essay on survival in the wilderness

20 Amazing Survival Stories in the Wilderness

For as long as humanity knows itself, surviving in the wilderness was always a number one challenge and priority. Humans were always determined to overcome whatever difficulties piled on their trail through the wild – and then shared their inspiring stories.

Some of the survival stories are summarized in the following video:

Aron Ralston: 127 Hours

Ralston’s passion for climbing took him to Utah, to Blue John Canyon . He was alone. He never told a living soul where he is planning to go. He was lowering himself into a canyon, but then a boulder fell from above and completely trapped his hand. And since he went alone, nobody knew where to look for him. Ralston had only a small portion of food and water. After trying to free himself for 3 straight days, he had to make the extremely tough decision to cut the hand. What followed is two more horrible days of him unsuccessfully attempting different ways of self-amputation. He also had no water left and had to drink his urine.

Hugh Glass: The Real Story Behind The Revenant

Many of us are familiar with “The Revenant”, the film that finally gave Leonardo DiCaprio the long-awaited Academy Award . However, the movie does add a few scenes that did not occur in reality. For instance, there wasn’t a shootout like in the final part. Moreover, Hugh Glass, the main protagonist, did not have a son who was killed before his eyes.

Glass woke up and saw that he was left behind with no equipment or guns, his leg broken, his wounds severely infected, his ribs exposed due to the gashes he received from the bear. The nearest civilization post was 200 miles away, Missouri’s Fort Kiowa. Glass had no choice but to set the leg, cover himself in the bear hide and crawl towards the settlement. He mainly fed on roots and berries.

The Mexican Fishermen: Living on a Prayer

On October 28, 2005, 5 fishermen left their Mexican village to fish for sharks. They planned to be away for a few days, but fate had other plans. First they lost their tackle, then they lost their fuel while searching for the tackle. They were “dead in the water”. The winds and the current pushed them even further away from the shores, some 5000 miles into the ocean. Two of the men, Juan David (the boat owner) and “El Farsero”, eventually starved to death and had to be buried in the ocean. Their rescue near the Marshall Island by a Taiwanese trawler came… 9 months and 9 days later! Their incredible survival at the heart of the sea is one of the longest among the recorded similar stories. Knowing that they can starve and perish, the three remaining men had to sustain by fishing as well as catching seabirds and eating the birds as they are, uncooked.

Steven Callahan: Adrift for 76 Days

January, 1981. Steven Callahan has just finished crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a small sloop and headed back home. One day a storm was gathering around the boat, and by an unfortunate coincidence, there was a hole in the hull, probably made by some large sea creature.

His rescue came on day 76, when he was spotted near Guadeloupe, thanks to the fish and the birds that followed his battered raft when he was throwing out fish intestines. By this time he was totally drained of energy, and he also lost at least 1/3 of his weight. Callahan describes his life changing story in the book “Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea” that currently has over 680 favorable reviews on Amazon.

The Lykov Family: Decades in Siberia

For almost 50 years the Lykovs lived in the woods, self-efficiently, depending on each other and on their faith. They faced starvation in every winter and had to decide how much of the seeds they would save for the next season and how much should be consumed. The priority was always to save the seeds, which eventually lead to mother’s unfortunate death during one of the harshest winters.

Juliane Koepcke: Surviving the Odds, Twice

Ann Rodgers: Surviving the Desert

Despite the wrong decision, Ann survived thanks to the skills acquired at a survival course, as well as her accumulated knowledge on desert survival. She was successful at building a fire to warm herself up on every night. She stayed hydrated by drinking from ponds. She caught and roasted a turtle. She recognized edible plants.

Yossi Ghinsberg: A Harrowing True Story of Survival

The year was 1981. Four adventurers, including the hero of this story, Yossi Ghinsberg, were trekking through the Amazon region in Bolivia. They faced two weeks of unpleasant conditions and decided to split. Two of them were never seen, and their fate is unknown. Ghinsberg and Kevin (Yossi’s friend) were determined to travel by a river using a raft. Their journey was smooth until they encountered a waterfall. Yossi Ghinsberg went over the gushing waterfall, and Kevin lost sight of him.

Ricky Megee: The Amazing Australian

January, 2006. Ricky Megee was driving in Northern Territory, Australia. 3 hikers signaled his car, pretending they are out of gas. But in fact, they were robbers. They spiked Ricky’s water, and while he was out, they took all his possessions and drove away, leaving him behind in a shallow grave.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates: The Fated Descent

Yates tried helping Simpson. He laid Simpson down on an improvised stretcher. A rope was tied to the stretcher, and Yates was slowly lowering the whole thing until the ropes length was reached. However, by an accident, Simpson was lowered over a crevasse and it was way too deep for the rope. Yates was getting pulled by all this weight toward the cliff, and had to make the hard decision of cutting the rope. Simpson, of course, fell into the chasm. But he did not die; instead, a shelf inside the crevasse broke his fall. Yates was not aware of this, he went back to the camp, feeling guilty and grieving.

Marcus Mazzaferri: The Lost Footprints

Challenged by cold and darkness, barely seeing without his glasses, he tried to make his way back using his footprints. The circumstances forced him to stay for the night. Fighting the deadly hypothermia, Mazzaferri rested for 20 minutes, then exercised to prevent numbness, then 20 more minutes of rest. He continued his journey at the dawn, but eventually could not find the footprints. He decided to hike using deer tracks, and only then was he successful in finding the way to his footprints.

The prints disappeared after a while and he could not find the right direction. However, sounds of a plow crew reached him from the other side of the river. Even though he was cold and the river was dangerously freezing, he swam toward the friendly voices and was saved.

Matthew Smith and Tommy Hendricks: Fighting the Deadly Cold

The lived through the night and tried to climb down in the morning. They had no cell reception and no food. They were lost because they took the wrong path, and the traces of iron in the surrounding rocks interfered with the compasses. The soaks lighters did not function, they could not light a fire, and understood that they are about to die.

Graham Austin: Riding the Lightning

For half a minute, his heart stopped beating, he could not breathe, his legs became paralyzed, deprived of blood and turned dark purple. But his friends brought him back to life, performed CPR to make his heart beat, got him breathing again, and massaged his legs until blood returned to the vessels. Graham Austin survived thanks to the friends. His legs still couldn’t quite function, so when the rescue finally got there, he had to be carried from the mountain.

“The Gremlin Special” Crew: US Air Force VS Cannibals

“The Gremlin Special” was US Air Force plane that crashed at mountain. It happened on May 13, 1945, in New Guinea. Out of 24 people, only 3 survived, two of them were seriously injured. Lt. John McCollom, Sgt. Kenneth Decker and Cpl. Margaret Hastings discovered to their amazement that they crashed in a territory, which was never visited by the modern civilization. The natives, as it turned out, were a tribe of cannibals. But at least they were the kind of cannibals that only eat their enemies.

The officers lived among the natives for 42 days, and were in fact nursed back to health. Eventually a rescue team arrived, and the survivors safely left the cannibal island.

Mike Vilhauer: The Worst Fishing Day

On August 6, 2014, a Californian named Mike Vilhauer was roaming the wilderness looking for grasshoppers to use as a fishing bait. He did not pay attention to the time, and the hour was getting late. So he camped beneath a pine, but on the following day succumbed to dehydration and hunger.

Four days passed. At this point he was exhausted, hungry, sick and out of ideas how to get back. He started carving a last letter to the wife on a wood. Additionally, he placed needles on the ground in the form of the word HELP, his last attempt to attract attention to his whereabouts.

Lt. David Steeves: The Vanished Pilot

Perhaps one of the most incredible stories of survival is also a remarkable story of vindication. Lt. David Steeves was a top-notch U.S. Air Force Pilot in the 1950s, but it wasn’t his impeccable flying that made him a household name. The pilot was ordered to fly a highly classified new fighter jet prototype from San Francisco to Craig, Air Force Base, near Selma Alabama on 9 May, 1957. Not long after he took off, he disappeared from radar and following a search which turned up nothing, was unjustly accused of stealing the jet to turn it over to the Soviet Union, himself defecting in the process. It was believed he was a traitor.

Until, of course, the following July when he walked out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and flagged down a pickup truck passing along a highway. He was malnourished, wearing only his flight boots and his government-issued tighty-whities which were all but threadbare. Once he was back to civilization he recounted the story of how an engine component of the experiential jet had exploded not long after takeoff. He had been forced to eject as the plane itself exploded into millions of pieces only a moment later. He parachuted down into the mountains where he landed hard and was knocked unconscious.

Slavomir Rawicz: The Real Great Escape

Conor Lodge and Adam Herman: A Hairline Between Life and Death

Soon the two were having to wait it out as they hoped Rich and Tristen were getting help as fast as possible. “I’m at peace with dying,” Conor said to Adam as they waited in the snow, but this was not a day to die and they managed to stay alive, with a massive concussion for Conor and a broken arm and fractured back for Adam, till they could be rescued. Their fall was estimated at more than 800 feet, but through friendship, they managed to survive.

Joshua Prestin: Alone and Scared on the Ledge

He remained on that narrow shelf for 6 days. He had to endure rain, darkness and anguish. He was terrified that no rescue will come for him. Water and food were running low. Eventually, he was picked up by a helicopter, who spotted his brother’s body below.

Lorraine Johnson: Time is Running Out

Her body started to shut down, the Mojave Green Rattler that had bit her packed a serious punch and it was a long way back to help. She made it, but had to be resuscitated twice on the way to the emergency room by paramedics. Her experience and skills as a hiker, let her survive this unfortunate chance encounter with one of the deadliest snakes on the planet, right in the backyard of a massive urban landscape.

Final Words

And there you have it, 20 true survival stories in the wilderness . The human spirit, the will to survive and persevere, kept all these brave people alive, even when the odds were stacked against them. We have much to learn from their stubbornness and resilience.

Alex is a seasoned survivalist, with a passion to all things related to prepping, hiking and living off the grid.

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A hiker walks through a lush moss covered forest on the way to Deeks Lake near Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. Though being on the trail sounds peaceful, even the most experienced hikers can lose the trail—which can prove deadly. Search and rescue experts say the most important thing hikers can do to is tell two people their hiking plans in the event that they do not come back as intended.

Day hikers are the most vulnerable in survival situations. Here's why.

A new study looks at who lives and who dies when lost in the wild.

On March 1, 2019, in Humboldt County, California, two sisters, ages 5 and 8, went for a walk in the woods adjoining their 80-acre rural property. They didn't come home. Search and rescue would find them, 44 hours later, huddled under a huckleberry bush in the forest, cold and dehydrated, but safe. A new study by SmokyMountains.com shows it’s not just children at risk. According to the research, wandering off trail is the number one reason, ahead of injury and bad weather, that adult hikers require search and rescue.

The study analyzed 100+ news reports over the past 25 years to identify the most common ways adults in North America got lost while hiking in national parks and wilderness, what they did to survive, and how they made it out alive. Forty-one percent of the survivors began their odysseys, which ranged from a half-day missing to 90 days, by accidentally straying from the trail. Another 16 percent fell off trail and couldn’t find their way back.

Losing the trail can happen to anyone. It’s not about veering off to get a closer look at the wildflowers or to capture a better landscape photo. According to Andrew Herrington, a survival instructor , search and rescue team leader, and wildlife ranger in the Smokies, it happens to alert, experienced hikers too, most often at what he calls a decision point on the trail. “It could be an actual trail junction,” he says. “It could be a social trail; a little path that leads off to an overlook or something like that.” Or it could be—in the case of Sue Clements, a 53-year-old hiker from Ohio who, in 2018, didn’t survive getting lost in Great Smoky Mountains National Park—a water bar that seems like a trail, but funnels down into a maze of rugged, heavily vegetated terrain.

The research also suggests that the most vulnerable group of hikers aren’t those going deep into the wilderness on backpacking expeditions, it’s day hikers, like Clements, whose body was found about two miles from the park’s Clingmans Dome parking lot.

A woman prepares breakfast inside her tent while camping in Vestvagoya, Lofoten, Norway. In survival situations on the trail, having warm layers and shelter can make the difference between life and dealth. For this reason, even day hikers should pack a few gear essentails, such as warm layers, water, food, and some form of shelter.

In the study, survivors’ most frequently mentioned source of warmth was clothes (12 percent). Their prevailing form of shelter was camping gear (11 percent). Most survivors had a water source—either their own (13 percent), or one they found (42 percent), be it a lake, creek, or puddle, or derived by licking leaves or sucking moist moss. None of the survivors except one were missing long enough to make starvation an issue, but 35 percent had food they could ration to keep their energy levels up. All these data points suggest that the best way to survive getting lost in a national park is to already have the clothing and gear needed for warmth and shelter during the night, as well as some food and water.

This is not the case with most day hikers, who are more likely to bring a camera than extra clothes in a backpack. Herrington concurs. “If you go backpacking and you get lost, or you get caught out in bad weather, it’s like oh well I’m going to be out here another night and maybe go to bed hungry. No big deal. But when you’re out there and you don’t have a sleeping bag and tent, or extra clothing for the overnight experience, you’re much more vulnerable, and that tends to be where most people get in trouble.”

“If you’re lost off trail, you’re most likely going to have to spend the night.” Andrew Herrington , Survival Instructor

His experience working in Great Smoky Mountains National Park further confirms. “Of our 100 search and rescue incidents a year, probably 90 percent of those are day hikers,” Herrington says. Across all U.S. national parks from 2004-2014, day hikers comprised 42 percent of the 46,609 search and rescue cases, almost four times the amount of the next closest group, overnight backpackers at 13 percent.

In Herrington’s wilderness survival courses, he teaches day hikers to pack a puffy jacket for warmth, and a 55-gallon trash bag for rain protection/shelter. Even in warm states. “If you’re wet—because it rains or you fell into water or you sweated through your clothes—and its 65 degrees, you can still get hypothermic,” says Herrington. “New Mexico is one of the leading states in hypothermia deaths, and look how warm it is there.” An injury compounds the risk of hypothermia by compromising the body’s ability to thermo-regulate.

Crossing a river is exciting, but getting wet can cause a chill or worse. Bringing extra layers for warmth and to stay dry not only makes hiking more fun, but could save a life.

Convincing day hikers that they’re at risk and need to take precautions requires a change in mindset. Harrison says technology makes that shift harder. People are so used to navigating city streets by GPS that they have no practice finding their own way. They also think that because they’re in a national park, not far from a trailhead, or a gift shop, that help is just a 911-call from their cellphone and a helicopter evacuation away. “That’s not how it works,” says Herrington. “If you’re lost off trail, you’re most likely going to have to spend the night.” Search and rescue teams don’t want to create “an incident within an incident” by sending their team members on an off-trail search at dark or near dark. The standard protocol is to wait until morning.

Survival television doesn’t help either. Harrison says it gives people the mistaken idea that wilderness survival skills are about learning to build a fire from scratch and saving yourself from starvation by eating bugs. “That’s primitive living and bush craft,” he says. “Carry a lighter wrapped in duct tape so it’s water proof and you have something to burn. And starvation isn’t even a concern in search and rescue. Even a lean person with 10 percent body fat has enough stores to live off for about a month.”

Harrison says real-world wilderness survival skills are much less entertaining. The most important thing a person can learn to do? Whether you’re going on a backpacking trip, a day hike, or even a trail run, leave a trip plan with two people who will notice you’re missing.

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The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

By william cronon.

Print-formatted version: PDF

In William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature , New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90.

The time has come to rethink wilderness.

This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet—indeed, a passion—of the environmental movement, especially in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.” ( 1 )

But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. For this reason, we mistake ourselves when we suppose that wilderness can be the solution to our culture’s problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is itself no small part of the problem.

To assert the unnaturalness of so natural a place will no doubt seem absurd or even perverse to many readers, so let me hasten to add that the nonhuman world we encounter in wilderness is far from being merely our own invention. I celebrate with others who love wilderness the beauty and power of the things it contains. Each of us who has spent time there can conjure images and sensations that seem all the more hauntingly real for having engraved themselves so indelibly on our memories. Such memories may be uniquely our own, but they are also familiar enough be to be instantly recognizable to others. Remember this? The torrents of mist shoot out from the base of a great waterfall in the depths of a Sierra canyon, the tiny droplets cooling your face as you listen to the roar of the water and gaze up toward the sky through a rainbow that hovers just out of reach. Remember this too: looking out across a desert canyon in the evening air, the only sound a lone raven calling in the distance, the rock walls dropping away into a chasm so deep that its bottom all but vanishes as you squint into the amber light of the setting sun. And this: the moment beside the trail as you sit on a sandstone ledge, your boots damp with the morning dew while you take in the rich smell of the pines, and the small red fox—or maybe for you it was a raccoon or a coyote or a deer—that suddenly ambles across your path, stopping for a long moment to gaze in your direction with cautious indifference before continuing on its way. Remember the feelings of such moments, and you will know as well as I do that you were in the presence of something irreducibly nonhuman, something profoundly Other than yourself Wilderness is made of that too.

And yet: what brought each of us to the places where such memories became possible is entirely a cultural invention. Go back 250 years in American and European history, and you do not find nearly so many people wandering around remote corners of the planet looking for what today we would call “the wilderness experience.” As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word “wilderness” in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives far different from the ones they attract today. To be a wilderness then was to be “deserted,” “savage,” “desolate,” “barren”—in short, a “waste,” the word’s nearest synonym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was most likely to feel in its presence was “bewilderment” or terror. ( 2 )

Many of the word’s strongest associations then were biblical, for it is used over and over again in the King James Version to refer to places on the margins of civilization where it is all too easy to lose oneself in moral confusion and despair. The wilderness was where Moses had wandered with his people for forty years, and where they had nearly abandoned their God to worship a golden idol. ( 3 ) “For Pharaoh will say of the Children of Israel,” we read in Exodus, “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.” ( 4 ) The wilderness was where Christ had struggled with the devil and endured his temptations: “And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness for forty days tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.” ( 5 ) The “delicious Paradise” of John Milton’s Eden was surrounded by “a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides /Access denied” to all who sought entry.” When Adam and Eve were driven from that garden, the world they entered was a wilderness that only their labor and pain could redeem. Wilderness, in short, was a place to which one came only against one’s will, and always in fear and trembling. Whatever value it might have arose solely from the possibility that it might be “reclaimed” and turned toward human ends—planted as a garden, say, or a city upon a hill. ( 7 ) In its raw state, it had little or nothing to offer civilized men and women.

But by the end of the nineteenth century, all this had changed. The wastelands that had once seemed worthless had for some people come to seem almost beyond price. That Thoreau in 1862 could declare wildness to be the preservation of the world suggests the sea change that was going on. Wilderness had once been the antithesis of all that was orderly and good—it had been the darkness, one might say, on the far side of the garden wall—and yet now it was frequently likened to Eden itself. When John Muir arrived in the Sierra Nevada in 1869, he would declare, “No description of Heaven that I have ever heard or read of seems half so fine.” ( 8 ) He was hardly alone in expressing such emotions. One by one, various corners of the American map came to be designated as sites whose wild beauty was so spectacular that a growing number of citizens had to visit and see them for themselves. Niagara Falls was the first to undergo this transformation, but it was soon followed by the Catskills, the Adirondacks, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and others. Yosemite was deeded by the U. S. government to the state of California in 1864 as the nation’s first wildland park, and Yellowstone became the first true national park in 1872. ( 9 )

By the first decade of the twentieth century, in the single most famous episode in American conservation history, a national debate had exploded over whether the city of San Francisco should be permitted to augment its water supply by damming the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy valley, well within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. The dam was eventually built, but what today seems no less significant is that so many people fought to prevent its completion. Even as the fight was being lost, Hetch Hetchy became the baffle cry of an emerging movement to preserve wilderness. Fifty years earlier, such opposition would have been unthinkable. Few would have questioned the merits of “reclaiming” a wasteland like this in order to put it to human use. Now the defenders of Hetch Hetchy attracted widespread national attention by portraying such an act not as improvement or progress but as desecration and vandalism. Lest one doubt that the old biblical metaphors had been turned completely on their heads, listen to John Muir attack the dam’s defenders. “Their arguments,” he wrote, “are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden—so much of the very best Eden fruit going to waste; so much of the best Tuolumne water and Tuolumne scenery going to waste.” ( 10 ) For Muir and the growing number of Americans who shared his views, Satan’s home had become God’s Own Temple.

The sources of this rather astonishing transformation were many, but for the purposes of this essay they can be gathered under two broad headings: the sublime and the frontier. Of the two, the sublime is the older and more pervasive cultural construct, being one of the most important expressions of that broad transatlantic movement we today label as romanticism; the frontier is more peculiarly American, though it too had its European antecedents and parallels. The two converged to remake wilderness in their own image, freighting it with moral values and cultural symbols that it carries to this day. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the modern environmental movement is itself a grandchild of romanticism and post-frontier ideology, which is why it is no accident that so much environmentalist discourse takes its bearings from the wilderness these intellectual movements helped create. Although wilderness may today seem to be just one environmental concern among many, it in fact serves as the foundation for a long list of other such concerns that on their face seem quite remote from it. That is why its influence is so pervasive and, potentially, so insidious.

To gain such remarkable influence, the concept of wilderness had to become loaded with some of the deepest core values of the culture that created and idealized it: it had to become sacred. This possibility had been present in wilderness even in the days when it had been a place of spiritual danger and moral temptation. If Satan was there, then so was Christ, who had found angels as well as wild beasts during His sojourn in the desert. In the wilderness the boundaries between human and nonhuman, between natural and supernatural, had always seemed less certain than elsewhere. This was why the early Christian saints and mystics had often emulated Christ’s desert retreat as they sought to experience for themselves the visions and spiritual testing He had endured. One might meet devils and run the risk of losing one’s soul in such a place, but one might also meet God. For some that possibility was worth almost any price.

By the eighteenth century this sense of the wilderness as a landscape where the supernatural lay just beneath the surface was expressed in the doctrine of the sublime, a word whose modern usage has been so watered down by commercial hype and tourist advertising that it retains only a dim echo of its former power. ( 11 ) In the theories of Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, William Gilpin, and others, sublime landscapes were those rare places on earth where one had more chance than elsewhere to glimpse the face of God. ( 12 ) Romantics had a clear notion of where one could be most sure of having this experience. Although God might, of course, choose to show Himself anywhere, He would most often be found in those vast, powerful landscapes where one could not help feeling insignificant and being reminded of one’s own mortality. Where were these sublime places? The eighteenth century catalog of their locations feels very familiar, for we still see and value landscapes as it taught us to do. God was on the mountaintop, in the chasm, in the waterfall, in the thundercloud, in the rainbow, in the sunset. One has only to think of the sites that Americans chose for their first national parks—Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Rainier, Zion—to realize that virtually all of them fit one or more of these categories. Less sublime landscapes simply did not appear worthy of such protection; not until the 1940s, for instance, would the first swamp be honored, in Everglades National Park, and to this day there is no national park in the grasslands. ( 13 )

Among the best proofs that one had entered a sublime landscape was the emotion it evoked. For the early romantic writers and artists who first began to celebrate it, the sublime was far from being a pleasurable experience. The classic description is that of William Wordsworth as he recounted climbing the Alps and crossing the Simplon Pass in his autobiographical poem “The Prelude.” There, surrounded by crags and waterfalls, the poet felt himself literally to be in the presence of the divine—and experienced an emotion remarkably close to terror:

The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent at every turn Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree; Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. ( 14 )

This was no casual stroll in the mountains, no simple sojourn in the gentle lap of nonhuman nature. What Wordsworth described was nothing less than a religious experience, akin to that of the Old Testament prophets as they conversed with their wrathful God. The symbols he detected in this wilderness landscape were more supernatural than natural, and they inspired more awe and dismay than joy or pleasure. No mere mortal was meant to linger long in such a place, so it was with considerable relief that Wordsworth and his companion made their way back down from the peaks to the sheltering valleys. Lest you suspect that this view of the sublime was limited to timid Europeans who lacked the American know-how for feeling at home in the wilderness, remember Henry David Thoreau’s 1846 climb of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. Although Thoreau is regarded by many today as one of the great American celebrators of wilderness, his emotions about Katahdin were no less ambivalent than Wordsworth’s about the Alps.

It was vast, Titanic, and such as man never inhabits. Some part of the beholder, even some vital part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends. He is more lone than you can imagine …. Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly, why came ye here before your time? This ground is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys? I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me but a stepmother? ( 15 )

This is surely not the way a modern backpacker or nature lover would describe Maine’s most famous mountain, but that is because Thoreau’s description owes as much to Wordsworth and other romantic contemporaries as to the rocks and clouds of Katahdin itself. His words took the physical mountain on which he stood and transmuted it into an icon of the sublime: a symbol of God’s presence on earth. The power and the glory of that icon were such that only a prophet might gaze on it for long. In effect, romantics like Thoreau joined Moses and the children of Israel in Exodus when “they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.” ( 16 )

But even as it came to embody the awesome power of the sublime, wilderness was also being tamed—not just by those who were building settlements in its midst but also by those who most celebrated its inhuman beauty. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the terrible awe that Wordsworth and Thoreau regarded as the appropriately pious stance to adopt in the presence of their mountaintop God was giving way to a much more comfortable, almost sentimental demeanor. As more and more tourists sought out the wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect became domesticated. The wilderness was still sacred, but the religious sentiments it evoked were more those of a pleasant parish church than those of a grand cathedral or a harsh desert retreat. The writer who best captures this late romantic sense of a domesticated sublime is undoubtedly John Muir, whose descriptions of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada reflect none of the anxiety or terror one finds in earlier writers. Here he is, for instance, sketching on North Dome in Yosemite Valley:

No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God’s beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air, and every movement of limbs is pleasure, while the body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one’s flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable.

The emotions Muir describes in Yosemite could hardly be more different from Thoreau’s on Katahdin or Wordsworth’s on the Simplon Pass. Yet all three men are participating in the same cultural tradition and contributing to the same myth—the mountain as cathedral. The three may differ in the way they choose to express their piety—Wordsworth favoring an awe-filled bewilderment, Thoreau a stern loneliness, Muir a welcome ecstasy—but they agree completely about the church in which they prefer to worship. Muir’s closing words on North Dome diverge from his older contemporaries only in mood, not in their ultimate content:

Perched like a fly on this Yosemite dome, I gaze and sketch and bask, oftentimes settling down into dumb admiration without definite hope of ever learning much, yet with the longing, unresting effort that lies at the door of hope, humbly prostrate before the vast display of God’s power, and eager to offer self-denial and renunciation with eternal toil to learn any lesson in the divine manuscript. ( 17 )

Muir’s “divine manuscript” and Wordsworth’s “Characters of the great Apocalypse” are in fact pages from the same holy book. The sublime wilderness had ceased to be place of satanic temptation and become instead a sacred temple, much as it continues to be for those who love it today.

But the romantic sublime was not the only cultural movement that helped transform wilderness into a sacred American icon during the nineteenth century. No less important was the powerful romantic attraction of primitivism, dating back at least to of that the best antidote to the ills of an overly refined and civilized modern world was a return to simpler, more primitive living. In the United States, this was embodied most strikingly in the national myth of the frontier. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in 1893 the classic academic statement of this myth, but it had been part of American cultural traditions for well over a century. As Turner described the process, easterners and European immigrants, in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization, rediscovered their primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that the source of American democracy and national character. Seen in this way, wild country became a place not just of religious redemption but of national renewal, the quintessential location for experiencing what it meant to be an American.

One of Turner’s most provocative claims was that by the 1890s the frontier was passing away. Never again would “such gifts of free land offer themselves” to the American people. “The frontier has gone,” he declared, “and with its going has closed the first period of American history.” ( 18 ) Built into the frontier myth from its very beginning was the notion that this crucible of American identity was temporary and would pass away. Those who have celebrated the frontier have almost always looked backward as they did so, mourning an older, simpler, truer world that is about to disappear, forever. That world and all of its attractions, Turner said, depended on free land—on wilderness. Thus, in the myth of the vanishing frontier lay the seeds of wilderness preservation in the United States, for if wild land had been so crucial in the making of the nation, then surely one must save its last remnants as monuments to the American past—and as an insurance policy to protect its future. It is no accident that the movement to set aside national parks and wilderness areas began to gain real momentum at precisely the time that laments about the passing frontier reached their peak. To protect wilderness was in a very real sense to protect the nation’s most sacred myth of origin.

Among the core elements of the frontier myth was the powerful sense among certain groups of Americans that wilderness was the last bastion of rugged individualism. Turner tended to stress communitarian themes when writing frontier history, asserting that Americans in primitive conditions had been forced to band together with their neighbors to form communities and democratic institutions. For other writers, however, frontier democracy for communities was less compelling than frontier freedom for individuals. ( 19 ) By fleeing to the outer margins of settled land and society—so the story ran—an individual could escape the confining strictures of civilized life. The mood among writers who celebrated frontier individualism was almost always nostalgic; they lamented not just a lost way of life but the passing of the heroic men who had embodied that life. Thus Owen Wister in the introduction to his classic 1902 novel The Virginian could write of “a vanished world” in which “the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure upon our soil” rode only “in his historic yesterday” and would “never come again.” For Wister, the cowboy was a man who gave his word and kept it (“Wall Street would have found him behind the times”), who did not talk lewdly to women (“Newport would have thought him old-fashioned”), who worked and played hard, and whose “ungoverned hours did not unman him.” ( 20 ) Theodore Roosevelt wrote with much the same nostalgic fervor about the “fine, manly qualities” of the “wild rough-rider of the plains.” No one could be more heroically masculine, thought Roosevelt, or more at home in the western wilderness:

There he passes his days, there he does his life-work, there, when he meets death, he faces it as he has faced many other evils, with quiet, uncomplaining fortitude. Brave, hospitable, hardy, and adventurous, he is the grim pioneer of our race; he prepares the way for the civilization from before whose face he must himself disappear. Hard and dangerous though his existence is, it has yet a wild attraction that strongly draws to it his bold, free spirit. ( 21 )

This nostalgia for a passing frontier way of life inevitably implied ambivalence, if not downright hostility, toward modernity and all that it represented. If one saw the wild lands of the frontier as freer, truer, and more natural than other, more modern places, then one was also inclined to see the cities and factories of urban-industrial civilization as confining, false, and artificial. Owen Wister looked at the post-frontier “transition” that had followed “the horseman of the plains,” and did not like what he saw: “a shapeless state, a condition of men and manners as unlovely as is that moment in the year when winter is gone and spring not come, and the face of Nature is ugly.” ( 22 ) In the eyes of writers who shared Wister’s distaste for modernity, civilization contaminated its inhabitants and absorbed them into the faceless, collective, contemptible life of the crowd. For all of its troubles and dangers, and despite the fact that it must pass away, the frontier had been a better place. If civilization was to be redeemed, it would be by men like the Virginian who could retain their frontier virtues even as they made the transition to post-frontier life.

The mythic frontier individualist was almost always masculine in gender: here, in the wilderness, a man could be a real man, the rugged individual he was meant to be before civilization sapped his energy and threatened his masculinity. Wister’s contemptuous remarks about Wall Street and Newport suggest what he and many others of his generation believed—that the comforts and seductions of civilized life were especially insidious for men, who all too easily became emasculated by the feminizing tendencies of civilization. More often than not, men who felt this way came, like Wister and Roosevelt, from elite class backgrounds. The curious result was that frontier nostalgia became an important vehicle for expressing a peculiarly bourgeois form of antimodernism. The very men who most benefited from urban-industrial capitalism were among those who believed they must escape its debilitating effects. If the frontier was passing, then men who had the means to do so should preserve for themselves some remnant of its wild landscape so that they might enjoy the regeneration and renewal that came from sleeping under the stars, participating in blood sports, and living off the land. The frontier might be gone, but the frontier experience could still be had if only wilderness were preserved.

Thus the decades following the Civil War saw more and more of the nation’s wealthiest citizens seeking out wilderness for themselves. The elite passion for wild land took many forms: enormous estates in the Adirondacks and elsewhere (disingenuously called “camps” despite their many servants and amenities), cattle ranches for would-be rough riders on the Great Plains, guided big-game hunting trips in the Rockies, and luxurious resort hotels wherever railroads pushed their way into sublime landscapes. Wilderness suddenly emerged as the landscape of choice for elite tourists, who brought with them strikingly urban ideas of the countryside through which they traveled. For them, wild land was not a site for productive labor and not a permanent home; rather, it was a place of recreation. One went to the wilderness not as a producer but as a consumer, hiring guides and other backcountry residents who could serve as romantic surrogates for the rough riders and hunters of the frontier if one was willing to overlook their new status as employees and servants of the rich. In just this way, wilderness came to embody the national frontier myth, standing for the wild freedom of America’s past and seeming to represent a highly attractive natural alternative to the ugly artificiality of modern civilization. The irony, of course, was that in the process wilderness came to reflect the very civilization its devotees sought to escape. Ever since the nineteenth century, celebrating wilderness has been an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks. Country people generally know far too much about working the land to regard unworked land as their ideal. In contrast, elite urban tourists and wealthy sportsmen projected their leisure-time frontier fantasies onto the American landscape and so created wilderness in their own image.

There were other ironies as well, The movement to set aside national parks and wilderness areas followed hard on the heels of the final Indian wars, in which the prior human inhabitants of these areas were rounded up and moved onto reservations. The myth of the wilderness as “virgin ” uninhabited land had always been especially cruel when seen from the perspective of the Indians who had once called that land home. Now they were forced to move elsewhere, with the result that tourists could safely enjoy the illusion that they were seeing their nation in its pristine, original state, in the new morning of God’s own creation. ( 23 ) Among the things that most marked the new national parks as reflecting a post-frontier consciousness was the relative absence of human violence within their boundaries. The actual frontier had often been a place of conflict, in which invaders and invaded fought for control of land and resources. Once set aside within the fixed and carefully policed boundaries of the modern bureaucratic state, the wilderness lost its savage image and became safe: a place more of reverie than of revulsion or fear. Meanwhile, its original inhabitants were kept out by dint of force, their earlier uses of the land redefined as inappropriate or even illegal. To this day, for instance, the Blackfeet continue to be accused of “poaching” on the lands of Glacier National Park that originally belonged to them and that were ceded by treaty only with the proviso that they be permitted to hunt there. ( 24 )

The removal of Indians to create an “uninhabited wilderness”—uninhabited as never before in the human history of the place—reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is. To return to my opening argument: there is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness. It is entirely a creation of the culture that holds it dear, a product of the very history it seeks to deny. Indeed, one of the most striking proofs of the cultural invention of wilderness is its thoroughgoing erasure of the history from which it sprang. In virtually all of its manifestations, wilderness represents a flight from history. Seen as the original garden, it is a place outside of time, from which human beings had to be ejected before the fallen world of history could properly begin. Seen as the frontier, it is a savage world at the dawn of civilization, whose transformation represents the very beginning of the national historical epic. Seen as the bold landscape of frontier heroism, it is the place of youth and childhood, into which men escape by abandoning their pasts and entering a world of freedom where the constraints of civilization fade into memory. Seen as the sacred sublime, it is the home of a God who transcends history by standing as the One who remains untouched and unchanged by time’s arrow. No matter what the angle from which we regard it, wilderness offers us the illusion that we can escape the cares and troubles of the world in which our past has ensnared us. ( 25 )

This escape from history is one reason why the language we use to talk about wilderness is often permeated with spiritual and religious values that reflect human ideals far more than the material world of physical nature. Wilderness fulfills the old romantic project of secularizing Judeo-Christian values so as to make a new cathedral not in some petty human building but in God’s own creation, Nature itself. Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists nonetheless express feelings tantamount to religious awe when in the presence of wilderness—a fact that testifies to the success of the romantic project. Those who have no difficulty seeing God as the expression of our human dreams and desires nonetheless have trouble recognizing that in a secular age Nature can offer precisely the same sort of mirror.

Thus it is that wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest. The critique of modernity that is one of environmentalism’s most important contributions to the moral and political discourse of our time more often than not appeals, explicitly or implicitly, to wilderness as the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world. Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are—or ought to be.

But the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world. The dream of an unworked natural landscape is very much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living—urban folk for whom food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant instead of a field, and for whom the wooden houses in which they live and work apparently have no meaningful connection to the forests in which trees grow and die. Only people whose relation to the land was already alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land.

This, then, is the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not. If this is so—if by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings, save perhaps as contemplative sojourners enjoying their leisurely reverie in God’s natural cathedral—then also by definition it can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us. To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.

Worse: to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead. We inhabit civilization while holding some part of ourselves—what we imagine to be the most precious part—aloof from its entanglements. We work our nine-to-five jobs in its institutions, we eat its food, we drive its cars (not least to reach the wilderness), we benefit from the intricate and all too invisible networks with which it shelters us, all the while pretending that these things are not an essential part of who we are. By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness, we forgive ourselves the homes we actually inhabit. In its flight from history, in its siren song of escape, in its reproduction of the dangerous dualism that sets human beings outside of nature—in all of these ways, wilderness poses a serious threat to responsible environmentalism at the end of the twentieth century.

By now I hope it is clear that my criticism in this essay is not directed at wild nature per se, or even at efforts to set aside large tracts of wild land, but rather at the specific habits of thinking that flow from this complex cultural construction called wilderness. It is not the things we label as wilderness that are the problem—for nonhuman nature and large tracts of the natural world do deserve protection—but rather what we ourselves mean when we use the label. Lest one doubt how pervasive these habits of thought actually are in contemporary environmentalism, let me list some of the places where wilderness serves as the ideological underpinning for environmental concerns that might otherwise seem quite remote from it. Defenders of biological diversity, for instance, although sometimes appealing to more utilitarian concerns, often point to “untouched” ecosystems as the best and richest repositories of the undiscovered species we must certainly try to protect. Although at first blush an apparently more “scientific” concept than wilderness, biological diversity in fact invokes many of the same sacred values, which is why organizations like the Nature Conservancy have been so quick to employ it as an alternative to the seemingly fuzzier and more problematic concept of wilderness. There is a paradox here, of course. To the extent that biological diversity (indeed, even wilderness itself) is likely to survive in the future only by the most vigilant and self-conscious management of the ecosystems that sustain it, the ideology of wilderness is potentially in direct conflict with the very thing it encourages us to protect. ( 26 ) The most striking instances of this have revolved around “endangered species,” which serve as vulnerable symbols of biological diversity while at the same time standing as surrogates for wilderness itself. The terms of the Endangered Species Act in the United States have often meant that those hoping to defend pristine wilderness have had to rely on a single endangered species like the spotted owl to gain legal standing for their case—thereby making the full power of the sacred land inhere in a single numinous organism whose habitat then becomes the object of intense debate about appropriate management and use. ( 27 ) The ease with which anti-environmental forces like the wise-use movement have attacked such single-species preservation efforts suggests the vulnerability of strategies like these.

Perhaps partly because our own conflicts over such places and organisms have become so messy, the convergence of wilderness values with concerns about biological diversity and endangered species has helped produce a deep fascination for remote ecosystems, where it is easier to imagine that nature might somehow be “left alone” to flourish by its own pristine devices. The classic example is the tropical rain forest, which since the 1970s has become the most powerful modern icon of unfallen, sacred land—a veritable Garden of Eden—for many Americans and Europeans. And yet protecting the rain forest in the eyes of First World environmentalists all too often means protecting it from the people who live there. Those who seek to preserve such “wilderness” from the activities of native peoples run the risk of reproducing the same tragedy—being forceably removed from an ancient home—that befell American Indians. Third World countries face massive environmental problems and deep social conflicts, but these are not likely to be solved by a cultural myth that encourages us to “preserve” peopleless landscapes that have not existed in such places for millennia. At its worst, as environmentalists are beginning to realize, exporting American notions of wilderness in this way can become an unthinking and self-defeating form of cultural imperialism. ( 28 )

Perhaps the most suggestive example of the way that wilderness thinking can underpin other environmental concerns has emerged in the recent debate about “global change.” In 1989 the journalist Bill McKibben published a book entitled The End of Nature, in which he argued that the prospect of global climate change as a result of unintentional human manipulation of the atmosphere means that nature as we once knew it no longer exists. ( 29 ) Whereas earlier generations inhabited a natural world that remained more or less unaffected by their actions, our own generation is uniquely different. We and our children will henceforth live in a biosphere completely altered by our own activity, a planet in which the human and the natural can no longer be distinguished, because the one has overwhelmed the other. In McKibben’s view, nature has died, and we are responsible for killing it. “The planet,” he declares, “is utterly different now.” ( 30 )

But such a perspective is possible only if we accept the wilderness premise that nature, to be natural, must also be pristine—remote from humanity and untouched by our common past. In fact, everything we know about environmental history suggests that people have been manipulating the natural world on various scales for as long as we have a record of their passing. Moreover, we have unassailable evidence that many of the environmental changes we now face also occurred quite apart from human intervention at one time or another in the earth’s past. ( 31 ) The point is not that our current problems are trivial, or that our devastating effects on the earth’s ecosystems should be accepted as inevitable or “natural.” It is rather that we seem unlikely to make much progress in solving these problems if we hold up to ourselves as the mirror of nature a wilderness we ourselves cannot inhabit.

To do so is merely to take to a logical extreme the paradox that was built into wilderness from the beginning: if nature dies because we enter it, then the only way to save nature is to kill ourselves. The absurdity of this proposition flows from the underlying dualism it expresses. Not only does it ascribe greater power to humanity that we in fact possess—physical and biological nature will surely survive in some form or another long after we ourselves have gone the way of all flesh—but in the end it offers us little more than a self-defeating counsel of despair. The tautology gives us no way out: if wild nature is the only thing worth saving, and if our mere presence destroys it, then the sole solution to our own unnaturalness, the only way to protect sacred wilderness from profane humanity, would seem to be suicide. It is not a proposition that seems likely to produce very positive or practical results.

And yet radical environmentalists and deep ecologists all too frequently come close to accepting this premise as a first principle. When they express, for instance, the popular notion that our environmental problems began with the invention of agriculture, they push the human fall from natural grace so far back into the past that all of civilized history becomes a tale of ecological declension. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman captures the familiar parable succinctly when he writes,

Before agriculture was midwifed in the Middle East, humans were in the wilderness. We had no concept of “wilderness” because everything was wilderness and we were a part of it. But with irrigation ditches, crop surpluses, and permanent villages, we became apart from the natural world…. Between the wilderness that created us and the civilization created by us grew an ever-widening rift. ( 32 )

In this view the farm becomes the first and most important battlefield in the long war against wild nature, and all else follows in its wake. From such a starting place, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that the only way human beings can hope to live naturally on earth is to follow the hunter-gatherers back into a wilderness Eden and abandon virtually everything that civilization has given us. It may indeed turn out that civilization will end in ecological collapse or nuclear disaster, whereupon one might expect to find any human survivors returning to a way of life closer to that celebrated by Foreman and his followers. For most of us, though, such a debacle would be cause for regret, a sign that humanity had failed to fulfill its own promise and failed to honor its own highest values—including those of the deep ecologists.

In offering wilderness as the ultimate hunter-gatherer alternative to civilization, Foreman reproduces an extreme but still easily recognizable version of the myth of frontier primitivism. When he writes of his fellow Earth Firsters that “we believe we must return to being animal, to glorying in our sweat, hormones, tears, and blood” and that “we struggle against the modern compulsion to become dull, passionless androids,” he is following in the footsteps of Owen Wister. ( 33 ) Although his arguments give primacy to defending biodiversity and the autonomy of wild nature, his prose becomes most passionate when he speaks of preserving “the wilderness experience.” His own ideal “Big Outside” bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the frontier myth: wide open spaces and virgin land with no trails, no signs, no facilities, no maps, no guides, no rescues, no modern equipment. Tellingly, it is a land where hardy travelers can support themselves by hunting with “primitive weapons (bow and arrow, atlatl, knife, sharp rock).” ( 34 ) Foreman claims that “the primary value of wilderness is not as a proving ground for young Huck Finns and Annie Oakleys,” but his heart is with Huck and Annie all the same. He admits that “preserving a quality wilderness experience for the human visitor, letting her or him flex Paleolithic muscles or seek visions, remains a tremendously important secondary purpose.” ( 35 ) Just so does Teddy Roosevelt’s rough rider live on in the greener garb of a new age.

However much one may be attracted to such a vision, it entails problematic consequences. For one, it makes wilderness the locus for an epic struggle between malign civilization and benign nature, compared with which all other social, political, and moral concerns seem trivial. Foreman writes, “The preservation of wildness and native diversity is the most important issue. Issues directly affecting only humans pale in comparison.” ( 36 ) Presumably so do any environmental problems whose victims are mainly people, for such problems usually surface in landscapes that have already “fallen” and are no longer wild. This would seem to exclude from the radical environmentalist agenda problems of occupational health and safety in industrial settings, problems of toxic waste exposure on “unnatural” urban and agricultural sites, problems of poor children poisoned by lead exposure in the inner city, problems of famine and poverty and human suffering in the “overpopulated” places of the earth—problems, in short, of environmental justice. If we set too high a stock on wilderness, too many other corners of the earth become less than natural and too many other people become less than human, thereby giving us permission not to care much about their suffering or their fate.

It is no accident that these supposedly inconsequential environmental problems affect mainly poor people, for the long affiliation between wilderness and wealth means that the only poor people who count when wilderness is the issue are hunter-gatherers, who presumably do not consider themselves to be poor in the first place. The dualism at the heart of wilderness encourages its advocates to conceive of its protection as a crude conflict between the “human” and the “nonhuman”—or, more often, between those who value the nonhuman and those who do not. This in turn tempts one to ignore crucial differences among humans and the complex cultural and historical reasons why different peoples may feel very differently about the meaning of wilderness.

Why, for instance, is the ” wilderness experience” so often conceived as a form of recreation best enjoyed by those whose class privileges give them the time and resources to leave their jobs behind and “get away from it all?” Why does the protection of wilderness so often seem to pit urban recreationists against rural people who actually earn their living from the land (excepting those who sell goods and services to the tourists themselves)? Why in the debates about pristine natural areas are “primitive” peoples idealized, even sentimentalized, until the moment they do something unprimitive, modern, and unnatural, and thereby fall from environmental grace? What are the consequences of a wilderness ideology that devalues productive labor and the very concrete knowledge that comes from working the land with one’s own hands? ( 37 ) All of these questions imply conflicts among different groups of people, conflicts that are obscured behind the deceptive clarity of “human” vs. “nonhuman.” If in answering these knotty questions we resort to so simplistic an opposition, we are almost certain to ignore the very subtleties and complexities we need to understand.

But the most troubling cultural baggage that accompanies the celebration of wilderness has less to do with remote rain forests and peoples than with the ways we think about ourselves—we American environmentalists who quite rightly worry about the future of the earth and the threats we pose to the natural world. Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live, the landscape that for better or worse we call home. Most of our most serious environmental problems start right here, at home, and if we are to solve those problems, we need an environmental ethic that will tell us as much about using nature as about not using it. The wilderness dualism tends to cast any use as abuse, and thereby denies us a middle ground in which responsible use and non-use might attain some kind of balanced, sustainable relationship. My own belief is that only by exploring this middle ground will we learn ways of imagining a better world for all of us: humans and nonhumans, rich people and poor, women and men, First Worlders and Third Worlders, white folks and people of color, consumers and producers—a world better for humanity in all of its diversity and for all the rest of nature too. The middle ground is where we actually live. It is where we—all of us, in our different places and ways—make our homes.

That is why, when I think of the times I myself have come closest to experiencing what I might call the sacred in nature, I often find myself remembering wild places much closer to home. I think, for instance, of a small pond near my house where water bubbles up from limestone springs to feed a series of pools that rarely freeze in winter and so play home to waterfowl that stay here for the protective warmth even on the coldest of winter days, gliding silently through streaming mists as the snow falls from gray February skies. I think of a November evening long ago when I found myself on a Wisconsin hilltop in rain and dense fog, only to have the setting sun break through the clouds to cast an otherworldly golden light on the misty farms and woodlands below, a scene so unexpected and joyous that I lingered past dusk so as not to miss any part of the gift that had come my way. And I think perhaps most especially of the blown-out, bankrupt farm in the sand country of central Wisconsin where Aldo Leopold and his family tried one of the first American experiments in ecological restoration, turning ravaged and infertile soil into carefully tended ground where the human and the nonhuman could exist side by side in relative harmony. What I celebrate about such places is not just their wildness, though that certainly is among their most important qualities; what I celebrate even more is that they remind us of the wildness in our own backyards, of the nature that is all around us if only we have eyes to see it.

Indeed, my principal objection to wilderness is that it may teach us to be dismissive or even contemptuous of such humble places and experiences. Without our quite realizing it, wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others. Most of us, I suspect, still follow the conventions of the romantic sublime in finding the mountaintop more glorious than the plains, the ancient forest nobler than the grasslands, the mighty canyon more inspiring than the humble marsh. Even John Muir, in arguing against those who sought to dam his beloved Hetch Hetchy valley in the Sierra Nevada, argued for alternative dam sites in the gentler valleys of the foothills—a preference that had nothing to do with nature and everything with the cultural traditions of the sublime. ( 38 ) Just as problematically, our frontier traditions have encouraged Americans to define “true” wilderness as requiring very large tracts of roadless land—what Dave Foreman calls “The Big Outside.” Leaving aside the legitimate empirical question in conservation biology of how large a tract of land must be before a given species can reproduce on it, the emphasis on big wilderness reflects a romantic frontier belief that one hasn’t really gotten away from civilization unless one can go for days at a time without encountering another human being. By teaching us to fetishize sublime places and wide open country, these peculiarly American ways of thinking about wilderness encourage us to adopt too high a standard for what counts as “natural.” If it isn’t hundreds of square miles big, if it doesn’t give us God’s eye views or grand vistas, if it doesn’t permit us the illusion that we are alone on the planet, then it really isn’t natural. It’s too small, too plain, or too crowded to be authentically wild.

In critiquing wilderness as I have done in this essay, I’m forced to confront my own deep ambivalence about its meaning for modern environmentalism. On the one hand, one of my own most important environmental ethics is that people should always be conscious that they are part of the natural world, inextricably tied to the ecological systems that sustain their lives. Any way of looking at nature that encourages us to believe we are separate from nature—as wilderness tends to do—is likely to reinforce environmentally irresponsible behavior. On the other hand, I also think it no less crucial for us to recognize and honor nonhuman nature as a world we did not create, a world with its own independent, nonhuman reasons for being as it is. The autonomy of nonhuman nature seems to me an indispensable corrective to human arrogance. Any way of looking at nature that helps us remember—as wilderness also tends to do—that the interests of people are not necessarily identical to those of every other creature or of the earth itself is likely to foster responsible behavior. To the extent that wilderness has served as an important vehicle for articulating deep moral values regarding our obligations and responsibilities to the nonhuman world, I would not want to jettison the contributions it has made to our culture’s ways of thinking about nature.

If the core problem of wilderness is that it distances us too much from the very things it teaches us to value, then the question we must ask is what it can tell us about home, the place where we actually live. How can we take the positive values we associate with wilderness and bring them closer to home? I think the answer to this question will come by broadening our sense of the otherness that wilderness seeks to define and protect. In reminding us of the world we did not make, wilderness can teach profound feelings of humility and respect as we confront our fellow beings and the earth itself. Feelings like these argue for the importance of self-awareness and self criticism as we exercise our own ability to transform the world around us, helping us set responsible limits to human mastery—which without such limits too easily becomes human hubris. Wilderness is the place where, symbolically at least, we try to withhold our power to dominate. Wallace Stegner once wrote of

the special human mark, the special record of human passage, that distinguishes man from all other species. It is rare enough among men, impossible to any other form of life. It is simply the deliberate and chosen refusal to make any marks at all…. We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. ( 39 )

The myth of wilderness, which Stegner knowingly reproduces in these remarks, is that we can somehow leave nature untouched by our passage. By now it should be clear that this for the most part is an illusion. But Stegner’s deeper message then becomes all the more compelling. If living in history means that we cannot help leaving marks on a fallen world, then the dilemma we face is to decide what kinds of marks we wish to leave. It is just here that our cultural traditions of wilderness remain so important. In the broadest sense, wilderness teaches us to ask whether the Other must always bend to our will, and, if not, under what circumstances it should be allowed to flourish without our intervention. This is surely a question worth asking about everything we do, and not just about the natural world.

When we visit a wilderness area, we find ourselves surrounded by plants and animals and physical landscapes whose otherness compels our attention. In forcing us to acknowledge that they are not of our making, that they have little or no need of our continued existence, they recall for us a creation far greater than our own. In the wilderness, we need no reminder that a tree has its own reasons for being, quite apart from us. The same is less true in the gardens we plant and tend ourselves: there it is far easier to forget the otherness of the tree. ( 40 ) Indeed, one could almost measure wilderness by the extent to which our recognition of its otherness requires a conscious, willed act on our part. The romantic legacy means that wilderness is more a state of mind than a fact of nature, and the state of mind that today most defines wilderness is wonder. The striking power of the wild is that wonder in the face of it requires no act of will, but forces itself upon us—as an expression of the nonhuman world experienced through the lens of our cultural history—as proof that ours is not the only presence in the universe.

Wilderness gets us into trouble only if we imagine that this experience of wonder and otherness is limited to the remote corners of the planet, or that it somehow depends on pristine landscapes we ourselves do not inhabit. Nothing could be more misleading. The tree in the garden is in reality no less other, no less worthy of our wonder and respect, than the tree in an ancient forest that has never known an ax or a saw—even though the tree in the forest reflects a more intricate web of ecological relationships. The tree in the garden could easily have sprung from the same seed as the tree in the forest, and we can claim only its location and perhaps its form as our own. Both trees stand apart from us; both share our common world. The special power of the tree in the wilderness is to remind us of this fact. It can teach us to recognize the wildness we did not see in the tree we planted in our own backyard. By seeing the otherness in that which is most unfamiliar, we can learn to see it too in that which at first seemed merely ordinary. If wilderness can do this—if it can help us perceive and respect a nature we had forgotten to recognize as natural—then it will become part of the solution to our environmental dilemmas rather than part of the problem.

This will only happen, however, if we abandon the dualism that sees the tree in the garden as artificial—completely fallen and unnatural—and the tree in the wilderness as natural—completely pristine and wild. Both trees in some ultimate sense are wild; both in a practical sense now depend on our management and care. We are responsible for both, even though we can claim credit for neither. Our challenge is to stop thinking of such things according to set of bipolar moral scales in which the human and the nonhuman, the unnatural and the natural, the fallen and the unfallen, serve as our conceptual map for understanding and valuing the world. Instead, we need to embrace the full continuum of a natural landscape that is also cultural, in which the city, the suburb, the pastoral, and the wild each has its proper place, which we permit ourselves to celebrate without needlessly denigrating the others. We need to honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far away—a lesson that applies as much to people as it does to (other) natural things. In particular, we need to discover a common middle ground in which all of these things, from the city to the wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word “home.” Home, after all, is the place where finally we make our living. It is the place for which we take responsibility, the place we try to sustain so we can pass on what is best in it (and in ourselves) to our children. ( 41 )

The task of making a home in nature is what Wendell Berry has called “the forever unfinished lifework of our species.” “The only thing we have to preserve nature with” he writes, “is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity.” ( 42 ) Calling a place home inevitably means that we will use the nature we find in it, for there can be no escape from manipulating and working and even killing some parts of nature to make our home. But if we acknowledge the autonomy and otherness of the things and creatures around us—an autonomy our culture has taught us to label with the word “wild”—then we will at least think carefully about the uses to which we put them, and even ask if we should use them at all. just so can we still join Thoreau in declaring that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World,” for wildness (as opposed to wilderness) can be found anywhere: in the seemingly tame fields and woodlots of Massachusetts, in the cracks of a Manhattan sidewalk, even in the cells of our own bodies. As Gary Snyder has wisely said, “A person with a clear heart and open mind can experience the wilderness anywhere on earth. It is a quality of one’s own consciousness. The planet is a wild place and always will be.” ( 43 ) To think ourselves capable of causing “the end of nature” is an act of great hubris, for it means forgetting the wildness that dwells everywhere within and around us.

Learning to honor the wild—learning to remember and acknowledge the autonomy of the other—means striving for critical self-consciousness in all of our actions. It means the deep reflection and respect must accompany each act of use, and means too that we must always consider the possibility of non-use. It means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and again—sustainably—without its being diminished in the process. It means never imagining that we can flee into a mythical wilderness to escape history and the obligation to take responsibility for our own actions that history inescapably entails. Most of all, it means practicing remembrance and gratitude, for thanksgiving is the simplest and most basic of ways for us to recollect the nature, the culture, and the history that have come together to make the world as we know it. If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world—not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both.

1. Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” The Works of Thoreau, ed. Henry S. Canby (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), p. 672.

2. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “wilderness”; see also Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 1-22; and Max Oelsehlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press, 1991).

3. Exodus 32:1-35, KJV.

4. Exodus 14:3, KJV.

5. Mark 1:12-13, KJV; see also Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

6. John Milton, “Paradise Lost,” John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York: Odyssey Press, 1957), pp. 280-81, lines 131-42

7. I have discussed this theme at length in “Landscapes of Abundance and Scarcity,” in Clyde Milner et al., eds., Oxford History of the American West (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 603-37. The classic work on the Puritan “city on a hill” in colonial New England is Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956).

8. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), reprinted in John Muir: The Eight Wilderness Discovery Books (London, England: Diadem; Seattle, Washington: Mountaineers, 1992), P. 211.

9. Alfred Route, National Parks: The American Experience, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1987)

10. John Muir, The Yosemite (1912), reprinted in John Muir: Eight Wilderness Discovery Books, P. 715.

11. Scholarly work on the sublime is extensive. Among the most important studies are Samuel Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England (New York: Modern Language Association, 1935); Basil Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background: Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period (London, England: Chattus and Windus, 1949); Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959); Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkin.s Univ. Press, 1976); Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, ig8o).

12. The classic works are Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 196o); Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (1958; Notre Dame, Indiana: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1968); William Gilpin, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape (London, England, 1803)

13. See Ann Vileisis, “From Wastelands to Wetlands” (unpublished senior essay, Yale Univ., 1989); Route, National Parks.

14. William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” bk. 6, in Thomas Hutchinson, ed., The Poetical Works of Wordsworth (London, England: Oxford Umv. Press, 1936), p. 536.

15. Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (1864), in Henry David Thoreau (New York: Library of America, 1985), pp. 640-41.

16. Exodus 16:10, KJV.

17. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, p. 238. Part of the difference between these descriptions may reflect the landscapes the three authors were describing. In his essay, “Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mount Rushmore—A Meandering Tale of a Double Nature,” Kenneth Olwig notes that early American travelers experienced Yosemite as much through the aesthetic tropes of the pastoral as through those of the sublime. The ease with which Muir celebrated the gentle divinity of the Sierra Nevada had much to do with the pastoral qualities of the landscape he described. See Olwig, “Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mount Rushmore—A Meandering Tale of a Double Nature,” Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton & CO, 1995), PP 379-408.

18. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1920), pp. 37-38.

19. Richard Slotkin has made this observation the linchpin of his comparison between Turner and Theodore Roosevelt. See Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Atheneum, 1992), pp. 29-62.

20. Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (New York: Macmillan, 1902), pp. viii-ix.

21. Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1888; NewYork: Century, 1899), p. 100.

22. Wister, Virginian, p. x.

23. On the many problems with this view, see William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (1992): 369-85

24. Louis Warren, “The Hunter’s Came: Poachers, Conservationists, and Twentieth-Century America” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1994).

25. Wilderness also lies at the foundation of the Clementsian ecological concept of the climax. See Michael Barbour, “Ecological Fragmentation in the Fifties” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, pp. 233-55, and William Cronon, “Introduction: In Search of Nature,” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, pp. 23-56.

26. On the many paradoxes of having to manage wilderness in order to maintain the appearance of an unmanaged landscape, see John C. Hendee et al., Wilderness Management, USDA Forest Service Miscellaneous Publication No. 1365 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1978).

27. See James Proctor, “Whose Nature?: The Contested Moral Terrain of Ancient Forests,” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, pp. 269-97

28. See Candace Slater, “Amazonia as Edenic Narrative,” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, pp. 114-31. This argument has been powerfully made by Ramachandra Cuba, “Radical American Environmentalism: A Third World Critique,” Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 71-83

29. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).

30. McKibben, The End of Nature, p. 49

31. Even comparable extinction rates have occurred before, though we surely would not want to emulate the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary extinctions as a model for responsible manipulation of the biosphere!

32. Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (New York: Harmony Books, 1991, p. 69 (italics in original). For a sampling of other writings by followers of deep ecology and/or Earth First!, see Michael Tobias, ed., Deep Ecology (San Diego, California: Avant Books, 1984); Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1985); Michael Tobias, After Eden: History, Ecology, and Conscience (San Diego, California: Avant Books, 1985); Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood, eds., Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching, 2nd ed. (Tucson, Arizona: Ned Ludd Books, 1987); Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1988); Steve Chase, ed., Defending the Earth: A Dialogue between Murray Bookchin & Dave Foreman (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1991); John Davis, ed., The Earth First, Reader. Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism (Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1991); Bill Devall, Living Richly in an Age of Limits: Using Deep Ecology for an Abundant Life (Salt Lake, City, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1993); Michael E. Zimmerman ct al., eds., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1993). A useful survey of the different factions of radical environmentalism can be found in Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (New York: Routledge, 1992). For a very interesting critique of this literature (first published in the anarchist newspaper Fifth Estate), see George Bradford, How Deep is Deep Ecology? (Ojai, California: Times Change Press, 1989).

33. Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, P. 34.

34. Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, p. 65. See also Dave Foreman and Howie Wolke, The Big Outside: A Descriptive Inventory of the Big Wilderness Areas of the U.S. (Tucson, Arizona: Ned Ludd Books, 1989).

35. Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, p. 63

36. Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, P. 27

37. See Richard White, ”’Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, pp. 171-85. Compare its analysis of environmental knowledge through work with Jennifer Price’s analysis of environmental knowledge through consumption. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the wilderness experience is essentially consumerist in its impulses.

38. Compare with Muir, Yosemite, in John Muir: Eight Wilderness Discovery Books, p. 714

39. Wallace Stegner, ed., This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers (New York: Knopf, 1955), P. 17 (italics in original).

40. Katherine Hayles helped me see the importance of this argument.

41. Analogous arguments can be found in John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “Beyond Wilderness,” A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 71-91, and in the wonderful collection of essays by Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991).

42. Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco, California: North Point, 1987), pp. 138, 143.

43. Gary Snyder, quoted in New York Times, “Week in Review,” 18 September 1994, p. 6.

Excerpted from Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, edited by William Cronon. Copyright © 1995 by William Cronon. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Copyright © William Cronon (Please do not reprint without permission; links to this website are fine.)

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Home :: 5 Basic Survival Skills

5 Basic Survival Skills

Survival techniques are plentiful, but there are five basic survival skills that everyone who ventures into the outdoors should understand, and be fully aware of their potential need and use. This is just a brief outline, not a full explanation of all the requirements and items required in each category. One of the most important elements of survival is between your ears – your brain. Of all survival techniques, the most important is DO NOT PANIC, use your wits and practice all elements of the five basic survival skills before you may need to rely on them.

Basic Survival Skill 1: Fire

Fire is the king of survival techniques! Fire can purify water, cook food, signal rescuers, provide warmth, light, and comfort. It can also help keep predators at a distance and can be a most welcome friend and companion. As a survival technique, it is one that is essential. Each and every person who ventures into the outdoors should have a minimum of two ways to start a fire with them – one on their person at all times, and the other with their gear. A few small fires provide more heat than one large fire. Collect firewood you think you will need for the night and then collect the same amount again, experience shows you will need it. Conserve fuel by making a “star fire”; where the ends of large logs meet in the fire only, push inward as more fuel is needed. Make a reflector from your space blanket on the back wall of a shelter to reflect the heat from your survival fire to your back, sit between the fire and the back of your shelter wall. To learn how to confidently make fire, check out our Fire Mastery Video Course or Ignite – A Firemaking eBook in our store.

Basic Survival Skill 2: Shelter

Shelter is the survival technique by which you protect your body from excess exposure from the sun, cold, wind, rain, or snow. Anything that takes away or adds to your overall body temperature can be your enemy. Clothing is the first line of shelter protection, have the right clothes for the right environment. Always have a hat. Do whatever you can to keep the layer closest to your body dry. Layers trap air and are warmer than wearing one thick garment. Do not expend energy making a shelter if nature provides one. Practice building a quick lean-to shelter in case you can not find your campsite, do not wait until you need to make one. Use a space blanket to prevent dampness, to insulate your shelter, or to wrap yourself up in a sitting or squatting position to concentrate your body core heat. Learn more about creating a survival shelter with this article from former Immersion instructor Laura Gunion.

Basic Survival Skill 3: Signaling

Signaling is unique among survival techniques in that it gives you the means and ability to alert any and all potential rescuers that you are in need of help. Fire, flashing light, bright color markers, flags, mirrors, whistles can all help you be found. Three fires in a triangular form are a recognized distress signal. Carefully bank your signal fires to prevent the igniting of your surrounding area. Use regular signal mirrors only when you can see a plane, or people in the distance. Use an emergency strobe light at night to help attract attention from those that may be in the area. Make smoky fire with organic material over the fire during the day to attract attention. Lay out ground messages to air signal in an open field, S.O.S. from rocks, logs, or colored clothing, whatever will be seen against the background. Most search and rescue parties use aircraft as a primary method of sighting.

Basic Survival Skill 4: Food & Water

Food and water are vital to your survival. Ration your sweat, not your water intake. You can live up to three days without water. DO NOT eat plants you do not know. Never drink urine. Always assume that you will need extra food and water when you plan your trip. Pack energy bars and candy in your pockets at all times, just in case. If possible boil all water 10 minutes plus one minute for every 1000 feet above sea level. Strain water through your handkerchief to remove large particles. Try to drink only in the cool of the evening. Never wait until you are without water to collect it. Have some poly zip bags to collect and store water. Never eat any wild berries that you cannot identify. You can catch rainwater in your space blanket by laying it out in a trench. Read more with How to Purify Water .

Basic Survival Skill 5: First Aid

First aid as a survival technique is not just the basic medical needs, it is the primary way in which you act to survive. DO NOT PANIC, remain calm, and do what you have to do to take care of yourself. STOP means Sit, Think, Observe, and Plan. It is the most intelligent thing you can do when you realize you are lost or stranded. The most important element is to keep your brain functioning rationally, this is basic first aid for survival. Analyze your needs before every trip, create a medical checklist, and carry a small personal kit with you at all times. Most survival situations require only dressing for small cuts, bruises, and personal medication needs, make sure you know what you have with you and how to use it. Do not overpack, pack what you feel you will need to carry with you at all times. Prevent hypothermia by insulating yourself in a space blanket. Concentrate on being found, pack a picture of your family in with your gear to remind you of the reasons to remain calm, and to survive.

Looking for more? Wilderness Awareness School teaches many weekend workshops centered around survival, including Wilderness Survival Basics which is held in the spring and fall each year. For those looking to become fully immersed in survival skills, naturalist studies, and earth-based resilience, check out The Immersion at Wilderness Awareness School for a nine-month transformative experience.

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Surviving the Wild: 10 Essential Wilderness Survival Skills

Discover the top 10 wilderness survival skills every adventurer should know before setting out into the great unknown.

Whether you’re a seasoned adventurer or just starting out, the importance of having essential survival skills cannot be overstated. I’m talking about the skills that could save your life when you’re lost, injured, or stranded in the wild.

Why is it so important to learn these skills? Well, the answer is simple – the wilderness is a beautiful but unforgiving place. You never know when you might get caught in a sudden storm, run out of water, or get injured on a remote trail. Without the right survival skills, you could find yourself in a life-threatening situation with no way out.

But we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll be diving into the top 10 essential wilderness survival skills that every adventurer should know. From building a shelter and starting a fire to finding food and water, we’ll cover everything you need to survive in the wild.

So, get ready to learn how to navigate through the wilderness, signal for help, and even administer first aid in case of an emergency.

Table of Contents

The pillars of effective wilderness survival skills.

Wilderness survival skills encompass much more than merely staying alive. Several activities, such as bushcraft, camping, hiking & backpacking, and hunting, contribute to a well-rounded survivalist.

Bushcraft: Mastering Nature’s Tools

Bushcraft is the art of thriving in the wild using only natural resources. It’s a cornerstone of wilderness survival skills, teaching essential techniques like:

• Firestarting with friction
• Building shelter with natural materials
• Foraging for edible plants and insects
• Crafting tools and weapons from wood, stone, and bone

With bushcraft skills, you become a resourceful survivor, capable of adapting to any environment.

Camping: Building Your Outdoor Home

Camping and wilderness survival are cut from the same cloth. It’s a fantastic way to practice and improve upon essential skills, including:

• Setting up tents and shelters
• Cooking over open fires
• Navigating with a map and compass
• Tying knots and lashings

By camping regularly, you hone your abilities to live comfortably outdoors and respond to unexpected situations.

Hiking & Backpacking: Exploring the Great Outdoors

Hiking and backpacking prepare you for extended stays in the wilderness. These activities test your endurance and teach vital lessons, such as:

• Properly packing a backpack
• Planning and following a route
• Identifying and avoiding hazards
• Reading weather patterns

You’ll learn to travel efficiently and safely while appreciating the beauty of nature.

Hunting: Providing Food for Survival

Hunting is an indispensable wilderness survival skill. It not only provides sustenance but also teaches stealth, patience, and respect for wildlife. Key aspects of hunting include:

• Tracking and stalking game
• Field dressing and preserving meat
• Building and using hunting blinds
• Understanding animal behavior and habitats

Mastering hunting techniques ensures you can sustain yourself in the most remote locations.

Wilderness survival encompasses a wide range of activities that promote self-reliance and adaptability. By learning bushcraft, camping, hiking & backpacking, and hunting, you become a more versatile and resilient outdoors enthusiast.

Finding and Purifying Water

Without water, you have about 2 days before life gets precarious. I know the rule of thumb is 3 days, but dehydration becomes debilitating sooner than that. So when you’re in the wilderness, finding and purifying water is essential for your survival. Let’s dive in and discuss the best ways to find and purify water in the wild.

Find Sources of Water

Firstly, let’s talk about finding water sources. The key is to look for signs of life – animals, insects, and vegetation. They all need water to survive, so if you spot them, chances are there’s water nearby. Additionally, keep an eye out for depressions in the ground or areas with damp soil, as they may indicate the presence of underground water.

The next step to finding water is to head downhill. Surface water trickles into creeks that flow into valleys, where they form streams that flow into ponds and lakes. So heading downhill will significantly increase your chances of finding low lying areas, potentially where water has collected.

Once you’ve located a water source, it’s time to collect and purify it. Don’t just start gulping it down. The water may contain harmful bacteria, viruses, or parasites that could make you seriously ill.

Collecting Water

Once you’ve found a source of water, it’s time to collect and purify it. You can use a water bottle, canteen, or even a plastic bag to collect water from a stream or river. However, make sure to filter the water before you purify it to remove any sediment or debris that may be present. You can use a cloth, coffee filter, or even a piece of clothing to filter the water.

Purifying Water

To purify the water, you have a few options. One is to boil it. Bring the water to a rolling boil for at least five minutes to kill any harmful bacteria and viruses. Another option is to use a water filter or purification tablets. These can effectively remove impurities and kill harmful organisms, but make sure to follow the instructions on the label carefully.

Conserving Water

And finally, let’s discuss conserving water. In the wilderness, water is a precious resource, so it’s crucial to use it wisely. One way to conserve water is to limit physical activity during the hottest parts of the day to reduce sweating. You can also use water sparingly when washing and cooking, and reuse water whenever possible.

Remember, the key to survival in the wilderness is preparation, and that includes having the skills to find and purify water.

Building a Shelter

When you’re out in the wilderness, you need a good shelter that can protect you from the elements. Luckily, nature provides plenty of options for the savvy survivor.

Types of Natural Shelters

There are a few different types of natural shelters you can take advantage of, depending on what’s available in your area. A cave or rock overhang is a classic choice, but you can also build a shelter using natural materials like branches, leaves, and bark.

Building A Shelter

To build a shelter from scratch, you’ll need to find a good spot and gather some materials. Look for a spot that’s dry and protected from the wind, and clear away any debris or obstacles. Then, start building your frame using branches and saplings.

A lean-to, a-frame or debris hut are the easiest to make without any tools. You can use smaller twigs, pine needles, pine boughs, grass and leaves to create insulation and keep the elements out.

If it’s winter, your best bet is to build a snow shelter . All you need is a shovel (see the best survival shovels ), lots of snow and a few twigs.

If you don’t have access to natural materials, there are other options. Tarps or ponchos can be used to create simple survival shelters . You can even use your backpack or a piece of clothing as a makeshift roof.

Tips For Staying Warm and Dry

Staying warm and dry is crucial for survival, so make sure to add a layer of insulation to the floor of your shelter as well. Pine needles, leaves, and grass can all be used for this purpose. If you have access to a fire, use it to dry out wet clothing and to warm up your shelter. Just make sure to keep the fire small and contained.

Remember, building a shelter is a key wilderness survival skill that can mean the difference between life and death. So take the time to learn how to build a good one, and always be prepared for the worst.

Starting a Fire

As challenging as it may be sometimes, you have to admit, fire starting is the fun part. And it can be applied across all aspects of survival: urban survival skills and long term survival skills . Here’s what to do to make it as easy as possible so you’re not struggling to catch a flame.

Materials To Make Fire

First things first, you need to find the right materials. Tinder is key – that’s anything that will catch fire easily, like dry grass, leaves, or bark shavings. Your tinder bundle needs to be as big as a bird’s nest or you run the risk of it burning up too soon. 

Next, you’ll need kindling – small twigs and branches that are no thicker than your finger. See the best survival axes . Like the tinder bundle, your kindling pile needs to be twice as big as you initially think. Once you have a decent flame going, it’s time to add some sticks and logs to keep the fire burning long into the night. 

In woodland areas, gather the amount of wood you think you need to burn through the night, then collect 5 times that. That’s how much people typically underestimate the amount of firewood they need.

Fire Starting

Now, onto the fun part – different methods for starting a fire. If you have matches or a lighter, count yourself lucky. But in the wilderness, you can’t always rely on modern conveniences. That’s where a good old-fashioned fire starter comes in – like a ferrocerium rod, which creates sparks when struck with a steel blade. If you don’t have a fire starter, you can try the hand drill or bow drill method, which involve rubbing sticks together to create friction and generate heat. It’s not easy, but it can be done with practice. See how to start a fire .

Fire Safety

But before you start channeling your inner caveman, it’s important to remember safety precautions. Always make sure you have a clear space for your fire, away from any low-hanging branches or dry brush. Build a ring of rocks around the fire to contain it, and never leave it unattended. And if you’re in a dry area, be sure to check for any fire restrictions or bans before starting a fire.

With the right materials, techniques, and safety precautions, starting a fire in the wilderness can be a satisfying and even enjoyable experience (see how to make your own survival fire starting kit ).

In the wilderness, it’s easy to get turned around and lose your sense of direction. That’s why having a reliable navigation system is crucial to your survival.

But with a little bit of knowledge, you can make sure that you never lose your way. In this section, we’ll cover the different tools and techniques that you can use to navigate in the wilderness.

Having a GPS

The easiest and most accurate way to navigate in the wilderness is with a GPS (Global Positioning System). A GPS can tell you exactly where you are and where you need to go. It can also track your progress and give you an estimated time of arrival. However, it’s important to remember that GPS devices can fail, run out of battery or lose reception in areas with thick tree canopies or canyons.

Using a Map and Compass

A map and compass are the most reliable backup navigation tools you can carry. A map will give you a general overview of the area, and a compass will help you to navigate in the right direction. When using a map and compass, be sure to orient yourself correctly, to ensure you are heading in the right direction. Always keep your map and compass safe from the elements, in a waterproof container or plastic zip-lock bag.

Orienting Yourself Without a Compass

Even if you don’t have a compass, there are still ways you can orient yourself in the wilderness. One method is to use the sun. You can determine the direction of east and west by observing where the sun rises and sets. You can also use the position of the stars and the moon to navigate.

Following Natural Markers

Another way to navigate in the wilderness is by following natural markers. Look for things like rock formations, rivers or creeks, and animal trails. In addition, pay attention to the direction that the wind is blowing, and the way that plants are growing. These can all be clues to help you navigate.

When it comes to wilderness survival, navigation is a key skill that you should have. Always carry a map and compass, and if possible, a GPS device.

Using Binoculars

Binoculars, in tandem with a compass and map, enhance wilderness survival navigation by offering a powerful trifecta. Binoculars magnify distant landmarks, elevating situational awareness, while a compass provides directional guidance.

Maps offer topographical context, streamlining route planning. Together, these tools empower you with superior navigational power, bolstering safety and efficiency, enabling you to confidently travel uncharted territories.

See the top binocular features for survival you should look for when shopping for that perfect pair of binoculars.

Signaling for Help

There are several ways to get the attention of rescuers or passersby, and this section will cover some of the most effective methods.

Creating a Signal Fire

One of the most recognizable ways to signal for help is to create a signal fire. A signal fire is a fire designed to produce smoke that can be seen from a distance. 

To make a signal fire, you will need to gather dry materials like leaves, sticks, twigs, and some fresh green material. Once you have a pile of these materials, you can ignite the dry materials (see fire starting above). The key to making a signal fire is to keep adding dry materials to keep the fire burning bright and hot. 

Then when you need lots of smoke, throw on some green materials. The smoke produced by the fire is what will catch the attention of rescuers. Make sure to keep the fire burning until you are rescued.

Making Noise

Another way to signal for help is by making noise. Yelling, screaming, and blowing a whistle are all effective methods for making noise in the wilderness. If you are traveling with a group, coordinate with them to make noise in a rhythm or pattern. This will make it easier for rescuers to identify that you are human, and not an animal or other natural sound. 

However, do not waste your energy by yelling continuously. Take breaks between your noise-making efforts to preserve your energy.

Using Visual Signals

Visual signals are another way to get the attention of rescuers. Using reflective materials like mirrors or shiny metal can help you to catch the sunlight and produce a signal that can be seen from a distance. You can also use bright clothing or create an arrow or SOS sign with rocks or sticks on the ground. Remember to position your visual signal in an open area where it is visible from the air.

Hunting and Gathering Food

When you’re out in the wilderness, finding food is a top priority for survival. While hunting and gathering food may not be for everyone, it’s important to know how to do it in case of an emergency.

Foraging for food is another option, and can be a great way to supplement your diet. Take the time to learn the seasonality of plants in your area, otherwise you can expend more calories searching for them than you’ll get in return.

Look for wild mushrooms, berries, and other edible plants. However, it’s important to be careful and know what plants are safe to eat.

Identifying Edible Plants

Before setting out to look for plants, it’s important to know how to identify edible plants. Take the time to research what plants are safe to eat in your area and learn what parts of the plants are edible. 

Some common edible plants include dandelions, cattails, wild strawberries, and blueberries. However, it’s important to note that some plants can be toxic, so it’s essential to have the knowledge to avoid them.

Finding and Trapping Small Game

If you’re looking for meat, you can find small game like rabbits, squirrels, and birds. To catch small game, you can use traps and snares. Learning how to make a trap and set it up correctly is crucial. You can also use a bow and arrow or a slingshot to hunt.

Fishing is another option for getting protein. If you have a fishing rod and bait, you can cast a line in a nearby river or stream. If you don’t have a fishing rod, you can make a simple one using a stick and some fishing line.

Learn how to make fish traps like a fish basket or a weir, both of which can be made with natural materials.

When you’re out in the wilderness, accidents can happen. Injuries like sprains, cuts, and blisters can quickly become serious if not properly treated. Knowing basic first aid skills and having a well-stocked first aid kit can make all the difference in a survival situation.

Creating a First Aid Kit

A first aid kit is an essential item for any wilderness excursion. It should contain a variety of medical supplies to help you treat a wide range of injuries. Here are some items that should be included in your kit, as a bare minimum:

• Adhesive bandages in different sizes
• Sterile gauze pads and medical tape
• Antiseptic wipes and antibiotic ointment
• Pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen
• Scissors and tweezers
• Emergency blanket
• Medical gloves

Treating Common Wilderness Injuries

Knowing how to properly treat common wilderness injuries can make a big difference in the outcome of a survival situation. Here are some tips on how to handle a few common injuries :

Cuts and scrapes : Clean the wound thoroughly and apply an antibiotic ointment. Cover the wound with a sterile gauze pad and secure it with medical tape.

Blisters : If possible, leave the blister intact. Cover it with a moleskin or other blister pad to protect it from further irritation.

Sprains and strains : Rest the injured area, apply a cold compress, and elevate it to reduce swelling. Use an elastic bandage to provide support and stability.

Knowing When to Seek Medical Help

In some situations, first aid may not be enough. It’s important to know when it’s time to seek medical help. Here are some signs that you should seek medical attention:

• Severe bleeding that can’t be stopped with direct pressure
• Loss of consciousness or a change in mental status
• Broken bones or suspected spinal injuries
• Severe allergic reactions
• Signs of hypothermia or heat stroke

In the end, the key to successful wilderness survival is being prepared. Knowing basic first aid skills and having a well-stocked first aid kit can mean the difference. Remember to stay calm, assess the situation, and take the necessary steps to keep yourself and your companions safe.

Wilderness Survival Skills: Gear Choices

When it comes to surviving in the wild, your wilderness survival gear can make a big difference. Certain items are just too difficult or time consuming to replicate from natural materials. Those are the items you want to carry with you.

Here are some tips for choosing the right gear, as well as ways to minimize the amount of gear you need.

Choosing the Right Gear for Your Survival Kit

You need to make sure you have the right gear in your survival kit. Your kit should be tailored to your needs and the environment you’ll be in. Here are some things to consider when choosing your gear:

Water : Make sure you have a way to purify water, such as a water filter or purification tablets. A metal water bottle or pot can be used to boil water.

Shelter : Your kit should include some form of shelter, such as a tent or tarp, to protect you from the elements. Cordage can be used to tie things down or lash poles together. 

Fire : You’ll need a way to start a fire, such as a lighter, matches, or a fire starter. Having a ready-made tinder can save you lots of time when you’re trying to get warm.

Navigation : Have a compass and map, or GPS device, so you can find your way in case you get lost.

First Aid : Your kit should have some basic medical supplies, such as bandages, antiseptic, and pain relievers.

Minimizing Survival Gear by Learning More Skills

While having the right gear is important, it’s also essential to have the skills to survive without it. Learning how to start a fire with natural materials, finding food and water sources, and building a shelter from natural materials can help you minimize the amount of gear you need to carry. With practice, you can even learn to create makeshift tools and weapons. The more you carry in your head, the less you need to carry on your back. So learn as many survival skills as you can.

Different Ways to Use a Knife in the Wilderness

A knife is one of the most essential pieces of gear you can have in the wilderness. Here are some ways to use your knife:

Building Shelter: You can use your knife to cut branches, sharpen stakes, and make notches in logs for building a shelter.

Starting a Fire: Your knife can be used to make kindling, carve a fireboard for starting a friction fire, and create feather sticks for lighting with a fire starter.

Preparing Food: You can use your knife to skin and clean game, fillet fish, and chop vegetables.

Creating Tools: With a little creativity, you can use your knife to make tools such as spears, bows, and traps.

Having the right gear in your survival kit is important, but it’s also essential to have the skills to survive without it. By learning how to make do with less, you can minimize the amount of gear you need to carry and increase your chances of survival in the wilderness. And remember, a knife is one of the most versatile tools you can have in your kit, so make sure you know how to use it to its full potential.

Self-Rescue & Mobility

When it comes to wilderness survival, it’s essential to prepare for all situations, including the possibility of self-rescue. In this section, we’ll discuss the importance of self-rescue and mobility, as well as some techniques and strategies for staying safe in the wilderness.

Preparing for Self-Rescue

Before you head out into the wilderness, it’s important to be prepared for the possibility of self-rescue. This means having a well-stocked survival kit with essential items like a first aid kit, signaling devices, navigation tools, and extra clothing.

It’s also a good idea to let someone know where you’re going and when you plan to return, so that if you do get lost or stranded, rescuers will know where to look for you.

Knowing When to Stay Put and When to Move

If you do find yourself in a survival situation, it’s important to assess your surroundings and decide whether it’s safer to stay put or to try to move to a safer location.

If you’re injured or in an area where you’re likely to be found, it may be better to stay put and wait for help. However, if you’re in a dangerous or unstable location, it may be safer to try to move to a safer spot.

Techniques for Self-Rescue

You can encounter many obstacles, especially if you’re lost.There are several skills that can help with self-rescue and mobility so you can get back to civilization safely. Here are a few examples:

Swimming : If you need to cross a body of water, swimming may be your only option. However, it’s important to be aware of the risks and take precautions. If you have a watertight backpack and it’s sealed properly, then it can act as a float. Avoid swimming in strong currents.

River Crossing : Crossing a river can be dangerous, but there are techniques that can help. Look for shallow areas, and try to cross perpendicular to the current. If you’re carrying a backpack, loosen the straps so that you can quickly remove it if you fall.

Climbing and Rappelling : Climbing and rappelling can be useful skills for navigating steep terrain. However, it’s important to have the right equipment and training. Always use a harness and rope, and make sure that you have a clear understanding of the terrain and weather conditions.

Improvising and operating Watercraft : In situations where there are no bridges, and you need to cross a body of water, improvising and operating a watercraft like a canoe or raft can be useful. However, make sure you have the necessary skills and equipment to handle the watercraft safely.

Driving : In some cases, it may be necessary to drive to safety. However, driving in extreme weather conditions or on muddy or snowy roads can be challenging. Make sure you have a reliable vehicle, and drive slowly and cautiously.

Hiking : Finally, if you need to hike to safety, make sure you have the necessary equipment and supplies, including a map and compass, water, and food. It’s also important to pace yourself and rest as needed, especially if you’re hiking over a long distance.

Remember, self-rescue and mobility skills are just one part of wilderness survival. The key to staying safe is being prepared and knowing how to react in any situation.

Self-Defense

When venturing into the wilderness, encountering wildlife is always possible. Although many of these encounters can be awe-inspiring, they can also be dangerous if not handled correctly. It is essential to know how to avoid wildlife confrontations and how to defend yourself if necessary.

Avoiding Wildlife Confrontation

The best way to avoid a wildlife confrontation is to make noise as you move. This alerts animals to your presence and gives them time to move away. Keep all food items sealed and make sure to store/hang your food at least 100 yards away from where you are sleeping.

Knowing How to Defend Against Black Bears and Grizzly Bears

If you encounter a black bear, talk to it in a calm voice, try to make yourself look bigger by standing on your tiptoes and spreading your arms out wide. If it charges at you, use bear spray or use any available object to hit it on its sensitive nose. Do not run, as this will trigger the bear’s natural instinct to chase.

Grizzly bears, on the other hand, require a different approach. If you see a grizzly bear, first, move away from it slowly and quietly, without turning your back to it. If it approaches you or attacks you, curl up in the fetal position and clasp your hands behind your neck, play dead, as the bear will eventually lose interest and leave. You cannot outrun these animals so don’t try, it will most likely provoke them to chase you. It is important to remember that grizzly bears are unpredictable, and the best defense is to avoid them.

Self Defense Tools and Makeshift Weapons

Having the right tools can make a significant difference when it comes to self-defense. Pepper spray or bear spray can be useful in deterring animals. A firearm is also an option, but it is important to have the proper training and permits to use it.

If you don’t have access to these tools, it is essential to know how to make makeshift weapons from natural resources around you. Large sticks or rocks can be used to fend off wildlife, and even your hiking poles can be used as a weapon. In a pinch, you can even use your backpack as a shield.

Avoiding wildlife confrontations and knowing how to defend yourself is crucial when it comes to wilderness survival. By making noise as you move, following food storage guidelines, and knowing how to defend against black and grizzly bears, you can significantly reduce your chances of a dangerous encounter. If you do need to defend yourself, having the right tools and knowledge to make makeshift weapons can make all the difference.

Final Word About Wilderness Survival Skills

The ten best wilderness survival skills are essential to have in your arsenal. They include creating a first aid kit, choosing the right gear for your survival kit, preparing for self-rescue, and knowing how to defend yourself. 

Additionally, knowing how to find food, water, and shelter, building a fire, navigating without a map or compass, signaling for help, and staying calm under pressure can all make the difference between life and death in the wilderness. 

Always remember that preparation is key, and being mentally and physically prepared for a survival situation is just as important as having the necessary skills and tools.

FAQ’s

What is the most important survival skill to learn.

The most important survival skill to learn is the ability to stay calm and maintain a positive mindset. In a survival situation, panic can be your worst enemy. It can cloud your judgment, waste your energy, and lead to poor decision-making. On the other hand, a calm and positive mindset can help you stay focused, think clearly, and take the necessary steps to stay alive. Therefore, before learning any other skills, it is important to practice techniques that help you manage your emotions, such as deep breathing, visualization, and positive self-talk. Once you are able to stay calm, you can start focusing on the other essential skills, such as shelter, water, fire, and food.

What should I do if I get lost in the wilderness?

If you get lost in the wilderness, the first thing you should do is stay put and try to remain calm. Moving around aimlessly can increase your chances of getting more lost or injured. Instead, find a safe spot to rest and assess your situation. Use any resources available to create shelter and start a fire for warmth. If you have water and food, ration it out conservatively. Use signaling techniques, such as making noise, using a whistle or mirror, or building a signal fire to attract rescuers. If you have a map and compass, try to use them to orient yourself and find your way back. Get to a high spot where you can possibly see distant landmarks like hills or rises. Then you can use them to orient yourself to your map. Remember that the key to survival is to stay calm, conserve your energy, and wait for rescuers to find you.

How can I stay warm in a survival situation?

Staying warm in a survival situation is crucial to avoid hypothermia, which can be life-threatening. The best way to stay warm is to create a shelter that can protect you from the elements, such as wind, rain, and snow. The shelter can be made of natural materials, such as leaves, branches, and moss, or can be constructed using a tarp or a survival blanket. A good shelter should be small, insulated, and well-ventilated to prevent condensation from building up. Once you have a shelter, you can start a fire to keep warm. Collect dry tinder, kindling, and fuel, and use a firestarter, such as a lighter or a ferrocerium rod, to ignite the fire. Make sure to keep the fire going throughout the night by adding more fuel and protecting it from the wind. If you don’t have a fire, huddle together with others for warmth, and insulate yourself from the ground using leaves, moss, or branches. Finally, make sure to wear dry and warm clothing, such as wool or synthetic fibers, and avoid sweating by removing layers when you start feeling too hot.

Can I drink my own urine to stay hydrated in the wilderness?

While drinking your urine may seem like a viable option, it is not recommended. Urine is full of waste products and drinking it can further dehydrate your body, which can be dangerous in a survival situation (there’s a reason why your body is getting rid of it). Look for other sources of water like streams or rainwater, and consider boiling it before drinking to purify it.

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Why do we need to find wilderness?

As a new book looks at one man’s journey along the Pacific Crest Trail in the US, Cameron Laux explores how writers, artists and thinkers have viewed our place in the natural world.

Reading through Tim Voor’s new book The Great Alone, about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), brings to mind the words of the poet TS Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Though you think you are going in a straight line, you might actually be tracing out a big circle. Voors, a Dutch advertising type, undertook the hike, 2,650 miles (4,300 km) from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, through desert, mountain, and forest, for now almost-standard reasons: to learn self-reliance, to get in touch with himself, to get in touch with unsullied nature, to give his marriage time to breathe. As I began to read, I felt a big, sceptical scowl coming on. But his exuberance is infectious and he demonstrates self-awareness – and the ‘journey’ seems to have changed him in a real sense. He wasn’t exactly ‘lost’ before, though he did wonder about it, and actually felt it at moments in the dense woods of the High Sierra. And he isn’t exactly ‘found’ at the end, though he seems to have made progress of some kind in knowing himself and the world. He has deepened his knowledge of the place where he started.

More like this:

- How nature helps us overcome trauma

- What trees teach us about life and happiness

- The wild words we’re losing

Cheryl Strayed mounted a similar expedition along the PCT in 1995, which she recounted in her celebrated book Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found (2012). In 2014 it was turned into a film starring Reese Witherspoon, called Wild. (Both are useful correctives to prevailing masculine archetypes about the ‘wilderness’.) An orphan and a recovering heroin addict, she relates this encounter while she is on the trail trying to find herself: “An actual stray, a stranger had observed a couple of weeks before, when I’d told him my name and explained how very loose I was in the world.” At this point she has managed to lose her hiking boots and is walking the trail barefoot – like a medieval penitent. Maybe things need to be made worse before they can get better? Maybe she had nothing more to lose, so to speak.

Losing yourself to find yourself is an age-old topos of writing. It involves accepting the risk that you might remain forever lost. In Buddhism, losing oneself, becoming one with the natural world, is the highest objective. As it happens there is a direct link (via Ralph Waldo Emerson) between Buddhist philosophy and John Muir, who is often called the father of the American National Parks system. Muir was a ‘wild man’ in a good sense: somewhat monomaniacal about preserving the nation’s natural beauty and the transcendence it promised; forever seeking the isolation of the wild. “We are now in the mountains and they are in us,” he wrote. The PCT passes through no fewer than six national parks, most of it mountainous terrain. Part of the trail itself is named after him.

There’s a famous ink-wash painting by the Japanese master Hasegawa Tohaku, traditionally called Pine Trees (1595). Tohaku painted in the Zen ink-wash tradition, with an economy and effortlessness of style which implies an unsettling concern with essences. Are the trees really there, or are they just ghosts? The composition suggests both the painful immanence and melancholy transience of natural beauty, and perhaps of life itself. Muir was fascinated with these qualities, and their bearing on the human spirit. So too were the pioneering photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Ansel Adams, both of whom made their names taking haunting photos of Yosemite, through which the PCT passes; often mysterious images which are precisely reminiscent of Japanese ink landscape paintings. Adams was directly influenced by Muir’s evangelical outdoor zeal.

In any event, the lost/found motif, or its plot points, have a far-reaching genealogy – stretching back to Greek and Roman pastoral poetry in the era before Christ. Virgil’s Eclogues imagine the countryside as a place of charming solitude and simplicity, where a shepherd-poet can return to innocence and glimpse the Golden Age – before the decline of Man. The idea recurs again in the Christian myth of a couple who are thrown out of a garden and sentenced to wander the wilds of Earth until they can find their way back to innocence and paradise. After being baptised by John the Baptist, Christ exiles himself to the wilderness for 40 days of contemplation, during which he undergoes spiritual and psychological struggle. Such losing and finding, ‘falling’ down and struggling back up, trajectories recur in the myths and religions of many cultures around the world.

The noble savage

At the beginning of the modern age, the 18th-Century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that savagery, our elemental state, had a certain nobility which civil society threatened to stifle. He said: “Everything that is not in the course of nature has its disadvantages, civil society most of all.”

Rousseau influenced the poets and writers of the Romantic movement, including William Wordsworth, who made a philosophy of worshipping the natural world and of fine-tuning his responses to it. The poet grew up in the Lake District – a picturesque, mountainous, and at the time unspoiled part of England, where he spent most of his life. He believed our relationship to the natural world was divine, a marvellous unity threatened by civilisation, writing in his poem Intimations of Immortality:

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy

Our current attitudes to nature, the romantic (small ‘r’) ideology of escaping from civilisation back into the authenticity of nature, the intimations we think we feel when looking at beautiful lakes or mountains, in the West at least, have a direct precursor in such Romanticism (big ‘R’).

In this period, the English artist JMW Turner painted landscapes of the Lake District. Many of his paintings, even when they are not of storms, look like storms. Lakes and mountains and clouds roil and merge together, materialise and dematerialise. Buttermere Lake (1798) is a painting of a storm. Everything seems to be trailing clouds of glory, murky and radiant. We might be viewing the interior of the Romantic mind. There is certainly ‘wildness’ aplenty here.

The road less travelled

Many of these people were outsiders; the Romantics in particular cherished, and often were themselves, crazy loners, free spirits, wanderers, and visionaries. The title of Strayed’s book plays on the two meanings of the word ‘wild’.

The great American ‘transcendentalist’ philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson admired both Romanticism and Buddhism. He saw a continuity between Man, God, and Nature; he came from a Protestant background and transformed that Christianity into an idealistic naturalism. He espoused self-reliance, non-conformism, and the primacy of individual experience as ways of returning to our authentic selves: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” The Buddhism in his thinking is apparent in passages such as this, from the 1836 essay Nature: “The waving of the boughs in a storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.”

One of Emerson’s disciples, Henry David Thoreau, was so taken with his philosophy that he built a tiny cabin by a rural pond on Emerson’s land, and lived there like a hermit for two years, thinking, writing, and communing with the ‘oversoul’ (Emerson’s word for the natural world). From that experience he wrote the book Walden, Or a Life in the Woods (1854), which has become a sort of American counter-cultural Bible of frugality, self-reliance, wilful eccentricity, civil disobedience, and back-to-the-land fundamentalism. If this sounds monastic, it is. Although he got married, Thoreau seems to have died a virgin. “All nature is my bride,” he wrote.

Throughout the history of writers, artists and thinkers contemplating nature, there is a sense that you have to lose your mind (your self, your way) to truly find it. Strayed actually carried with her a book called Staying Found, a guide to using maps and compasses (which she should have mastered before she left, but didn’t).

Nature as threat

This raises the thorny issue of what happens when you get lost and stay lost. Nature was tamed a long time ago in Europe, for example, though cultural memory preserves images of the ‘Big Bad Wolf’, bears and sinister forests from which people never return in fairytales. Wordsworth’s Lake District was ‘wild’ in a sense, but it was never threatening. The New World, on the other hand, was colonised by men who regarded its wilderness as a colossal enemy, to be brought to heel or destroyed.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), often called the greatest novel in US literature, is a prototypical tale of the conflict between man and nature. Ahab, the captain of a whaling ship, loses his leg to, becomes obsessed with capturing and killing, a white whale, which is a sort of supernatural object and a symbol for the natural world. Ahab gives chase through the wastes of the ocean, until in a final confrontation his ship is destroyed and he and his crew are drowned. The ship is sucked down and disappears, Melville writes, “and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago”.

Melville and Emerson were friends. It is often said that Emerson was such a towering figure in 19th-Century America that one either had to be for him or against him. It is possible to read Moby Dick as a reaction against Emersonian self-reliance, as a story of romantic hubris taken to the limit. In addition, Melville’s natural world is less cooperative than Emerson’s: it may still be a majestic immanence, but it is also deadly.

US writers after Melville had no lack of narratives about Man’s precarious vendetta against Nature. To pluck a few classics out of the tradition, one could choose the fantasies of Jack London, such as White Fang (1906 – a dog fights for survival in the savagery of the natural world and makes it to civilisation); Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952 – an old fisherman battles against the sea and its creatures); or William Faulkner’s The Bear (1942-55 – a hunter kills a legendary bear and then descends into disillusionment). In all of these books, the showdown with Nature has ambiguous results.

The rise of the anti-hero

All of this hits a crescendo in the work of Cormac McCarthy, whose writing picks obsessively at the myths of the Wild West and at the US male self-image. The characters in his books end up on anti-heroic odysseys through the hostile modern wilderness, a universe of precarious meaning consisting blurrily of nature, mankind, and one’s own soul. What is often called his most important book, Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), is a gut-wrenching, awe-inspiring fantasia on, and relentless deconstruction of, Wild West themes, in which human savagery, egotism, and cruelty run rampant. Surviving the elements and avoiding being bitten by rattlesnakes are the least of men’s worries, for the biggest monsters here are other men.

These themes are even more explicit in nightmarish fable The Road (2006; also a film). A man and his son wander a post-apocalyptic US wilderness, struggling to survive. The greatest threat now is being bitten by other people, who have turned to cannibalism. The ideology of man against wilderness stands revealed: without doubt, the real wilderness is inside us.

As a final counterpoint to this, John Krakauer’s Into the Wild (1998; and a film) is the true account of a middle-class American boy whose head was full of Thoreau and Jack London, who in 1992 divested himself of all his possessions and walked into the Alaskan wilderness to experience the great adventure of oneness with the land and surviving on his wits. Four months later he was found dead. The book anatomises the boy’s fantasies, aspirations, and motivations. In the end the question is left hanging: is this story an indictment of the false American back-to-nature dream, or an affirmation of its holiness? Is the important scenery around us, or in our heads?

The lessons Voors draws from his trail experience include living life more adventurously and more frugally. Back at home, when he goes out for dinner with friends he orders soup and bread, never wanting to forget the humility of surviving on very little. Already before he finishes his PCT odyssey he is dreaming of new adventures: a hike across the whole of Canada; the Te Araroa Trail, that covers 1,875 miles (3,000 km) of New Zealand. His forays into outward immensities open up fresh expanses in the most private parts of his mind. As Melville put it in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851: “Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing. So, now, let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish; – I have heard of Krakens.”

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And if you liked this story,  sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter , called The Essential List. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Henry David Thoreau

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"In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote Henry David Thoreau in his essay "Walking" (Finch & Elder, p. 192). This saying is often misquoted and the preservation of the world attributed to wilderness. This minor wrinkle in how one of the most contradictory voices for wilderness and wildness is remembered is quite appropriate. Thoreau is not a simple subject. 

David Henry Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts to John and Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau. The newest Thoreau joined siblings Helen (born 1812, five months after the parents' marriage) and John, jr. (born 1815). The Thoreaus' last child, Sophia, was born in 1819. David Henry was named for a recently deceased relative, but by all accounts was always called Henry by his family. 

Thoreau's father was nearly as much of a wandering soul as his son would become. While the Thoreau household was home to a close-knit family, they struggled financially through most of Thoreau's childhood and well into his adolescence. John Thoreau, sr. worked at various times as a farmer, a store-keeper, a teacher, and a traveling salesman specializing in trading with Native American tribes occupying the fringes of Massachusetts. In 1823, John sr. returned permanently to Concord and his family and became a pencil maker. This provided a degree of stability both financially and emotionally for the family. 

Thoreau attended Concord's public primary school and went on to Concord Academy. Thoreau was not an extraordinary student in any regard. It is not difficult to imagine that the mind that would create some of the most influential writings on freedom might have been unwilling to conform to the authoritarian 1820's New England education system. However, Thoreau was enough of a scholar to be accepted to Harvard in 1833, just after his sixteenth birthday. 

It was a financial struggle for the Thoreau family to send Henry to college, but through a combination of Yankee frugality, family contributions, a minor scholarship from Harvard, and a program that allowed latter-day financial aid students to take semesters off to work, Thoreau completed his studies at Harvard in 1837.

Although today Thoreau is honored and studied as a scholar, writer, philosopher, and social activist, there was nothing remarkable about him as a student. He graduated 19th out of 44 students, and did nothing in his scholastic endeavors to distinguish himself. What is perhaps most notable about Thoreau's time at Harvard is that his future mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a noted Transcendental scholar, spoke at Thoreau's graduation. 

After Harvard, Thoreau returned to Concord and taught briefly at the public school. He accepted the teaching position on the condition that he would not implement any form of corporal punishment. The school board did not agree with the young teacher's alternative ideas of education, and Thoreau left after only two weeks. He worked alternately in his father's pencil shop, which was operating in the back wing of the family house, but felt called to teach. Thoreau applied for a teaching job in Maine, but when he wasn't hired, he and his brother started a school in the Thoreau house in 1838. 

The Thoreau brothers' alternative style of teaching, which featured nature walks and discussions rather than memorization and corporal punishment, became popular with Concord residents and other nearby parents wishing for a different sort of education for their children. Due to the popularity of their methods, the school outgrew the Thoreau house, and the brothers moved their school to the grounds of the then defunct Concord Academy. 

The Thoreau family home itself was far from the idyllic solitude "Walden" and Thoreau have come to symbolize. Not only was the pencil-making operation run out of the house, but several of Thoreau's aunts also lived there. Thoreau's mother took in boarders, including John and Henry's pupils. The house was also a hotbed of abolitionist activities. Thoreau's mother and both sisters were founding and active members of the Concord Women's Anti-Slavery Society, formed in 1837.

Not surprisingly, there are accounts that Thoreau himself was active in the Underground Railroad, (Cain, p. 65). It was a busy place-Thoreau's daily walks may have arisen as much out of need to hear himself think as  "a sort of crusade, preached by Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer [sic] this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels,"  as he wrote in "Walking," (Finch & Elder, p. 180). 

In 1837, following Emerson's speech at Harvard and Thoreau's return to Concord, the two men struck up a friendship. The exact details of their meeting remain obscure. Thoreau may have worked briefly as a gardener for Emerson, or mutual friends may have introduced young Thoreau to the elder Emerson based on similarities between Thoreau's journals and Emerson's lectures. In any case they enjoyed, for a time, a mutually beneficial and harmonious friendship. While their love and respect for each other was constant, in the nearly 30 years of their friendship, they had many intellectual and social differences of opinion. 

Emerson was thirty-four years old when he and Thoreau became friends and he admired the younger man, who seemed to live out so many of the Transcendental ideals that he was writing about and lecturing on at the time. It is possible that it was Emerson who encouraged Thoreau to keep a daily journal. Thoreau, somehow between teaching at the school, helping with the pencil business, and doing other odd jobs around Concord, found time for nearly daily walks where he recorded both his natural history observations and his commentaries on society. This was a practice that Thoreau would keep for his entire life-the full collection of his journals and diaries is well over 7000 pages. 

In 1839, Thoreau and John took a river trip down the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The journals and observations that Thoreau made over those two weeks comprised his first book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers . Thoreau's writing conveys an infectious and passionate enthusiasm for the wildness he found along the two populated rivers. This enthusiasm is almost tangible, even reading his accounts 170 years after the fact. The triumphant vitality of Thoreau's writing has carved his rightful place among the various schools of philosophy, politics, naturalists, and writers who all claim him as their own. 

Although the brothers' river trip occurred in 1839, the book was not written and published until 1848. Thoreau was busy in the intervening years. In 1839 he delivered his first lecture to the Concord Lyceum, one of the many active facets of the Transcendentalist movement in the greater Boston area in the mid-1800s. Thoreau also worked with Emerson on "The Dial," a Transcendental publication, and continuing to teach with John. 

Sadly, in 1842, John's health began to fail and the Thoreau brothers closed their school. Thoreau moved into the Emerson household as a tutor, gardener, and intellectual companion. In January of 1842, John died of lockjaw. Perhaps as a way to cope with the grief of John's death, Thoreau moved to Staten Island and tutored Emerson's relatives. He returned to Concord in 1843. For all his ramblings and rovings throughout New England, Thoreau was more tied to his family and the Transcendentalists in Concord than any other place he ever visited. 

In April of 1844, Thoreau and a friend took another river trip along the Sudbury River. The two men burnt down 300 acres of forested land when a cooking fire they started in a stump got wildly out of control. This event was reported in the Concord newspaper, and though Thoreau remained anonymous, there was little doubt in the townspeople's minds who had set the fire. For Thoreau, who espoused personal responsibility, freedom, and respect for the natural world above all else, this fire was a wake-up call to his own potential impact on the world around him. Thoreau wrote of the fire, and the loss of the woodlands saying, "I felt that I had a deeper interest in the woods, knew them better, and should feel their loss more, than any or all of them," (Derleth, p. 53). 

In 1845, Thoreau built his famous cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. He moved to the woods to  "live deliberately"  as he says in Walden . The myth of Thoreau's two years there is of a lone woodsman/philosopher scrapping out a living in the wilderness, pausing occasionally to write down his observations. In reality, Thoreau was living on the edge of settled Concord, and he maintained frequent, if not daily contact with friends and visitors-Walden Pond was no hermitage. 

In fact, the whole experiment of "Life in the Woods," the subtitle of Walden , rose out of friendship. The cabin was on land that Emerson had purchased several years earlier, and Emerson encouraged Thoreau to pursue a deliberate life in the woods. While Thoreau's cabin was in a grove of trees, Concord and its surrounding lands had been settled and farmed for years-this was more edge-of-the-pasture than edge-of-the-wilderness. And while Thoreau was certainly alone at Walden much of the time, his sauntering jaunts around the country side and journal entries are nearly as much social observation as they are natural history. 

While at Walden, Thoreau frequently returned home for meals or company, and had many visitors to his home. It was June of 1846 that Thoreau spent his famous night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax, the inspiration for his famous essay "Civil Disobedience." This act and essay went onto inspire people as varied as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Daniel Ellsberg, as noted in the 2006 film Life with Principle: Thoreau's Voice in Our Time . Also in the summer of 1846, his mother, sisters, and the rest of the Concord Women's Anti-Slavery Society gathered at Walden Pond. 

While living at Walden, Thoreau took his first of two major excursions to Maine in the summer of 1846. This was somewhat rougher country than Thoreau was accustomed to in his rambles around Concord and he was reminded of "the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of Atlas, Vulcan, the Cyclops, and Prometheus," (Finch & Elder, p. 206) high praise indeed for the Appalachian Mountains which are often overlooked in light of larger western mountain ranges. Thoreau's travels through Maine and New Hampshire would become his posthumously published The Maine Woods .

In fact, the bulk of Thoreau's work was published after his death. While he spent a great deal of his time at Walden writing in his journal, revising the story of his trip along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and beginning pieces of other essays, he only published two books during his lifetime. The first, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, dedicated to the memory of his brother, was published in 1848. It was moderately well received, certainly more so than the 1854 publication of Walden , or, Life in the Woods . 

It is hard to picture the romantic ideal of Thoreau having any life besides those years at Walden, but his time after Walden was at least equally productive. Following his father's death in 1857, Thoreau assumed the responsibilities of running the pencil factory, and continued to write and study the world around him. The primary topic for his prose continued to be freedom, almost as if his time in quasi-solitude in the woods had given him greater empathy for the plight of those who were not free. He wrote an essay in defense of the militant Abolitionist John Brown following Brown's execution in 1859. 

Thoreau also continued his careful and ecstatic observations of the wild places around Concord. It was in fact, in the spirit of scientific observation that Thoreau found himself out in the chilly December weather of 1860. He was counting tree rings in the Walden woods, studying the succession of trees, and became ill. Thoreau had been plagued by tuberculosis since he was an adolescent and he would never fully recover from this bout. He continued to investigate forest succession, observe natural history, and write politically even as his health declined. Thoreau died on May 6, 1862. He is buried in Concord.

While Emerson and Thoreau had had several intellectual falling-outs in their long friendship, there is little doubt that the two men retained a deep respect for each other. Of Thoreau's death, Emerson said:  "The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost"  (Derleth, p. 202). Emerson's eulogy is oddly prophetic because it is only since his death that Thoreau has come to be seen and understood as a great voice for wildness and wilderness. 

Many people who are seen as defenders of wilderness often use sweeping language and images to inspire thoughts of wild places untrammeled by humans, places that are almost sublime in their beauty. Appropriately for his Transcendentalist leanings, Thoreau is most noted for his ability to transcend this idea and instead focus on the human need for freedom in the beauty of ordinary places. He does use dramatic language, but the scenes he describes are on a smaller scale than most wilderness writers.

He finds epic drama and wildness in the ordinary and overlooked corners of life, ants and mice, for example. Those not from New England are often taken aback when they realize that Thoreau's wild places were not akin to Muir's or Abbey's Yosemite and Arches, but instead were his neighbor's apple orchards and berry patches. Thoreau's talents for finding and highlighting wildness in both the natural world and as a right for humanity were indeed revolutionary. 

Cain, W.B., (Ed.) . (2000). A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Derleth, A. (1962). Concord Rebel: A Life of Henrey David Thoreau. Philadephia & New York: Chilton Company. 

Finch, R., & Elder, J. (Eds.) . (2002). The Norton Book of Nature Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 

Melvyn Hopper Production (Producer). (2006). Life with Principle: Thoreau's Voice in Our Time. [DVD recording]. Concord, MA: The Thoreau Society 

The Thoreau Project. (2008). A Chronology of Thoreau's Life, with Events of the Times.

Thoreau, H.D. (1993 ed.) Walden and Other Writings. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics.

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Top Wilderness Survival Stories And Lessons Learned

Are you fascinated by real-life tales of adventure and survival in the wild? Look no further! In this article, you’ll discover a collection of captivating wilderness survival stories that will leave you on the edge of your seat. From battling the harsh elements to outsmarting relentless predators, these individuals faced unimaginable challenges and emerged victorious. Not only will these stories captivate your imagination, but they also offer valuable lessons on resilience, resourcefulness, and the indomitable human spirit. So strap yourself in and join us on a thrilling journey through some of the most awe-inspiring wilderness survival stories of all time.

Table of Contents

Surviving a Bear Attack

Encountering a Grizzly Bear: When coming face to face with a grizzly bear, it’s important to remember that these creatures are powerful and potentially dangerous. Stay calm and slowly back away without turning your back on the bear. Avoid direct eye contact, as this can be interpreted as a threat. Make yourself appear larger by raising your arms or using any available objects to increase your perceived size. Speak calmly and firmly, letting the bear know that you are not a threat.

Fighting Back or Playing Dead?: The appropriate response when a grizzly bear attacks depends on the situation. If the bear is defensive and seems to be protecting its cubs or territory, playing dead is often the best course of action. Lie flat on your stomach with your hands clasped behind your neck and your legs spread apart to make it more difficult for the bear to flip you over. Stay still and do not fight back until the bear has left the area. On the other hand, if the bear is predatory and launches a surprise attack, fight back using any available weapons or tools. Aim for the bear’s eyes or sensitive areas such as its nose, aiming to inflict pain and deter the attack.

Using Bear Spray as a Defense: Bear spray is a highly effective tool for warding off bear attacks. It is essential to carry bear spray with you when venturing into bear territory, and to familiarize yourself with how to use it properly. Bear spray should be stored in an accessible location and easily reachable in case of an encounter. When using bear spray, aim low and slightly ahead of the bear’s path, creating a barrier between you and the bear. The spray should create a thick cloud that discourages the bear from approaching further.

Proper Food Storage to Avoid Bear Encounters: One of the best ways to avoid bear encounters is to store food and other scented items properly. Bears have an incredible sense of smell and are attracted to the smell of food, so keeping your food stored in a bear-resistant container or hanging it high off the ground and away from your campsite is essential. Additionally, cooking and eating away from your sleeping area will help prevent bears from associating your campsite with a potential food source. By practicing proper food storage techniques, you can greatly reduce the risk of bear encounters.

Lost in the Wilderness

Navigational Mistakes: Getting lost in the wilderness can be a frightening experience, but it’s essential to stay calm and think logically. One of the most common navigational mistakes is failing to bring a map and compass or relying solely on GPS. It’s crucial to have a backup method of navigation and invest time in learning how to use them properly. Navigation skills such as using landmarks, orienting yourself with the sun, and reading topographical features can help guide you back on track.

Surviving Without Supplies: In the event that you find yourself lost without supplies, it’s important to prioritize your basic survival needs. Finding water is crucial, as dehydration can quickly become a life-threatening situation. Look for natural water sources such as streams, rivers, or even digging for water in dry riverbeds. Conserve energy and focus on finding shelter and building a fire when necessary, as these will help keep you warm and protected from the elements.

Creating Shelter: Building a shelter is vital for protection against the elements and maintaining body heat. Look for natural features such as caves, rock formations, or fallen trees to serve as a foundation for your shelter. If these are not available, you can construct a lean-to shelter using branches and leaves. Ensure your shelter is well-insulated and offers protection from wind and rain.

Finding Water Sources: Without water, survival in the wilderness becomes nearly impossible. If you find yourself without water, begin by searching for nearby water sources such as streams, rivers, or lakes. If water is not readily available, you can collect dew from plants in the morning or use a cloth to gather moisture from damp areas. It’s important to purify any water you find before consumption, either by boiling it or using a water filter if you have one.

Signaling for Help: When lost in the wilderness, it’s important to attract the attention of potential rescuers. Use any means available to create a visible signal, such as reflecting sunlight with a mirror, building a large SOS sign on the ground using rocks or branches, or using brightly colored clothing to attract attention. Make noise by shouting or using a whistle to alert others of your presence.

Staying Calm and Positive: Perhaps the most crucial aspect of surviving in the wilderness is maintaining a calm and positive mindset. It’s natural to feel fear and anxiety in such a situation, but panic only worsens the chances of survival. Take deep breaths, remind yourself to stay positive, and focus on the tasks at hand. Keeping a positive mindset can help you make rational decisions and increase your chances of being found or finding your way back to safety.

Stranded in the Mountains

Surviving Extreme Cold: Being stranded in the mountains during extreme cold puts you at risk of hypothermia and frostbite. To combat the cold, it’s crucial to dress in layers, starting with a moisture-wicking base layer, insulation layer, and waterproof outer layer. Cover your head, hands, and feet with appropriate gear to prevent heat loss. Avoid sweating excessively, as damp clothing can accelerate heat loss.

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How to Live in the Wilderness

Last Updated: September 17, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Scott Fitterman . Scott Fitterman is an Outdoor Skills Expert and the Co-Founder of TrailBound Project, a hiking and backpacking school headquartered in Ringwood, New Jersey. TrailBound Project offers hiking and backpacking courses, trips, and outdoor adventure challenges for all skill levels. Scott is also a Search and Rescue Officer, Instructor, Mountain Rescue Unit member, and certified as a Wilderness First Responder EMT. Leveraging his extensive expertise, Scott leads treks in the backcountry across the Northeastern US. He holds a business degree from the University of Maryland. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 100% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 803,507 times.

John Muir once said, "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity." [1] X Research source Does anyone need more of an explanation than that? Though life will be simpler in the wilderness, taking the steps to get there is not. But with the right knowledge, skill set, and equipment, you'll be prepared for a successful transition.

Preparing to Go Off-Grid

• What time of year would make it easiest to get started?
• How many supplies would you need to start off with?
• Would you have access to civilization? How far away would it be? How does this change your situation?
• Try to buy a map of where you are going (if you can) before you leave.
• Do you have the skills to survive in the terrain/climate you're considered?
• Do you need time to adapt your body? (to extreme weather, for example)

• Consider doing crazier things, like learning to eat insects and grubs. Then, if you're in a sticky spot, you'll be more likely to succeed.

• Utility items (rope, knives, netting, etc.)
• Rifle and/or shotgun (guns in cold condensate and will have to be taken care of)
• Lantern and flashlights (with oil and batteries)
• Dried food (oats, lentils, beans, rice, coffee)
• Source of vitamin C (Tang, for example)
• Water filter
• Compass and Map of Area
• Fire steel, matches, etc.
• Flares, mirrors, whistle, etc.
• Tool and sewing kit

• Remember: you can always take layers off if you get hot. It's better to have too many clothes than to not have enough, after all. If something happens to one, you'll have something else equally as warm. Marino wool is very insulating and cannot easily get wet. Some jackets are made of Marino, so try to get your hands on one of them.
• Get a shell jacket and pants for rain and snow. Most cases of hypothermia happen in temperatures under 40 °F (4 °C). [3] X Research source

• Learn to identify poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, death caps, and yellow stainers, in addition to other poisonous plants and mushrooms (and avoid them). What's more, there are some plants (cow parsnip) whose sap makes your skin hyper photosensitive. That is, the sun will cause your skin to painfully blister. It's best to know your terrain to the best of your ability.
• And the calmer you'll be able to stay, which is of utmost importance. If you've seen a situation before, you'll know what to do and you'll be able to relax. If you're nervous and unsure, it's possible you could make a grave mistake. Getting trained is a way to avoid future mishaps.

• Pack your backpack before you leave to see how much it can carry. Get familiar with how you can pack it to the brim and still be able to carry it. Even packing skills come in handy in the wilderness.

• Know how to build a signal fire
• Use a mirror or similarly reflective object to flash the horizon
• Send an SOS signal, if possible
• Use emergency beacon devices such as ACR or SPOT

Setting Up Camp

• It should also be on stable ground. Avoid drop-offs, areas that are too rocky, or areas too close to water. All of these are areas that are vulnerable to the elements.

• Build a fire away from your valuables and away from your food supply, should anything go wrong (animals included).
• When you cook with fire, do not use a flame right away, but instead build a fire and let it sit. You should build a fire long before you eat. In the process of building a fire, you create a hot bed of coals which will create an open flame. This open flame will allow you to burn your food to a black crisp.
• Look for birch bark to start a fire. Birch bark, wet or dry, is highly flammable and is great for starting fires in wet or cold locations.
• Burning hemlock bows keeps away flies and mosquitoes.

• It is highly recommended to never sleep on bare ground, and to always make the floor of your shelter something like hemlock bows, leaves or hay; if you do not make the floor of the shelter with hemlock bows, leaves or hay, you will freeze when you sleep on the dirt.

• Also, you can collect morning dew from grasses and leaves with a clean cloth (rag) and squeeze it out into a container. It may not be the cleanest, but it will help to keep you hydrated.

Meeting Your Basic Needs

• Do not eat any plants or mushrooms unless you know that they are edible. If you can, bring a book discussing the flora and fauna of your local. Or start your own garden.
• As a general rule - if you kill an animal when it is acting normally, then it should be safe for you to eat it. Ensure that you have the knowledge and resources to preserve meat and fish so that it does not spoil. Do not attempt to eat an animal that appears visibly sick or is dead when you find it.
• Have a good storage system, too. There may be scavengers in your area that pose a threat to your food stock.

• The easiest method is to boil your water. It should take about 10 minutes.
• Another is to use iodine tablets ( not liquid iodine from the drug store). Use the iodine tablets according to directions that are provided on the label.
• A gravity filter is easiest, if you can bring one with you. You pour the water in, do more chores, and an hour or two later return to find fresh water.

• To sterilize your clean container again, boil it in water for 10 minutes. Make sure all parts of the container are under water while boiling.

• If you've constructed an outhouse or similar structure, know that in winter, your butt will freeze to wood. Use styrofoam over your toilet seat to avoid a rather unfortunate event from happening.

• You can use trees, the moon, and the sun to navigate, too. If you're the type that has an internal compass, this will come easy to you.

• Pemmican requires no cooking (just drying) and if you have enough fat in the mix, will sustain you longer than any other "survival food". You can live on it for months in any situation, even at home.

Staying Long-Term

• If you break your leg (or something similarly terrible happens), have a way that you can contact for help, whether it's a radio, a phone, or some other reliable signaling mechanism. Having this ability will help take the stress off should something happen.

• Be sure you can keep your garden away from wild animals. Construct a fence around your garden, use objects to scare them away, and "mark your territory" if need be.

• Keep a few months' supply of food on hand, if at all possible. If you have access to a meat freezer, then try to shoot a deer or large game animal in the late fall.
• The same goes firewood. Move it inside, if at all possible.
• The water will be ice in winter, so keep fresh, clean water inside, too.

• Figure out a way to bring your outhouse to you for the winter, if at all possible. It can be closer to your shelter, though it shouldn't be inside your home (unless you want the stink).

• Your diet is essential to your survival. The more balanced it is, the better. Try to get all your major food groups so you can stay strong and healthy. If you don't, you risk compromising your immune system and being susceptible to even the weakest of bacteria and viruses.

• This means detecting changes in air pressure, recognizing cloud systems, and even noticing smaller things, like how the smoke is rising from your fire (swirling smoke is not good). Animals can give you signals, too.

• You may want to take small steps. Moving to a farm or a rural area may be better than trying to go back to city life, at least immediately. Don't give a shock to your system if you don't have to. Baby steps will make it easier.

Expert Q&A

• Do not attract any wild animal with your actions. Never leave any traces of non-veg food or smelly socks and undergarments near your settlement as wild animals have a very good power of sensing such things. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Always keep some sort of weapon on you in case of attack. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Pick a site near water, but not too near! Some have awoken only to find themselves and their gear under a foot of water, be sure you are not one of those individuals. Be sure your campsite is well above the high water mark of any lakes or rivers. Never camp in a dry riverbed. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Even if the goal is to live without electricity, emergencies happen, and there may be a time when you need to call for help. You won't have electricity to charge your phone, but you can use a solar charger to power your devices when needed.
• Keep a good liquid castile soap on hand, like a bottle of Dr. Bronner's. You can use it to wash dishes, clothes, your hands, body, and even your hair! It also lasts a very long time and isn't bad for the environment.
• Plan your garden in advance so you can sow seeds at the best time for your climate. The Farmer's Almanac can be helpful, as can gardening books written specifically for your region.
• Wool is a great fabric for both clothing and blankets, as it can keep you warm without trapping heat. It also keeps moisture away from your skin and dries quickly when wet.

• Do not touch a bush with red stems. Thanks Helpful 16 Not Helpful 0
• Relying on Iodine-Purified water for more than about 5 weeks can begin to upset your stomach. If you happen to have enough tablets to last for that long, try boiling some water, too. Thanks Helpful 15 Not Helpful 0
• Do not touch anything with shiny leaves and beware of plants that have three leaves. Thanks Helpful 12 Not Helpful 0
• Black bears can often be scared away with loud noises. Brown bears and polar bears however are attracted to noise, the trick is to know where all three roam. Thanks Helpful 10 Not Helpful 1
• Always stay calm and busy, by accomplishing set tasks; confidence grows and will improve your ability to survive. Thanks Helpful 13 Not Helpful 2
• Don't sleep in the clothes you cooked in -- the scent will linger on your clothes and body, attracting bears and other animals. Thanks Helpful 11 Not Helpful 2
• When you go in the woods expect large swarms of painful insects wherever you go and prepare for the eventuality of meeting them. Beware dusk and dawn both often signal the onset of these swarms. Thanks Helpful 8 Not Helpful 1
• Try to battle your fears and win them over. It will help in your future life. Thanks Helpful 12 Not Helpful 3
• Don't leave your tent un-zipped during night. Wild animals have tendencies to crawl inside and some are dangerous. Thanks Helpful 12 Not Helpful 4
• Do not eat anything that has a milky liquid bleed; exceptions to this rule are dandelions and milkweed, both are edible and palatable if cooked correctly. Thanks Helpful 10 Not Helpful 3
• Do not eat ferns as some are poisonous. However if you contract an intestinal parasite those same ferns can be ingested in small amounts to rid yourself of the parasites. Thanks Helpful 8 Not Helpful 2
• Never go near an animal's young, especially bears and exotic cats. Thanks Helpful 10 Not Helpful 4
• Beware of colorful animals (generally bugs and snakes). They are often deadly and their stunning colours tell other animals to STAY AWAY! Examples of these animals are the poison dart frog, the coral snake and the Monarch Butterfly. Thanks Helpful 8 Not Helpful 5
• Tell someone you are going, where and for what time before you leave, so they can contact you when you are in danger. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 4
• Don't eat mushrooms that you cannot identify, as some edible varieties can have poisonous lookalikes. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0

Things You'll Need

• Water Source (creek or river)
• Food source (small game and plants)
• Warm clothing
• A way to start fires
• Thick, warm blanket
• Small skillet, small bowl and plate, fork, knife, and spoon.
• Multi-tool or Swiss army knife
• Flash light
• Weapon (in case of attacks)
• Water jug (in case of no water source)
• A device that can be used to communicate someone when in need.
• Camera (can be used to prove evidence if you are attacked by a wild animal and take scenic shots)

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/wilderness
• ↑ http://survival-mastery.com/skills/bushcraft/living-in-the-wilderness.html
• ↑ http://survivalcache.com/wilderness-survival/
• ↑ https://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/2014/09/11-ways-signal-help/
• ↑ https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoor-gear/a25095391/how-to-set-up-camp/
• ↑ https://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/hunting/2013/05/survival-shelters-15-best-designs-wilderness-shelters/
• ↑ https://authorizedboots.com/17-best-ways-to-purify-water-in-the-wild/
• ↑ https://www.wildernesscollege.com/pemmican-recipes.html
• ↑ https://www.outsideonline.com/1920651/5-essential-survival-tips
• ↑ http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/wilderness/survival/basic.htm
• ↑ http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/showthread.php?8382-Wilderness-Living-How-It-Really-Works

About This Article

To live in the wilderness, start by learning survival techniques like hunting, first-aid, gardening, and shelter-building by taking wilderness survival classes or studying independently. Next, make a list of the gear and supplies you'll need and pack them into a travel bag that's easy for you to carry. Then, choose a safe area near water to set up your camp site and build a shelter. Finally, get a fire going, plan your first meal, and start your new life in the wilderness! For tips on hunting and trapping food, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Brett • March 11, 2010 • Last updated: March 12, 2022

10 Wilderness Survival Lessons From Hatchet

The other day I was sorting through some old books and stumbled upon a childhood favorite, Hatchet , by Gary Paulsen. The last time I read it was nearly 15 years ago, so I decided to read it again for old times’ sake. For those of you who haven’t read Hatchet , the basic plot is this: A teenage city boy named Brian Robeson crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness while flying in a bush plane. The pilot dies, and the boy lives. All alone in the wilderness, Brian must learn how to survive in the wild for 54 days with nothing but a hatchet.

I discovered a few things while re-reading Hatchet . First, the story is just as good and entertaining as it was when I was 12 years old. It’s truly one of the best books for boys . Second, Hatchet is a super quick read. You can finish the book in one sitting if you want. I definitely recommend reading it this weekend. It beats surfing the web mindlessly . Finally, while Hatchet is a work of fiction and wasn’t written as a how-to survival guide, we can learn a lot from Brian Robeson on how to stay alive in the wilderness. Gary Paulsen tested everything he had Brian do himself just to make sure the story was authentic.

As a boy I made mental notes of what Brian did to survive; every boy secretly dreams and wonders about whether he’d be up for such a challenge. I couldn’t help taking away some lessons this time around, too. Here are 10 wilderness survival skills that a man of any age can glean from Hatchet. Note: All quotes are from the book.

1. Take Inventory of Your Supplies

“It kept coming back to that. He had nothing. Well, almost nothing. As a matter of fact, he thought, I don’t know what I’ve got or haven’t got. Maybe I should try and figure out just how I stand.”

Everything you have on your person is a potential survival tool. When Brian did his inventory, he had a torn parka, shoes, his trusty hatchet, a $20 bill, a pair of jeans, and a t-shirt. Not much. But with some creativity and ingenuity, he used a shoelace to fashion a bow and arrow and the $20 bill and hatchet to start a fire without matches . Follow Brian’s lead. Take advantage of everything you have.

2. Get Your Head Right

“Brian had once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things… Brian thought of him now- wondered how to stay positive and stay on top of things.”

Maintaining a positive attitude is perhaps the hardest and most important wilderness survival skill to develop. Studies have shown that when people adopt a positive attitude “their thinking is more creative, integrative, flexible, and open to information.” Moreover, positive people tend to bounce back more quickly from physical sickness and injuries than people with negative attitudes. These two traits, creativity and physical resiliency, are essential to survival.

When you’re alone in the wild with little or no provisions it’s easy to slip into depression and feel sorry for yourself. But pity parties won’t get you anywhere as Brian learned after one particularly rough night:

“He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work… When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done, all done with it, nothing had changed. His leg still hurt, it was still dark, he was still alone and the self-pity had accomplished nothing.”

In a previous article, we discussed the fact that resilient men have an internal locus of control . They’re the masters of their own destiny and tend to handle stress well. Those with an external locus of control curl up into a ball and cry big crocodile tears about how bad they have it. Which man do you think is going to survive when their back is to the wall?

While you should maintain a positive attitude while lost in the wild, you don’t want to delude yourself into thinking that things are better than they really are. First, you only set yourself up for disappointment when things don’t go your way, and second, maintaining a realistic outlook will keep you from getting complacent. You always need to be planning and working as though you’re in your situation for the long haul.

In short, hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

3. Learn to S.T.O.P.

“With his mind opened and thoughts happening it all tried to come in with a rush, all of what had occurred and he could not take it. The whole thing turned into a confused jumble that made no sense. So he fought it down and tried to take one thing at a time.”

A key to Brian’s survival was that he did something that wilderness survival experts recommend without even knowing he was doing it. He frequently S.T.O.P.-ed: S top, T hink, O bserve, P lan. Throughout the story we’ll find Brian frantically attempting to complete a task. For example, when he tried to make a fire for the first time, he rushed the whole process and kept coming up empty. Frustrated, he stopped and deliberately thought about what was needed to start a fire. After observing that he didn’t have adequate oxygen or air for combustion, he made a plan to blow on the sparks when they landed in the tinder. And just like that he had fire.

The key to surviving in the wilderness is keeping yourself from panicking. Sometimes the best thing you can do in a survival situation is to do nothing and just think. You’ll save yourself a lot of wasted effort.

4. Small Mistakes Are Magnified in the Wilderness

“Small mistakes could turn into disasters, funny little mistakes could snowball so that while you were still smiling at the humor you could find yourself looking at death. In the city if he made a mistake usually there was a way to rectify it, make it all right. Now it was different…”

In the wild, small mistakes can kill. If you break your leg in suburbia, you’ll just have to prop your foot up on a pillow for a few days and hobble around on crutches. An inconvenience, but you’ll get by. Now, break that leg in the middle of nowhere and you have a world of problems. You won’t be able to walk, which means you won’t be able to hunt. If you can’t hunt, you can’t eat. If you don’t eat, you die. All because of a stupid broken leg.

There were a few moments in the book where Brian made some small mistakes that could have created huge setbacks. Eating and puking the “gut berries,” not adequately protecting his shelter which allowed a porcupine to inject a couple dozen quills into his leg, and getting sprayed in the face by a skunk. Many of these mistakes could have been avoided if he was simply more careful.

Granted, completely avoiding mistakes isn’t possible, but you should limit them as much as you can. Taking the time to S.T.O.P. can definitely prevent most blunders. Staying constantly vigilant will help, too.  Be aware of your surroundings. You never know if you’ll end up face to face with an angry mother bear or a raging bull moose.

5. Always Carry a Good Tool

“Brian took the sack and opened the top. Inside there was a hatchet, the kind with a steel handle and a rubber handgrip. The head was in a stout leather case that had a brass-riveted belt loop.”

The hatchet. That tool literally saved young Brian Robeson’s life. With it, he made a fire that offered warmth and protection at night and created spears and arrows he used to hunt for food. If he didn’t have that hatchet, Brian would have been bug food in just a few days. Any cutting tool would come in handy out in the wild. Even a lowly pocket knife . But if I were out in the wild, I would want a quality multi-tool like a Leatherman. I own one and they’ve come in real handy during my outdoor excursions. However, a new multi-tool has recently caught my eye, and I’ve put it on my wish list. The Atax puts Brian’s hatchet to shame. This thing does it all. It’s an ax, a skinner, a hammer, a wrench, a compass, and get this, an arrow launcher. Put this in the hands of a crafty, able-bodied man, and he’ll not only survive the wild, he’ll conquer it.

6. Know How and Where to Get Clean Water

“It was water. But he did not know if he could drink it. Nobody ever told him if you could or could not drink lakes.”

People often underestimate the importance of water in a survival situation. Your body can still function with little or no food for weeks, but go without water for a few days and you die. Water isn’t hard to find. It’s everywhere (well, except for deserts). The problem is finding clean water. Lucky for Brian he crashed in the middle of the Canadian wilderness right next to a clear, pristine lake. He could dunk his head right into the water, drink it, and not get sick.

You’ll probably not be as fortunate. Most wilderness survival experts recommend boiling water before drinking it to kill any harmful pathogens. This technique, of course, assumes you have a pot on hand. If you don’t have a pot, several techniques exist to procure drinking water like collecting rain or creating a water still. It’s also possible to create filtering systems with things you have on hand, like a t-shirt.

7. Make a Safe Shelter

“Protect food and have a good shelter. Not just a shelter to keep the wind and rain out, but a shelter to protect, a shelter to make him safe.”

After finding water, finding (or creating) shelter to protect you from the elements should be your next priority. Take advantage of your surroundings when creating a shelter. Rock overhangs make excellent shelters. That’s what Brian used. If you don’t have a rock overhang nearby, you’ll need to use materials like limbs, leaves, and pine boughs to make a shelter. A lean-to is an easy and popular wilderness survival shelter. Other shelter designs exist and each one has their pros and cons.

8. Find Food

“He had learned the most important thing, the truly vital knowledge that drives all creatures in the forest — food is all. Food was simply everything. All things in the woods, from insects to fish to bears, were always, always looking for food — it was the great single driving influence in nature.”

Most of the book describes Brian’s attempts to procure food. He spent the bulk of his time scavenging for something to eat. He starts off gorging on a strange berry that makes him puke. After that, he discovers raspberries growing in the wild and adds them to his menu.

But man can not survive on fruit alone. Brian’s body needed protein to give him strength. He found his first dose of protein in the form of raw turtle eggs. They were hard to keep down at first, but he forced himself to drink the nourishing substance. Soon he added fish and birds to his diet. You can prepare to feed yourself in the wild now by becoming familiar with edible plants, berries, and roots . Moreover, learn how to create rudimentary traps to capture small game .

9. Know How to Start a Fire Without Matches

“He swung harder, held the hatchet so it would hit a longer, sliding blow, and the black rock exploded in fire… There could be fire here, he thought. I will have a fire here, he thought, and struck again — I will have fire from the hatchet.”

Fire provides warmth, light, protection from animals and insects, and a rescue signal. Fire is also a big morale booster — almost like a companion. That’s what Brian noticed when he created his first fire. “I have a friend, he thought — I have a friend now. A hungry friend, but a good one. I have a friend named fire.”

When you’re in a wilderness survival situation, don’t count on matches. Even if you have them, windy and wet situations will render them virtually useless. Thus, it’s essential that a man know how to start a fire without matches . Brian got his fire going by striking his metal hatchet blade against the quartzite in his shelter. You should try learning several methods so you’re prepared for any situation. In addition to knowing how to start a fire, you should also know how to build a campfire appropriate for your different needs.

10. Prepare a Signal

“While he was working he decided to have the fire ready and if he heard an engine, or even thought he heard a plane, he would run up with a burning limb and set off the signal fire.”

In the wild, surviving is your top priority. Your second priority should be to get the hell out of there and back to safety. Fire works as a great signal. Brian prepared a fire lay that he could light quickly as soon as he heard a plane. A reflection mirror is another great option. While you can purchase a special signal mirror, any shiny, metallic object could work in a pinch. You can also create search signals by using rocks which contrast with the ground’s color to spell out “SOS” or “HELP.” The letters you create should be at least 9 feet tall in order for pilots to see them from the air.

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• Essay on Security

Example Of Essay On How To Survive In The Wilderness

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Security , Media , Homelessness , Real Estate , Soil , Building , Internet , Fire

Published: 12/23/2019

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Building a fire and a shelter are two of the first things you should do when you’re stranded in the wilderness (“How To”). You should try to accomplish this before night time falls to ensure that you’ll have warmth and protection throughout the night.

How to Build a Campfire

Fire is an important part of life. Whether you’re safe at home or stranded in the wilderness, you will need fire for warmth, light, cooking, and protection (Vaux). Building a campfire is then one of the first things that you should do when you’re stranded in the wilderness. Aside from the benefits previously mentioned, a campfire can also serve as a way for rescuers to find you.

Match or Lighter Magnifying glass or a pair of eyeglasses Magnesium and a block of flint Two dry sticks Dry leaves or twigs

1. Build a spark by performing any of the following steps:

Use a match or a lighter to light a pile of dry leaves or twigs.

Use a magnifying glass or a pair of eyeglasses to concentrate the sun’s rays on a pile of leaves or twigs.

Figure 1 Building a spark with a magnifying glass (Fotolia)

Strike a chunk of magnesium against a block of flint.

Figure 2 Building a spark with magnesium and flint ("Survival Magnesium") Rub two dry sticks together really fast.

Figure 3 Building a spark by rubbing two sticks ("Starting a Fire") 2. Build a fire.

Be sure to build a fire at least ten feet away from flammable objects such as bushes or trees.

a. Make a slack and small pile of kindling with materials that easily combust. Examples are dry leaves, napkins, and paper. b. Build a small pyramid of dry twigs and sticks above and around the kindling pile. c. Keep adding logs and larger sticks as the fire continues to intensify.

Be careful not to smother the flames as you add the logs.

Figure 4 Adding logs to the fire (Ariel) How to Build a Shelter You need to build a shelter for protection from the elements like the wind and rain, especially during the night. It will also help make you a bit more comfortable as you wait for rescue to arrive.

Branches Pine needles Leaves

1. Cut branches from the underside of the trees. 2. Assemble the branches into a makeshift tent.

You can use heavier branches to make a frame.

3. Make sure that the frame is anchored well into the ground.

Figure 5 Making a makeshift tent (Rempe)

4. Lay pine needles on the ground to have a comfortable bed. You can also use large leaves for roofing.

Now that you have built a fire and a shelter, you should now start to get oriented with your

surroundings and start to look for food.

Works Cited Ariel, Roshana. “How to Build a Fire: The Art of Fire Design.” rightlivingsite.com. Right Living Site, n.d. Web. 18 Jun 2012 . Fotolia. “magnifying glass make fire © saidin b jusoh #39570125.” fotolia.com. Fotolia, 2012.

Web. 18 Jun 2012 . “How To: Survive in the Wilderness.” askmen.com. IGN Entertainment, 2012. Web. 18 Jun 2012 . Rempe, Stephanie. “How to Make Survival Shelter out of Sticks.” ehow.com. Demand Media, Inc., 19 Aug. 2011. Web. 18 Jun 2012 . “Start a Fire.” flickr.com. Yahoo!, 2012. Web. 18 Jun 2012

. “Survival Magnesium Flint Stone Fire Starter Lighter Kit.” wikecamera.ivoire-blog.com. Ivoire

Blog, 9 Jun 2011. Web. 18 Jun 2012 . Vaux, Robert. “Why is Fire so Important to Survive?.” ehow.com. Demand Media, Inc., 2012. Web. 18 Jun 2012 .

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Survival — Exploring the Essential Qualities that Help Us Survive

Exploring The Essential Qualities that Help Us Survive

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Resilience and adaptability, resourcefulness and creativity, emotional intelligence, perseverance and determination.

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Survival Stories

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/a-brief-history-of-hikers-getting-trapped-under-boulders/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "hero", "title": "a brief history of hikers getting trapped under boulders"}}' > a brief history of hikers getting trapped under boulders, a hiker rescued in california last week is the latest to find themselves pinned under a big rock. but they're far from the first—or the unluckiest—to have a bad encounter with a boulder., latest in survival stories, >", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/the-mountains-show-no-mercy/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "the mountains show no mercy"}}'> the mountains show no mercy.

On the "easy" climbs up Mexico's volcanoes, ignorance and arrogance can be deadly. A classic story from the Backpacker archives.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/six-days-stranded-in-the-snow/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Six Days Stranded in the Snow on Mt. Hood"}}'> Six Days Stranded in the Snow on Mt. Hood

In 2013, Mary Grimm got lost amid whiteout conditions on Mt. Hood. She spent six days alone before anyone found her.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/the-new-movie-infinite-storm-chronicles-a-one-woman-mountain-rescue/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "The New Movie “Infinite Storm” Chronicles a One-Woman Mountain Rescue"}}'> The New Movie “Infinite Storm” Chronicles a One-Woman Mountain Rescue

In this film based on a true incident on Mount Washington, particulars are off but the message is hope.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/surviving-a-100-foot-fall-in-arizona/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "I Survived a 100-Foot Fall"}}'> I Survived a 100-Foot Fall

Amber Kohnhorst was hundreds of miles from her nearest friend when she fell down a cliff and broke her back.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/out-alive-struck-by-lightning/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "What’s it Like to Survive a Lightning Strike?"}}'> What’s it Like to Survive a Lightning Strike?

A heart-stopping bolt hits one hiker and levels a group of his friends who then fight to resuscitate him.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/learn-from-our-mistakes-backpacker-writers-share-their-worst-screw-ups/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Learn From Our Mistakes: Backpacker Writers Share Their Worst Screw-Ups"}}'> Learn From Our Mistakes: Backpacker Writers Share Their Worst Screw-Ups

From a leaky tent to a bout of hypothermia, these misadventures left us wiser in the end.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/missing-in-action-how-a-backcountry-ranger-with-28-years-experience-disappeared/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "He Was a Backcountry Ranger With 28 Years of Experience. Then He Vanished."}}'> He Was a Backcountry Ranger With 28 Years of Experience. Then He Vanished.

Did ranger Randy Morgenson succumb to disaster or despair?

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/surviving-a-deadly-desert-hiking-accident/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "I Thought I Could Handle the Hike Alone. Then I Fell."}}'> I Thought I Could Handle the Hike Alone. Then I Fell.

When his brother turned back a few miles into their overnight hike, Jacob Velarde decided to continue solo. It was a mistake.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/an-accident-and-an-injury-on-a-canyon-hike/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "First, the Long Fall. Then, the Even Longer Wait."}}'> First, the Long Fall. Then, the Even Longer Wait.

When his brother turned back a few miles into their overnight hike, Jacob Velarde decided to continue solo. Then, he fell.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/how-an-ultrarunner-saved-a-lost-hikers-life/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "How an Ultrarunner Saved a Lost Hiker’s Life"}}'> How an Ultrarunner Saved a Lost Hiker’s Life

In June of 2020, Jeremy Humphrey used his intimate knowledge of his local mountain range to rescue a missing hiker.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/shock-and-awe/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "After Losing Their Eyes and Leg in Iraq, Rainier Was Just One More Mountain to Climb."}}'> After Losing Their Eyes and Leg in Iraq, Rainier Was Just One More Mountain to Climb.

You think climbing Rainier is tough? Try it carrying wounds from a war, then see who you pity.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/two-of-my-friends-suffered-separate-accidents-on-the-same-peak-only-one-survived/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Two of My Friends Suffered Separate Accidents on the Same Peak. Only One Survived."}}'> Two of My Friends Suffered Separate Accidents on the Same Peak. Only One Survived.

In a wilderness emergency, the tiniest details can be a matter of life and death. After a pair of accidents leave one one young adventurer injured and another deceased, Hayden Seder ponders the difference a stroke of luck can make.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/a-slip-and-then-disaster/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "A Slip, and Then Disaster"}}'> A Slip, and Then Disaster

Courtney Henderson, 19, and Gavin Caruso, 23, fell 50 feet during a storm in June of 2020. Only one survived.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-sliding-down-a-mountain/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Sliding Down a Mountain"}}'> Out Alive: Sliding Down a Mountain

Taylor Gibler, 26, barreled towards frozen peril after stumbling on Mt. Baker in June of 2020.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/the-mystery-on-mount-washington/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "The Mystery on Mount Washington"}}'> The Mystery on Mount Washington

Pam Bales’ solo hike in October 2010 turned into a daring rescue of a fellow hiker. But she was left with more questions than answers.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/i-survived-a-lightning-strike/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "I Survived a Lightning Strike"}}'> I Survived a Lightning Strike

Minko Nikolov, 32, suffered a near-fatal lightning strike while scouting a bouldering objective in Rocky Mountain National Park in August 2019.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-fall-from-a-cliff/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Fall From a Cliff"}}'> Out Alive: Fall From a Cliff

When Shaina Maytum was 21, a slip in the desert left her broken, alone, and unable to move.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/pinned-to-a-mountain-by-a-storm/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Pinned to a Mountain By a Storm"}}'> Pinned to a Mountain By a Storm

Mountaineers Yevgeniy Krasnitskiy (39), Vasily Aushev (35), Constantin Toporov (37), and Rus Khasbulatov (33) survived a days-long storm on Mt. Rainier in June 2019.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/sleepingwalking-in-the-wilderness/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Sleepwalking Into the Wilderness"}}'> Sleepwalking Into the Wilderness

In October 2018, Rob Lundgren, 66, woke from a dream to find himself in a nightmare—lost in Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/chased-by-a-flash-flood-out-alive/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Chased by a Flash Flood"}}'> Chased by a Flash Flood

For J.P. Rose, 34, and Christina Fialho, 35, an idyllic dayhike in the Caribbean in 2017 turned into a nightmare.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-injured-and-cold-in-the-montana-wilderness/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost, Injured, and Cold"}}'> Lost, Injured, and Cold

For George Brown, 68, a morning trail run in August 2018 became more than 40 hours stranded in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness with a broken leg.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-in-an-ice-cave/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost In an Ice Cave"}}'> Lost In an Ice Cave

In August 2018, Spencer Christiansen, 31, and his wife Jess, 24, spent nearly two days lost in Wyoming’s Darby Ice Caves.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-caught-in-a-whiteout/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Caught in a Whiteout"}}'> Out Alive: Caught in a Whiteout

Dylan “Flip” Zitawi, 25, and Colton “Rook” Lulfs, 21, spent 60 hours in a snow pit near Indian Pass, Washington, when a blizzard struck in 2017.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/frostbitten-and-stranded-eric-lemarque/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Frostbitten and Stranded"}}'> Frostbitten and Stranded

When Eric LeMarque was rescued off California’s Mammoth Mountain in 2004, he had no way of knowing the hardship was just beginning.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/mauled-by/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Mauled by a Mountain Lion"}}'> Mauled by a Mountain Lion

How do you move on after a cougar tries to kill you? Following an attack in 2004, Anne Hjelle got back on the trail.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/mental-trauma-accident-on-mt-rainier/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "First, the Accident. Then, the Invisible Trauma."}}'> First, the Accident. Then, the Invisible Trauma.

After a fall on Mt. Rainier in 2012, Stacy Wren Liedle found herself dealing with a different kind of injury.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/struck-by-a-heart-attack-on-a-mountain/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Struck by a Heart Attack on a Mountain"}}'> Struck by a Heart Attack on a Mountain

Jon Carlton, then 38, survived a massive heart attack while backcountry snowboarding on 12,400-foot Esha Peak near Mammoth Lakes, California, in April 2016.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/surviving-like-a-hunter-gatherer-for-backpackers/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Eating Mice and Building Traps: What it Takes to Survive in the Wilderness"}}'> Eating Mice and Building Traps: What it Takes to Survive in the Wilderness

The best way to ensure survival in the wild? Learn how to live like a hunter-gatherer.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/the-best-survival-stories/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "The 10 Most Popular Survival Stories from Backpacker"}}'> The 10 Most Popular Survival Stories from Backpacker

From strandings at sea to grizzly attacks, we collect our readers' favorite tales from the brink.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/surviving-on-a-colorado-fourteener/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Stranded in the Alpine Zone"}}'> Stranded in the Alpine Zone

Shuei Kato, 37, survived wind, cold, and hallucinations for four days in the Colorado backcountry in October, 2017.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-in-the-rainforest-new-zealand-david-tamowski/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost in the Rainforest"}}'> Lost in the Rainforest

David Tamowski, 58, was alone in the New Zealand bush for 10 days in April 2015.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/the-day-a-water-bottle-saved-my-life/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "The Day a Water Bottle Saved My Life"}}'> The Day a Water Bottle Saved My Life

A rib-breaking fall was my wake-up call.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/trapped-in-a-canyon-with-a-broken-leg/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Trapped in a Canyon With a Broken Leg"}}'> Trapped in a Canyon With a Broken Leg

Brigham Holladay, 26, fell while trying to escape a slot canyon near Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park in March 2018.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-and-injured-in-the-desert/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost and Injured in the Desert"}}'> Lost and Injured in the Desert

Roger Dannen, 75, slipped 60 feet down a rock face in remote Indian Canyons, near Palm Springs, California, in January 2018. He survived in the desert for three days.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-benighted/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Trapped on a Mountain in Winter"}}'> Trapped on a Mountain in Winter

Soon we both stopped shivering, and neither of us could feel our feet. Matt turned to me. “Tommy, we could die out here.”

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-blind-and-running-out-of-time/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost, Blind, and Running Out of Time"}}'> Lost, Blind, and Running Out of Time

In late May 2017, Marcus Mazzaferri, 25, lost his pack and glasses fording a river in Yosemite National Park, leaving him lost and gearless for 24 hours in late-season snow and freezing temperatures.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/free-falling-in-a-canyon/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Free Falling in a Utah Canyon"}}'> Out Alive: Free Falling in a Utah Canyon

Niki Rellon, 40, fell 45 feet during a canyoneering expedition in November, 2013.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Trapped on a Cliff Side"}}'> Trapped on a Cliff Side

April Meads, 19, slipped down a cliff in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge and was rescued with an improvised rope in May 2015.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/out-alive-volcanic-eruption/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "It Was Supposed to Be the Hike of Their Lives. Then, the Volcano Erupted."}}'> It Was Supposed to Be the Hike of Their Lives. Then, the Volcano Erupted.

When we awoke in the blizzard of ash, we were ready to run for our lives. Was the ash toxic? Would slag soon fall from the sky like meteorites?

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/out-alive-swept-out-to-sea/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Swept Out to Sea"}}'> Out Alive: Swept Out to Sea

Greg Barnes, 28, was swept out to sea on March 30, 2015, while on a hike near Pagat Cave, Guam.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/five-adventure-books-you-need-to-read-this-summer/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Five Adventure Books You Need to Read This Summer"}}'> Five Adventure Books You Need to Read This Summer

We're in summer's last stretch—but the warm weather isn't over yet. Get some inspiration from these five volumes.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-underwater/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Underwater"}}'> Out Alive: Underwater

A couple flips their canoe in class V rapids on Northern Ontario's Kopka River

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-severe-hypothermia/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Severe Hypothermia"}}'> Out Alive: Severe Hypothermia

Lost in an Alaskan blizzard, one man struggles to stave off hypothermia.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/disorientation/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Disorientation"}}'> Disorientation

A new mother's true tale of getting lost in the wilderness.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-stories/out-alive-survive-an-avalanche/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: We Survived an Avalanche"}}'> Out Alive: We Survived an Avalanche

Adam Herman, 24, and Conor Lodge, 22, were caught in an avalanche in Tuckerman Ravine on New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington on December 28, 2013.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-alone-with-a-compound-fracture/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Alone with a Compound Fracture"}}'> Out Alive: Alone with a Compound Fracture

Gregg Hein, 33, of Fresno, California, survived six days on remote Mt. Goddard in Kings Canyon National Park in July 2014.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-lost-and-blind/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Lost and Blind"}}'> Out Alive: Lost and Blind

David Snider, 57, fell, lost his glasses, and spent five days wandering lost in Washington’s Olympic Range in May 2012.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-lost-in-the-desert/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Lost in the Desert"}}'> Out Alive: Lost in the Desert

Ed Rosenthal, 68, spent six days lost in Joshua Tree National Park in September, 2010.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-caught-by-a-strainer/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Caught by a Strainer"}}'> Out Alive: Caught by a Strainer

A kayaker struggles to stay afloat when a tangle of trees pins her boat.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-broken-leg-lost-and-alone/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Broken Leg, Lost, and Alone"}}'> Out Alive: Broken Leg, Lost, and Alone

A disoriented hiker snaps her leg in a gruesome fall and spends the next three days trying to crawl her way to safety.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-trapped-in-an-ice-tunnel/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Trapped in an Ice Tunnel"}}'> Out Alive: Trapped in an Ice Tunnel

A solo hiker tries to claw her way out of a frozen cave after a winter pathway collapses.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-chased-by-widowmakers/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Out Alive: Chased by Widowmakers"}}'> Out Alive: Chased by Widowmakers

A violent storm ravages a stressed forest, threatening to crush two dayhikers.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/worst-nightmare-cold/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Worst Nightmare: Cold"}}'> Worst Nightmare: Cold

A hair-raising tale of wilderness terror that will haunt your backcountry dreams

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/worst-nightmare-breathless/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Worst Nightmare: Breathless"}}'> Worst Nightmare: Breathless

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/worst-nightmare-blindsided/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "worst nightmare: blindsided"}}'> worst nightmare: blindsided, >", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/worst-nightmare-man-down/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "worst nightmare: man down"}}'> worst nightmare: man down, >", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/worst-nightmare-entwined/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "worst nightmare: entwined"}}'> worst nightmare: entwined, >", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/the-lost-boy-of-the-ozarks/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "the lost boy of the ozarks"}}'> the lost boy of the ozarks.

After three decades of silence, a reporter reveals the story he was afraid to write.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/rescue-me/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Rescue Me!"}}'> Rescue Me!

On a snowy night in New Hampshire, Congressional candidate Gary Dodds crashed his car, wandered into the woods, and collapsed. Twenty-seven hours later, rescuers carried him out. And then the real drama began.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/a-dozen-ways-to-die/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "A Dozen Ways to Die"}}'> A Dozen Ways to Die

How do hikers meet their maker in the backcountry? The answers may surprise you.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/survival-story-surviving-a-grizzly-attack-in-glacier-national-park/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Surviving a Grizzly Attack in Glacier National Park"}}'> Surviving a Grizzly Attack in Glacier National Park

On August 25, 2005, Johan Otter and his 18-year-old daughter, Jenna, hiked right into the worst nightmare of any Glacier National Park backpacker: a 300-pound mother grizzly protecting two cubs. Here, in his own words, the 45-year-old physical therapist from Escondido, CA, shares the incredible story of their life-and-death struggle.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/lost-true-tales-of-wilderness-treks-gone-desperately-wrong/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "Lost: True Tales of Wilderness Treks Gone Desperately Wrong"}}'> Lost: True Tales of Wilderness Treks Gone Desperately Wrong

From snowblindness to wrong turns, everyday wilderness adventures can turn ugly if you're not prepared for everything.

>", "path": "https://www.backpacker.com/survival/the-mountain-knows/", "listing_type": "category", "location": "list", "title": "The Mountain Knows"}}'> The Mountain Knows

When our firstborn son left us, the word "burial" was never uttered.

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Survival in the Wilderness

The little girl who loved Gordon is a horror story narrated by Stephen King in a psychological novel on the adaptation techniques in the wilderness presenting the survival tactics. The novel presents a story of little girl of about seven years who got lost in the wilderness or what the story presents as ‘desert wild in the woods.’ Although there is a great danger in desert wild, the girl goes ahead and sleeps in the wilderness under a tree. The psychological mind set of the girl is conditioned to reflect the absence of danger that is the reason the girl comfortably slept under a tree while the wild beast were roaming around. The conscience of the girl never reflected the surrounding due to the psychological settings in children and their adaptive mechanisms does not at this age reflect the presence of danger; therefore the girl has no worry spending the night under a tree (Stephen 23).

Trisha is the name given to this girl lost in the wood in the novel by Stephen King where the rescuer of the girl carries her on the arms after a confrontation with a bear. Trisha was only left with a boiled egg, a bottle of water, a Walkman, a Game Boy and a bottle of Surge. When she became helpless and her efforts to trace back her way became futile, she opted to listen to her walkman to keep her busy and whether she might get news of her search. This is the intelligent and wisdom required when a person is totally lost in the wilderness and deeper forests. The girl also concentrated on her favorite base ball on her walkman at least to beef up her mood in the lonely woodland at the heart of the forest. Therefore it took courage, confidence and hope for a little girl like Trisha to make her survival in the wilderness especially so deep like where she was. The survival in this kind of environment is not easy and the girl had to utilize all the available opportunities at least to prolong her stay and keep her alive. It took wisdom and creativity to enhance the survival of such a little girl in the woods a little longer (Stephen 29).

She conserved the little food she had by substituting it with edible flora which included; fiddleheads, beech nuts and checkerberries. The survival tactics required in this situation are those of rationality and creativity, Trisha decided to follow the available water body since she recognized that most of them lead to civilization where she could eventually get help. It also takes courage especially for a little girl like Trisha for sanity maintenance recognizing the ultimate danger of death that faced her deeper in the woods. Quick thought and strong character are also vital for survival portrayed by how Trisha despite her weak conditions due to pneumonia faces and challenges the bear sustaining efforts till her rescuers arrived. Strong memory is also paramount since her attack to the bear was similar to how she watched Tom Gordon does in his plays (Stan, Christopher and Hank 12).   

Her courage came from the hallucinations she got while at the woods of Tom Gordon here representing the supernatural beings mostly one referred as God. As she continued deeper in the wilderness, she believed to confront the God of the lost while fear and anxiety build up. Unfortunately she came into contact with a wild beast of which she hits with a walkman like a baseball and forces it to return back a character that requires extraordinary courage to overcome and hold for survival. The survival of a kid in the desert wild, deeper forests and the woodland may take two to three days. When it exceeds there, it becomes disastrous since little children are not only prone to danger of wild beasts and other wild animals but also are vulnerable to diseases like pneumonia which had already attacked Trisha. Due to the psychological configuration of human beings, it becomes hard for someone to race back his/her way easily due to influence of some natural phenomenon like what Trisha thought that by following the swamp she would come across civilization settlements. She is however rescued by the hunter who was following the bear and drawn near by the confrontation (Stan, Christopher and Hank 19).

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• Literary Analysis
• Blog Article
• Business Report
• Motivation Letter for the University of East Anglia