Above are a couple photos from my Advanced Standard Class at Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School in New Jersey. These were taken a few years ago, but I'm gearing up for this survival experiment in Oregon so I thought I'd share a couple photos with you. The top one is of me from our camouflage practice, and the bottom one is the inside of the debris hut I built for sleeping in. It's built like stick and leaf and debris cocoon that you wiggle into and plug up after you're in. It did keep me warm at night, without a sleeping bag, but I learned not to use moldy leaves!
I'm still in Florida, in the process of recovering from a minor surgery, but enjoying the silver lining of READING and lounging around, spending time with the kids and relaxing.
I'm re-reading "Tom Brown's Field Guide To Nature And Survival For Children" which has some similar information as his "Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival", but with a slant for children to give us adults some ideas for teaching this to them, including games to play!
As the time draws near to go to Oregon and quest for survival, I realize more and more how ill prepared I am! I was grateful when I read in his book that it is important to prepare through the honing of wilderness skills BEFORE going into survival. That makes good sense.
Will I actually go into full survival this summer? I think it's real to say that working toward that goal is the only thing that will actually push me enough to practice the skills like I should. Set a date and work toward it!
I am also considering running a vision quest class this summer as well. If I do it will most likely be the last week of August, but that could change at this point.
I'm excited to get to Oregon and spend time with family, and play some survival and awareness games with my grandchildren!
Oh, by the way, Tom has been teaching a lot of classes online lately. I think he may continue to do so, which really enables more people to learn from him, especially those who can't go to a physical class. I have taken many of his online classes as have many of my friends. We find them to be excellent.
Here's the link to the school for anyone interested in his classes:
http://www.trackerschool.com/
