Wilderness Survival Skills

Wilderness Survival Skills to enhance your outdoor experience…

There are some outdoor and wilderness survival skills that you should know that could really save your life. Then again, there are outdoor skills that can really help you out that aren’t necessarily about survival. Therefore, we call them “Wilderness Living Skills.”  Skills to improve your experience outdoors. From wilderness survival skills like how to start a five minute fire in an emergency to outdoor skills like how to operate a wilderness Laundromat, you’ll find it here.

Bowmaking Basics

I remember making my first bow as a kid. I found a branch on the ground under the black oak trees that grew in our yard. There was a windstorm the prior evening and branches were everywhere. I found one with a bend and tied on a string. Then I grabbed a smaller, straighter branch. [...]

Photo by Kristi Dranginis

Survival Techniques: 5 Basic Survival Skills

Within all survival techniques, there are 5 Outdoor Basic Survival Skills that everyone who ventures into the Outdoors should understand and be fully aware of their potential need and use. This is a just brief outline, not a full explanation of all the requirements and items required in each category.  One of the most important [...]

Primitive Living as a Metaphor

Here in Montana I practice and teach classes on primitive or stone age skills–which is to say, camping with little or no gear. We build shelters that are warm and comfortable without a sleeping bag or blanket. We start fires by rubbing sticks together. We harvest and use edible wild plants, make baskets, and tan [...]

How to Build a Survival Shelter

Sleeping outside in a primitive survival shelter with no tent and no sleeping bag?! In the rain? Are you crazy? This idea may indeed seem crazy and a bit daunting to many of us. However, with a couple of hours, proper materials and the right mindset, constructing and sleeping in a primitive survival shelter can [...]

Photo by Kristi Dranginis

Make Rope from Plants – Cordage making

Cordage (rope and string) can be made from many different fibers including (Bast) Dogbane, Milkweed, Nettles, Hemp, Flax; (Leaves) Cattail, Yucca, Agave, Douglas Iris; (Bark) Willow, Maple, Basswood, Cedar; (Root) Leather Root, Beach Lupine; (Whole stem) Tule, straw, Juncus. Each material has specific requirements for extracting and preparing the fibers, but there are only two [...]

Photo by Linda Bittle

Rock Boiling – Survival Water Purification

From microwaving popcorn to roasting potatoes around a car’s hot exhaust pipe, humans have developed a variety of cooking methods by which we render food safer, more digestible, and more palatable.  Rock boiling is one of my favorite Stone Age (pardon the pun) methods.  Some alternatives for boiling food are energy intensive and more difficult [...]

Photo by Kristi Dranginis

Friction Fire Basics

You’re speeding down a river in a canoe. Your friend in the front yells something that you can’t hear over the rapids. Before you know what has happened, you flip out of your canoe and you wake up next to your friend with a roaring fire in front of you. Maybe you ask him all [...]

Photo by Kristi Dranginis

Bow-Drill Fire Making

Step-by-step instructions I. Body Positions and General Considerations for bow-drill fire-making and . Fuel, Heat, Oxygen, and Moisture: Duration, Pressure, and Speed. All are factors which will affect the success or failure of making fire with a bow and drill. Lock wrist against leg. Keep hand hold perpendicular to drill. Apply proper pressure. Keep bow [...]

How to Make a Birch Bark Basket

Anyone who’s ever lived up North knows that the birch is as precious as gold. Its bark is useful for fire, shelter, and communication, its sap is edible, and the inner bark of the yellow and black birches can be ground into flour and their twigs made into tea. Paper Birch bark has been used [...]

How to Make Moccasins

The most comfortable ‘mocs’ in the world… This last summer Wilderness Youth Project took a group of teenagers on a trip up the coast experiencing elements of survival such as sleeping in a debris hut, making fire by friction and eating wild edibles. One of our most popular activities was going through the entire process [...]