Grenada and the Tropics

I arrived in Grenada last Tuesday and its vastly different than any environment I have ever been in. We haven't reached any uninhabited islands yet, as Grenada is relatively developed. Most of the beaches here are privately owned and any of my bushcraft skills I would like to practice here I fear would attract too much attention. Tomorrow we make passage for Curriacou, an island that has a lengthy history with ancient peoples who migrated there from Northern South America. One account I read described "pottery literally falling into the ocean" from the ancient inhabitants.
My plans are to make a series of tropical survival videos with the help of my brother, so if anyone has any advice or suggestions in this area please share, as there appears to be a relatively steep learning curve in the tropics, in my opinion.

Beginners Guide to Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills Part 1

The realm of the skills used by our ancestors, and survival in general can, to some, seem like a daunting and overwhelming place, fraught with hardship and discouraging moments which all too often lead to a "this just isn't my thing" mentality. On a regular basis when I mention the skills i practice and teach, I am greeted with the all too familiar retort: "I would die if i got lost in the woods."
This mental barrier of doubt gets in the way of learning new skills, the though that because it implies leaving your TV behind and cooking on a fire, it is somehow a difficult and painful way to get by, or live. The purpose of this, and others that will follow it are to give some guidelines and direction to those who are interested, but have no idea where to start when it comes to learning these skills.

First of all, locate a teacher or mentor if possible. When I began, I managed to get by for a short while by teaching myself to sew leather, knap small arrowheads, and generally spend lots of time in the woods making various odds and ends, but when it came to the desire to learn the hard skills like fire making, shelter building, finding water, or more advanced knapping skills, I realized I would need a teacher (or teachers) if I wanted to progress to a proficient level. My answer was MAPS Group at the time, where I attended many gatherings and learned many of the skills I know today. Other teachers seemed to find me, my friend Bill Ewing happened to have extensive bow drill knowledge, and had a very natural way of teaching me which woods to use and how to adjust the set to make it work.
Look up nearby tracking groups, anthropology departments at some universities teach knapping, or atleast have someone on staff who knows something of knapping. If you are on the east coast in the Mid Atlantic Area, there are several schools you can take classes from such as Ancestral Knowledge and Earth Connection. MAPS Group also has a list of people who can offer advice on certain skills.

Which skills should I learn first?
Good question. Perhaps a good way to decide is to put it into perspective. Eventualy you will hear of the Order of Survival. No, its not some mysterious cult dating back to a group of 15th century survival monks, the Order of Survival is the 4 things you need to live on a day to day basis, and in the long term, which are:

Shelter
Water
Fire
Food

This order is not set in stone however, since your situation will dictate which is more important, but this is more or less the order of importance of these 4 things.
That being said, I personally consider fire making one of the first things you should learn and become proficient with. It can be learned any where you are, there are a number of ways to go about it, and it covers a lot of your physical and mental needs. Being able to make fire can dramaticly increase your chances, so it is always a good thing to have a number of ways to do it on hand (and have some level of mastery of those ways).
I'm a big proponent of controlled chaos, putting yourself into less than desirable situation in order to take your skills (and your edge) to new levels. Its important to always push your limits, do not simply make a fire with a bow drill then put it away and decide you have mastered it, because you haven't (can you ever truly master anything?). Start adding in new factors, new obstacles, new challenges. Try it in the rain, in the snow, in a hail storm, break your arm and fine a way to make it work then. Well.. don't actually break your arm obviously, you can just tie it behind your back or something, but you get my point!
I'd like to share a story I often share with my students when teaching fire making.
Last Febuary on a particularly cold day, I was in the hilly woodlands of central Maryland. I was showing my girlfriend (at the time) around a patch of woods I had been going to for a number of years. THis particular patch of woods was a steep sided valley with a fairly deep, and at times wide creek running through it. It was cold enough that ice covered large patches. So, being the manly survival so-called "expert" that I was thinking I was, I decided it was a very good idea to show her how to cross ice without falling through. We found a patch of ice in a rather deep section of the creek and I laid down on my stomach and army crawled across the ice. No problem. Not so much as a crack. Once reaching the other side I coaxed ehr into doing the same, so she got on her stomach and started to crawl across the ice. About halfway across, she pushed down onto the ice to inch her way forward (instead of inch-worming your way across with arms out-stretched) and cracks immediately shot in every direction. Luckily she stopped moving and I was able to grab her hand and pull her across without the ice stressing any more.
We proceed down stream until we reached a series of rapids with deep pools, and we came upon a bridge crossing the creek from one side to the other, with open holes on either side. Once again my "man vs wild" mentality took over and I proceeded onto the ice bridge to show her how it could hold my weight, which it did, up until I started hitting the side of it with my boot. I remember looking back to her to say "wow it isn't breaking" or something to that effect, and that's when I heard a definite crack. I remember looking down in time to see the ice disappear beneath me and water come up to meet me. First thing I noticed was how fast the current was, it literally grabbed hold of my legs and tried to force me under a nearby sheet of ice. Another thing is that everything they say about trying to get out once you've fallen through ice is true. It's wet, cold, slippery, and tiring. I did manage to pull myself out however, at which point my clothes were completely soaked.
I don't remember feeling especialy cold, but I do remember rapidly decideing whether I was going to walk out of the woods, or stay put and make a fire. I settled on fire making, it was about 30 atleast in a snow filled valley.
The only fire making device I had on me was a bow drill, and a ball of tinder which had both gone into the creek with me when I fell through, so I immediatly handed it all to my girlfriend (who had done bow drill once or twice prior). After about a minute trying it became clear that she had not practiced since the last time she made a fire, and was not going to get a coal in time, so I had to take over and managed to get the fastest coal I think I've ever made (amazing what a little motivation can do). Within about 5 minutes of going into the water I had a fire going and my clothes drying by it. At first I felt slightly embarrassed, I had put myself in a position to get seriously hurt or killed, but I saw a different side of it. Using the skills I had practiced so much up until then, I had used them to better my situation, and perhaps save my life.
From that experience, I have come to appreciate the value of scenarios. Putting yourself in situations that are uncomfortable or perhaps risky to push your edge and test yourself. Making a fire in your backyard on a nice day is vastly different from making it in heavy rain t 40 degrees in a t-shirt and a pair of Carhartts. So I encourage you, challenge yourself, be uncomfortable, learn to adapt.

General Update

I haven't really sat down to update in awhile, so I'll covered a few new things.
We got some nice snow accumulation about 2 weeks ago, which was also my first snow experience in Maryland for about 3 years. I've grown used to dry powdery snow in Montana, so the wet, icy snow of Maryland is quite different for me. We usually get at least one big snow storm a year in Maryland with significant accumulation (save my senior year of high school when we failed to accumulate any snow days), so I look forward to another big snowfall as Spring draws closer.

This picture doesn't really reflect how much actually fell, this was pretty early on when I was visiting my old debris hut.

This hut is in very poor condition, and I was going to tear it apart earlier and rebuild it so I could use it when snow came, but the snow beat me to the chase. I was looking through the contents of the shelter and found a bundle of milkweed stalks and some polypore fungus I had left last December. I also left an elk knuckle bone, however it appears the local animals have made off with that. It always amuses me to find things I've left from the previous year.

I spent some time exploring the woods in the hills above Ellicott City this past week and found an exceptionally large deer rub. I'm no expert on deer rubs, though I enjoy finding them, but I'd say this is from a rather large buck, judging by its distance from the ground. My friend who hunts further west of Ellicott City agreed that a very large deer made this. It does seem unusual to me that it would be on such a thick tree. I see them on smaller saplings usually.

Fires of the New Year

I was planning on making a video today, but when I arrived at my old debris hut, I found I had left the memory card to my camera at home, and while my house wasn't that far, I didn't feel like walking back to get a 1"x1" piece of plastic and metal. So I pulled out my basswood bowdrill and started an ember. For tinder I used some birch bark collected in Montana with Tulip Poplar in the center. For kindling, even though it's been wet and rainy around here recently, there was plenty of dead rose bushes, box elder twigs and dead grapevine. The fire produced is of the scout fire variety. Small, enough to keep you warm, provide you with spiritual comfort, some light, and easily extinguished if need be.
The debris hut I have is in very poor condition. The skeleton of the structure can be seen, and the ridgepole has snapped in half. It's also located in a wet area, so it has a tendency to rot away so by this time each year it needs to be pulled apart and reconstructed. I hope to get a series of pictures when I rebuild the hut to demonstrate how it's all put together.

Old pictures

Still haven't bee able to upload my pictures yet, but I did come across an old album of mine that has some pictures from way back before I knew much at all (i.e. debris hut, tracking, etc.) Theres also some old MAPS Meet 2005 pictures in there among others.

This is me circa senior year of high school. I can remember walking down the road dressed like this to get to some woods that are pretty far from my house. Alot of strange looks. Anyway I have a whitetail deer hide cape with rabbit pelts lashed to my arms and hide wrapped around my legs to keep the snow out with buckskin moccasins. I have an Osage Orange sapling bow with arrow wood arrows (stone tipped), as well as my satchel and quiver behind me under the hide. Even though I have a shirt on I was quite warm and comfortable.

This is a debris hut I made also during my senior year. It's mostly pine boughs from discarded Christmas trees and branches from the surrounding area. Key things that are wrong with this shelter (yes, I froze in this shelter), too many open areas to let heat escape, too big, no leaves. If I had made it smaller and used more leaves, I would have been warmer I'm sure. I did have a small fire in there, but it was placed off to the side and provided little to no heat.

Fast forward to this past winter break. This is me approaching a debris hut made by my brother and I the previous summer. I had been told they had severe flooding in the area while I was away, but surprisingly it was relatively intact and required only minimal repair to be usable. It showed no sign of other human habitation, everything was as we had left it 5 months or so earlier. This means to me that the area is relatively safe from most flooding in the area, and not many people go here. The cool thing about this shelter is that one side of it is a large boulder. I plan to rebuild it, possibly take advantage of the boulder to use it as a heat reflector (possible lean-to style shelter?)

Close view of the shelter showing the framework, severe lack of leaves and me removing various gear. Theres also an Ironwood sapling in the foreground, theres quite a few of them around.

This is from the very first summer camp I taught. It was one I ran where I taught my mums friends children. Pretty basic stuff, some primitive bows, tracking, moving through the woods, making things out of tulip poplar, etc. Just a cool picture from the past.

Indian Longhouse and Wigwam construction

Today Ashley and I went to Jefferson Patterson Park to volunteer with the construction of the cattail reed longhouse and larger bark longhouse that Jeff Gottlieb has been supervising.. It's an amazing place, with several wigwams and longhouses. The weather was looking rather stormy/rainy, but it turned out well and we had no rain until later in the day.
The first thing we worked on was weaving cattail mats using a kind of loom. It seems like it would be a task that would take a long time, but it went rather quickly. It takes about 3 people to weave the mat with another person or more to gather reeds.
After weaving the mat you untie it and cut the strings holding it to the loom then place it on the longhouse. This is the fun part, you can climb on longhouse and wigwam frames. So, of course, I climbed up to help tie the mat to the frame. We made about 3 mats during the course of the day, then added the bark sheets to the roof of the longhouse. We finished up by working on adding bark sheets to the larger longhouse nearby.
The picture above was taken from on top of the completed bark longhouse. It shows the cattail and bark lodge, then the bark wigwam, and in the background is a side less longhouse which has 3 fire pits. You cant see it, but between the wigwam and the side less longhouse is a dugout canoe under construction.