Outdoor books are top-heavy with survival suggestions. Gather watercress, plantain, wild tubers, and concoct a wilderness salad; make a deadfall and trap an edible critter; roast it on a fire conjured up from bits of bark, a bow and drill, all whittled with a stone knife scrounged from a streambed! And like the Mounties of old, signal for help with a pocket mirror.
The truth is, not one outdoorsman in 10,000 is sufficiently learned as a botanist to know watercress from skunk cabbage. And the sportsman who can successfully rig a deadfall is as rare as a whooping crane.
To acquire the skills for this type of survival calls for years in the wilderness, plus substantial exposure to "book knowledge". However, the genuine need for such spartan effort to survive arises during the life of no more than one man in a million. With such odds, an outdoorsman is better off first acquiring the basic skills which will prevent the need for such survival effort. If he can live through the first forty-eight hours in the wilds, the average sportsman - however hopelessly lost he may think he is - will probably be back in camp within another forty-eight.
My point is that all too often there is no real need to survive; merely to avoid!
True survival in the backwoods begins anew every morning, at the moment you step from the camp-yard or leave an established trail, not when you discover you are lost. This includes never stepping into the woods without the "basics" - map, compass, matches, knife, possibly an axe.
Condition your mind to the fact that someday you will become lost if you roam the woods long enough. Convince yourself beforehand, as you wander along known trails, that an enforced night in the forest need not be a horrifying ordeal. To experienced woodsmen, it isn't. The late Colonel Towsend Whelen, one of the greatest outdoorsmen of recent times, once wrote that a "compulsory" night out... is an experience you will enjoy and cherish for years afterwards.
Learn to love the wilderness, in the sunshine and in the rain, in the heat and in the cold. With a knowledge of the woods and a close kinship with its creatures, will come a feeling of ease, a knowing that you are "at home".
- Bill Riviere, Backcountry Camping (1971)
