Practical Skills Pt. 2: Survivalist

One of the first full series of books I read was the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It was this cute light blue gingham box set where each book, from Little House in the Big Woods to The First Four Years, were a different color. I devoured the series. It was fascinating to me, how the entire life of Laura Ingalls Wilder was documented. In telling the stories of her early childhood through to marriage, Laura gave a vivid account of the lifestyle in the developing United States in the late 1800's. Most importantly to me, she gave careful details about how her family survived.

The difficulties of tilling and farming previously wild land were recounted. Various recipes using wild or minimal ingredients could be found on the pages. The meticulous ways Mary and Laura went from making their own corn husk dolls to sewing their own clothes made me consider the ease with which I obtained my own toys and clothes. Most importantly were the ways the family would settle in an area, with little to no resources, and build a home from logs, stones, and mud. I thought about the wariness of the family after they all came down with malaria, which they assumed was caused by the watermelons they ate but was actually from the mosquitoes by the river. Things like household insulation and fuel for steady heat were out of mind before reading through The Long Winter. I developed a new appreciation for maple syrup in general. Pretty sure I was seven or eight when I read them all.

This instilled in me an intense desire to read stories about characters surviving. I didn't really have words for what exactly I was looking for until I read My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It was about a boy named Sam who up and went to live in the wilderness of the Catskills. While Sam starts off with some food and a loose idea of what to do, he quickly realizes that he needs more knowledge. He researches different types of vegetation he can eat. He makes a home out of a hollow tree, which he uses to learn exactly how to make a chimney out of natural clay. He ends up training a bird of prey. He skins a deer to make clothes and preserves the meat by smoking it. Every little detail about roughing it that was described, I drank up. Same went with the brutal conditions in Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. And the food preparation and preservation in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. And the sanitizing of rusty pots and old utensils in the first Boxcar Children book by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

So I previously wrote about practical skills - stuff I know, stuff I've learned by living it. Now, I have never gone full wilderness. The closest I get is going camping every once and a while, and that has all of the supplies I bring with me though I do rough it more than most. Also I don't think most camp sites would be okay with me hacking down logs to build a cabin or burn out a big tree for shelter! But through my readings, not only have I learned that you can dry out and grind acorns into an edible flour, or saw dust can be used to insulate ice to prevent melting even on the hottest days, but I've also grown an appreciation of all of the survival skills I don't need to call upon regularly.

I'm pretty lucky in my suburban home where I don't need to boil and purify the water I drink and research the quality of the food I've scavenged. At the same time I've always found this sort of skill set worth knowing, just in case something terrible happens - I'll be living it up in the post-apocalyptic dystopia! Or maybe I'll just write about it. Who knows!