WWS Immersion Course Q & A

We are, Shirli and I, about to begin penning the next chapter of our lives.

To say that we are excited about the blank pages awaiting ahead of us is a bit of an understatement.

Our new digs up in the woods has been a long time in the making. The woods environment at the cabin affords us the peaceful natural serenity that we both personally need in our daily lives. It also provides us with an atmosphere, away from the hustle and bustle of mainstream society, where we can more fully practice and appreciate our lifestyle of self-reliant living.

What I want to do in this blog article is to address a few questions regarding Woodsmoke Woodcraft School. The question and answer format will, hopefully, be clarifying and explanatory for those reading it.

What prompted me to start WWS?

I had been thinking about doing something like this for quite some time.

A few years ago, a good friend asked me if I would help with a project that he was working on with his College and Career age Sunday School Class. They were planning a weekend survival exercise before these young people graduated and went off on their own into the world. My part in the deal was to set up and give these youth a block of instruction … basically a crash course … that focused on the Four Essentials for Survival … Shelter, Hydration, Fire, and Food.

That was the humble beginning of something that I've always spoken of as of all the good and meaningful things I've done … this is the most personally rewarding.

Where did I learn these skills?

This has been an ongoing course of learning for me that began early on in life as a poor farm boy growing up.

When most other boys were playing extracurricular sports, going to Scout meetings, or hanging out in the town park, I was exploring and hanging out in the woods and along the creeks. I've been in, close to, or longing to be in the woods all these years. There have been seasons here and there that kept me out of the woods. Those were miserable seasons. Maybe necessary at the time but, nonetheless, miserable. I took up golf ... imagine that ... during one of those seasons and got fairly good at it. But it was no viable substitute for hunting, fishing, camping, trapping, and generally wandering the woods.

I'm still learning. As Horace Kephart said, “In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day.” Why? Because there is always more to learn. Especially where identifying and utilizing natural resources are concerned. Nature is a classroom with an extremely vast curriculum.

Am I self-taught?

I have difficulty accepting self-taught as a valid concept.

Most of what we learn is taught to us by someone in one way or another. Even when we figure something out … supposedly on our own ... it is because someone taught us the skills necessary to work through a problem or challenge, see a solution, and manipulate a positive result.

I have had an innumerable number of teachers along the way. And will, as long as I breathe and have mental capacity, have more teachers.

I read. I study. I observe. I practice until I am proficient.

This thing … call it woodcraft or bushcraft or survivalcraft or whatevercraft … isn't neurosurgery. Learning how to survive in a wilderness setting doesn't take a PhD from XYZ University either.

What these do require is an investment of time and a commitment to learn. It involves assembling a specific tool kit to successfully accomplish the mission.

One does not necessarily have to enroll in a course at a bushcraft or wilderness survival school to learn these skills. People can, and do, learn a lot on their own when they apply themselves. Immersion type courses with an instructor do, however, make it a lot easier to get started. Especially for people unfamiliar with woods life and the natural laws that prevail in the woods.

What is a WWS Immersion Course?

An Immersion Course is a weekend basic wilderness skills training course.

Participants arrive on Friday at a designated drive-in location with their prescribed gear (KIT). Orientation, gear review, and set-up begins at 1:00 with instruction on course specific content during the afternoon. More course content is covered Saturday morning. We pack up Saturday afternoon and hike in for an overnight at a wilderness location that removes participants from familiar amenities and requires them to utilize their kit out there in a Lower Alabama woodland environment. We hike out Sunday morning, summarize, evaluate, and wrap it up at 1:00.

Although numerous related subjects naturally arise during the course, the Immersion Course focuses primarily on the four essentials for survival ... Hydration, Shelter, Fire-Making, and Food … and how to safely satisfy these basic human needs with the items in our kit and the resources that surround us.

How rigorous is a WWS Immersion Course?

That really depends upon the physical condition and health of participants.

What we do during a Basic Skills Immersion Course is done outdoors in the elements that are natural aspects of the outdoors. What we do is done with prescribed minimal gear. Simply being outdoors, for some, may seem rigorous. A weekend without the conveniences and entertainments of modern amenities, for some, may seem rigorous. A weekend without the pseudo-security of having insulated walls and locked doors, for some, may seem rigorous.

Participants should, ideally, be in good enough physical shape to hike a couple of miles with 30-35 pounds on their backs. We do not do the miles in a fashion that resembles a forced march. We set a casual pace and take breaks along the way. Rushing through wilderness settings is a good way to miss out on opportunities afforded in natural settings. Rushing is also a good way to set yourself up for some sort of mishap.

What are my goals for WWS at this point?

There are two goals and they are the same now as they were from the very beginning.

The first is to offer course opportunities for people to learn important foundational skills that assist them in preparing for unforeseen circumstances. This is the taught part. I teach people skills that can keep them alive. People learn. There's a lot of personal reward in seeing people learn.

The second is different from the first in that it is not something that can be taught. It's something residential in the caught department. It's that thing where people begin to see the surrounding natural environment as a benevolent friend to be embraced rather than as a foe to be feared.

Some fall in love with the woods in their first encounter. Some develop a love affair with the woods over time. Some never get it.

Forty Miles And What's Ahead

Forty miles.

It's not really far. Not at sixty miles per hour on the highway.

I've lived places where it was forty miles to the next small town. Wasn't a thing at all to take off and drive to Such and So town because they had a regular Walmart, or more than one grocery store. The Super Walmart was almost twice that distance to the North and better than twice that distance to the Southeast. It was also, come to think of it, a solid six hour drive at seventy miles per hour to the nearest city with a commercial airport to rent a seat on a commercial airliner.

The environment didn't change much in an hour on the road. It didn't change much in six hours on the road. Except traveling to the West. The front range, near the Mile High City, got more snow. Ambient temperatures, summer and winter, were about the same. Hot summers, cold winters, and a hard blowing wind … summer and winter ... that was often unrelenting for days on end blowing tumbleweed down main street. The available natural resources, the flora and fauna, were pretty much the same for hundreds of miles around. It was the kind of place with a desolate beauty that outsiders either fell in love with or went crazy on account of.

It's different here in this geographical region … the Alabama coastal plain.

Forty miles makes a difference.

Certainly nothing significant where the ambient temperatures are concerned. Subtle but not significant. There is certainly no significant differences where these coastal plain mosquitoes are concerned. Those boogers thrive from the time you're tempted to wear short sleeves in the spring until the first real hard frost in late fall or early winter. The subtle difference, something generated by those few slight degrees of winter temperatures and about 200 feet in elevation, is the occurrence of hardwood trees that aren't common closer to the coast.

We have, for the past twelve years, lived fairly close to the Gulf Coast. The “as the crow flies miles” to be over water is about four to the West and to the South. Another four or so to the South over water, plus a few hundred yards to clear the thin Fort Morgan Peninsula, and a crow is flying over the Gulf of Mexico.

I grew up here. I have, off and on, lived here in this immediate vicinity when I wasn't off out there living somewhere else … in three countries and a nice assortment of states. This immediate vicinity, my home turf, is the one that I am most familiar with. Not just with the road numbers and where they lead. Any map can provide people with that information to get you there and back again. I am, more importantly, quite familiar with the geography and the hazards lurking within the climate of this geographic area. I have also made it a point, and continue the practice, to familiarize myself with many of the beneficial helpers afforded in this area.

Making this claim is not intended to come across as boastful chest beating. It's just an honest statement. There is still plenty that I am not familiar with. That plenty is vast. A lifetime isn't long enough to possibly learn it all. The challenge, for me anyway, is to learn as much of the plenty as possible … to be always learning … to be a perpetual student of the natural environment that offers its life to support my own.

Acquiring the simple tools, and developing the necessary skills to embrace the natural environment as an ally, pairs naturally with the challenge.

So what's happening with us now?

Shirli and I are closing in fast on finishing up this major move we've been working on. A lot of other doings had to be put on hold while we pulled this thing together and pulled it off. There's still some pulling to do to finish up but we are, at last, finishing up our move forty miles inland to The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill.

This is September.

September means our Annual Skills Day gathering with our Mountain Bushcrafters Alliance family in Southeast Kentucky. This is always a great experience with some fine folks and we consider it an honor to be part of the MBA family. Mountain Bushcrafters Alliance maintains a Facebook page. Check us out. “Go Farther. Stay Longer.”

On the backside of this trip to Kentucky, and after finishing up our geographic move, I will resume offering skills courses. I will be publishing information soon regarding available courses, dates, and course fees.

In resuming these skills classes, I will also be networking with Buck Terry at the Southeastern Defensive Training Center in Foley, Alabama. Buck is well-qualified as a NRA Advanced Pistol Instructor, Massad Ayoob Staff Instructor, NRA Personal Protection Inside & Outside the Home Instructor, and Defensive Firearms Coach With Combat Focus Academy and I.C.E. Training Academy. The SDTC website is located at www.selfdefensefoley.com .

Get the skills you need, folks. Whether it's self-defense with a weapon or the ability to use the natural surroundings as a means to sustain your life in the event the need arises.

Sometime … Somewhere … Somebody … will be in a situation where successfully negotiating the situation demands having the tools and skills to come out on the other side alive and healthy.