm a big proponent of controlled chaos. That means putting yourself into a less than desirable situation in order to take your skills (and your edge) to new levels. Its important to always push your limits, do not simply make a fire with a bow drill then put it away and decide you have mastered it, because you haven't (can you ever truly master anything?). Start adding in new factors, new obstacles, new challenges. Try it in the rain, in the snow, in a hail storm, break your arm (ouch) and THEN find a way to make it work. Well... don't actually break your arm obviously, you can just tie it behind your back or something, but you get my point!
Let me share a story I often share with my students when teaching fire making.
Last Febuary on a particularly cold day, I was in the hilly woodlands of central Maryland. I was showing my girlfriend (at the time) around a patch of woods I had been exploring for a number of years. This particular patch of woods was a steep sided valley with a fairly deep, and at times wide creek running through it. It was cold enough that ice covered it in some places in large patches. So, being the so-called manly survival "expert" that I was thinking I was, I decided it was a very good idea to show her how to cross ice without falling through. We found a patch of ice in a rather deep section of the creek and I laid down on my stomach and GI-Joe crawled across the ice. No problem. Not so much as a crack.
Once reaching the other side I coaxed her into doing the same, so she got on her stomach and started to crawl across the ice. About halfway across, she pushed down onto the ice to inch her way forward (instead of inch-worming your way across with arms out-stretched) and cracks immediately shot in every direction. Luckily she stopped moving and I was able to grab her hand and pull her across without the ice stressing any more.
We proceed down stream until we reached a series of rapids with deep pools, and we came upon a bridge crossing the creek from one side to the other, with open holes on either side. Once again my "man vs wild" mentality took over and I proceeded onto the ice bridge to show her how it could hold my weight, which it did, up until I started hitting the side of it with my boot. I remember looking back to her to say "wow, it isn't breaking" or something to that effect, and that's when I heard a definite crack.
I remember looking down in time to see the ice disappear beneath me and water come up to meet me. First thing I noticed was how fast the current was, it literally grabbed hold of my legs and tried to force me under a nearby sheet of ice. Another thing is that everything they say about trying to get out once you've fallen through ice is true. It's wet, cold, slippery, and tiring. I did manage to pull myself out however, at which point my clothes were completely soaked.
I don't remember feeling especialy cold, but I do remember rapidly decideing whether I was going to walk out of the woods, or stay put and make a fire. I settled on fire making, it was about 30 atleast in a snow filled valley.
The only fire making device I had on me was a bow drill, and a ball of tinder which had both gone into the creek with me when I fell through, so I immediatly handed it all to my girlfriend who had done bow drill once or twice prior. After about a minute trying it became clear that she had not practiced since the last time she made a fire and was not going to get a coal in time. So I had to take over and managed to get the fastest coal I think I've ever made (amazing what a little motivation can do).
Within about 5 minutes of going into the water I had a fire going and my clothes drying by it. At first I felt slightly embarrassed, I had put myself in a position to get seriously hurt or killed, but I saw a different side of it. Using the skills I had practiced so much up until then, I had used them to better my situation, and perhaps save my life.
From that experience, I have come to appreciate the value of scenarios. Putting yourself in situations that are uncomfortable or perhaps risky to push your edge and test yourself. Making a fire in your backyard on a nice day is vastly different from making it in heavy rain at 40 degrees in a t-shirt and a pair of Carhartts. So I encourage you, challenge yourself, be uncomfortable, learn to adapt. But, do it safely with minimal risk. Don't throw yourself in an icy creek 10 miles from home with no backup plan.
Modified and used with permission: Owen Budd has been learning, sharing and mentoring ancestral skills since 2005. He enjoys flint knapping, brain tanning, using stone tools, friction firemaking, scout skills, tracking, mud, woodsmoke, and many other primitive/ancestral skills. He also regularly taught classes at the annual Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills (MAPS) Group Meet, among them the scout skills class, previously taught by Hue of Earth Connection Wilderness School. He worked for Ancestral Knowledge as an instructor as well as for Living Earth School in Virginia. He moved to Australia in 2009 and continues to explore primitive skills in a new and challenging environment. If you have any questions
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or visit his blog.
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