Thursday 17 July 2008

Survival - its not a dirty word

In the bushcraft world many people get quite ................... ermmmm excited at the mention of SURVIVAL SKILLS ..............WHY??
What do they fear? Kit separation anxiety syndrome (after all must bushcrafters cant survive without all their flash gucci kit can they? or is it just going outside their comfort zone (we all like being in the bush when the suns out - its warm - we have a campfire and a car full of food near by)
Survival skills are key to bushcraft skills for without the later we can not build bushcraft skills we can depend on any more than we can build a house without foundations!!
Survival skills are the common sense skills, the nitty gritty that leads us to bushcraft!
To qoute Lofty Wisemen "Life we survive til we die"
A recent google of "survival course" found 158,000 sites .................of those almost all are professed Bushcraft schools who also list survival in their itinery .............bushcraft and survival courses ........wilderness living and survival ............our own WEISS course (wilderness experience International Survival school) ..................so whats the hang up with wanting to do survival training?
Even Mr Mears' books and programmes "the survival HANDBOOK" "EXTREME SURVIVAL" even "the WORLD OF SURVIVAL" - Good enough for Ray good enough for me say!!
Maybe its a comfort zone thing - UK shrafters like to sit around the campfire!! Before you ponder this think on the fact that from my own experience Swedes, Danes and even Spainards.......... our shall we say europeans all seem more iinterested in learning survival skills over bushcraft!
But its just a word and I think the reason most schools list bushcraft and survival courses rather than just bushcraft or just survival (and you will note there courses themselves rarely are just bushcraft or just survival) is because the over lap is to great .................bushcraft and survival are the same thing - they are feathers on the same bird - so survival isnt a dirty word well not if you wish to be a well rounded outdoorsman with the skills to live and thrive in the wilderness!

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