Lists

After a minor panic attack yesterday, today Ellie and I decided to make lists of all the items we will need for our trip. We divided it into several different categories and only after finishing it, did we realize how much we need to get. We also realized that all together the supplies would cost several hundreds of dollars. Due to our lack of money, we are hoping to ask to borrow some of the items and we are also going to look to buy secondhand. 

Due to the fact that there is virtually no vegetation yet, we have abandoned our plan to collect food. Since we feel that it is kind of "cheating" to buy all of our food, we are setting a series of guidelines for our shopping. We can buy as much food as we can within a $15 budget, however, everything must be whole foods, things we don't particularly like, and non perishable. With these qualifying factors, we will put to test our abilities to survive on very little. 

Below is a picture of our handwritten planning from today.

A Day Outdoors

Today the nicer weather and free time in our schedules permitted Ellie and I to begin the hands on portion of our project. After my boys hockey banquet, at around 5:00, I went over to Ellie's house, we put on warm clothes (although the weather was nicer, it still was 35 degrees out) and trekked back into the woods with our machete and hatchet. 

The focus of today was to collect tinder, kindling of various sizes and larger wood for our fires. We began our search by looking for smaller sticks and tinder. These were both found easily, from dead bushes and various twiggy plants, and within about 20 minutes we had collected a heaping pile. We then set out to find larger wood, which was much more challenging because we couldn't just snap off a branch with our hands and the large pieces on the ground were rotten and wet, making them unlikely to burn. We decided the best way to find this wood would be by cutting down a dead tree. Since all we had was a hatchet and a machete, we found a couple of dead saplings (trunks with approximately 4 inch diameters) and chopped them down. 

We stayed outside for about 2.5 hours and by the end of the evening we had gathered a decently sized pile of wood, which we are storing under Ellie's dad's Adirondack shelter to keep dry. We will use this wood this Tuesday, when we practice our fire building and water purification, and we will possibly use some on our first survival trip, which is just 2 weeks away. 

Finalized Dates!

Finally we have been able to set in stone the dates for our trips! The first one, which will be back in Ellie's woods is going to take place April 9th-12 with the possible addition of the 8th, granting approval from the school. Our second one will be May 14th-17th, with the possibility of adding the 13th. This trip was previously set to take place in the Adirondacks, however, after talking with my mom, we may want to reconsider. Although Ellie's dad would be staying with us, our moms are a bit scared for our safety and would prefer if we stayed a bit closer to home. Because of this, I am looking into different options such as the Hector national forest.

How to Build a Proper Fire

Today I did a lot of research on how to start and maintain a fire. Although it doesn't seem like something that would be very difficult, in unideal conditions, such as rain, wind or snow,  it can be quite hard. In order to successfully build a fire, there is a specific sequence of how to do so.

1. Collect tinder and make a tinder bundle. Tinder is anything that burns fast and catches easily. This can be wood shavings, dry shrubbery, cattails, cedar bark, leaves or dry grass.
2. After the tinder catches, you must add pencil lead sized pieces, which are small grass and twigs, just slightly larger than the tinder.
3. Progressively collect and add larger sized pieces of wood. The best wood is dead branches that are still attached to the tree and not rotten. The branch should make a clean snapping sound when it is broken from the tree.
4. Now that the wood is collected, you must prepare the ground for the fire. If the ground is wet, you will need to make a platform of branches which will ward off moisture.
5. Light the small bundle of tinder, then immediately proceed to adding the twiggy pencil lead sized pieces, then the kindling and so on.

Water Purification (Info)

Last weekend, Ellie and I made plans to go out and practice purifying water, however Saturday morning brought, yet another snow storm. This impeded our ability to practice purification so we have rescheduled for this coming Saturday. Over the past week, I gathered information on several different methods that we will possibly use to purify water.

The first thing we will do is dig a hole 2-4 feet from a creek and gather the water that appears at the bottom. This water is generally pretty clean, however we will use further steps to ensure that it is safe to drink.

One thing we will do to further the purification is boil the water for 5 to 10 minutes to kill off all living organisms and some chemicals. This method will definitely be the easiest and most reliable. The only problem I see us facing is not being able to make a hot enough fire to boil the water enough.

The second option is a filter made from a cone of birch bark. This cone is then filled with layers of sand, charcoal, grasses and other sediments. The charcoal serves to remove chemical impurities, and the other layers help to remove small particles and sometimes even bacteria. I think this will be one of the most challenging methods we attempt because it is fragile and intricate. 

This picture (found on google images) is a completed birch bark filter.

2/18

Today I was feeling quite lazy so I spent a large portion of my afternoon watching the Alaskan Bush People a survival show on the Discovery Channel. Although entertaining to watch, it was much different from our project guidelines. First off, they used many man-made items such as cooking utensils, many tarps, rope, and extensive hunting items. It also differed from ours in that it seemed very posed and fake at times. I think this is because it is an aired TV show, however I think this really detracted from the survival aspect of it. For our project, I hope to make the documentary as genuine as possible, regardless of how embarrassing or revealing this may be.

Review of Peers' Blogs

Today I looked at Carrie's blog "CARRIE" and my partner Ellie's blog. Although both were written in different styles, they were uniquely great.

Carrie's contained a few slightly incomplete posts, however, those that she had completed were fully to the point, and full of her comical voice. She presented a lot of information on her project and it was entertaining to read it because she presented it in a funny way. I think she could benefit from adding video clips to show her progress and to update the aesthetic of her blog as well.

Ellie's blog on the other hand had many posts, which touched on other aspects of her life such as being sick, Alex Turner, and her future years in Germany. I hadn't really considered doing this, however, it definitely made her blog fun to read. I also enjoyed reading Ellie's blog because she is my partner in this project and it was interesting to see her views.

Planning in the Quarry

Ellie and I decided to meet up again after school to begin getting some footage for the documentary. We met in Brooktondale and decided to take advantage of the nice day by filming outdoors. We gathered the camera equipment, some snacks and our planners and headed out on a walk to find a good location. We decided on a nearby quarry (it wasn't in use), we set up our camera and had a videotaped conversation.

During this conversation, we introduced ouselves and the project, both for the sake of our documentary. We also discussed a lot of dates and other logistics of our project. We decided that our first 5 day stay will take place the second weekend in April. We have yet to choose a finalized date for our second stay, however, we figured out several tentative times that work for us and Ellie is working it out with her dad.

I thought that we made great progress during this meeting and I hope to have many more like these. I also really enjoyed doing this interview outdoors because it was great to take advantage of one of the first above-freezing evenings of the year.

7th Period with Ellie

Today, Ellie and I met during 7th period to discuss our project. I shared with her some information I have gathered from my interview and sources. I brought light to my concern that we aren't going to be able to learn all of the aspects of survival before our first wilderness stay and that we should focus on becoming masters of shelter building and water purification. I also discussed possibly bringing sleeping bags, a tarp, food and several other commodities on our first stay considering it is going to be quite chilly, wet and we will still be fairly inexperienced. She completely agreed and suggested that we limit the number of items we bring in by only taking what can fit inside of our backpack. 

We also discussed how peaceful and serene it will be in the complete isolation of the woods. Imagining the difference between this calm environment and our generally stressful everyday lives led us to discuss how we are going to feel and what we are going to do. We discussed our interest of bringing in notebooks and drawing pads so that we can use this environment to show our creativity and thought process with clear minds. 

Every time I sit down to talk with Ellie, I get so excited about our project. I cannot wait for the snow to melt so we can begin our hands on work!

Sacred Order of Survival

Today I looked back over my notes from my interview with Justin Sutera to gather information. I especially took note of the "sacred order of survival," Justin spoke a lot about. This explains the hierarchy of our primitive needs, shelter is the most immediate because you can only live 3 hours without it, water comes second and you can live 3 days without it, and finally food which you can live 3 weeks without. 

Due to our limited amount of time to prepare before our wilderness trips, I have decided that we will be focusing more over the next month before our first journey to learn how to build a shelter. I think it will be more fulfilling for us to become well learned and trained in one skill area, rather than having a lot of loose knowledge in several areas. I think we should also learn how to purify water, and gather plants, however we may not become as skilled in these areas as we will be in shelter building.

Beginning of Website Exploration

Over the past week, I have spent a lot of time poking around on many webpages, exploring the different aspects of survival. What I've been trying to do is gain a better sense of direction in terms of where I should begin to approach the learning and acquisition of skills. From this, I have discovered that a lot of the skills we are planning on learning are very difficult and require a large amount of practice. Additionally, a lot of the tutorials on how to do these survival skills used modern equipment, such as tarps, pots, and bottles in addition to natural resources. After discussing it with Ellie, we too have decided to bring in man-made items similar to these in order to facilitate something that is going to be a challenging feat even with these "comfort items."

First 2 Weeks

The first two weeks of my project are going to be entirely spent gathering information and compiling it into a Google document. As of right now I don't know the first thing about survival, I am starting with a completely blank slate, and everything I learn from here on out will begin building a new set of knowledge, perceptions and abilities. I will begin this hunting for knowledge by reading or watching non-fiction survival short stories, books, and movies. I will also spend some time browsing survival websites in order to obtain a large basis of knowledge. By the end of the first week, I hope to have a pretty good understanding of what major skills we will be focusing on and which skills will be too difficult to master in the time that we have. 

During the second week, I will be choosing one skill, most likely shelter, and researching everything I will need to know about it. I will organize all of my findings in a Google document and include step by step procedures on how we will make different types of shelters. I will be spending approximately an hour and fifteen minutes every day working on research over these two weeks.

Introduction

Hello Reader,

Welcome to my blog! To round off my four years at Ithaca High School, I will be spending the second semester of my WISE class working on an independent project. I will be partnering with an old time friend Eleanor Glahn to learn about wilderness survival and at the end of our journey display what we have experienced in a documentary. Along the journey, I will be focusing more on the survival aspects and Ellie will be mostly in charge of the documentation.

During the first couple of months of our project, I am going to be researching new skills and compiling easy to understand instructions on how to do these many skills. As soon as the snow melts, Ellie and I will begin to put to use the information I will have collected outdoors. This will be the most work heavy portion of our project as we try to memorize and practice how to do several different survival skills, all the while preparing for our ultimate project goal of two 5 day long survival trips. 


The first of these trips is going to take place at a close to home location, a mile or so back in Ellie's woods. Since this is our first trip and is going to be taking place in mid to late April, which is an unpredictable time of year in terms of weather and vegetation, we plan to bring several of outside materials (ie. tarp, food, pots, etc.) to complement our use of several natural resources.
Our second and final trip is going to occur in late May to early June and will hopefully take place on lower St. Regis, near the town of Saranac Inn, in the Adirondacks. Although we will be more experienced by this point, surviving the Adirondacks will be a challenging feat due to our unfamiliarity with it. For this trip, we will likely bring more supplies because it will be isolated, however, we will only use them if we need to. In this sense, the Adirondack trip will be more of a test of what we have learned and hopefully will be a great learning experience.

My inspiration for this project came from my love for the outdoors. Growing up in a more rural, wooded neighborhood, I spent a large portion of my childhood playing outside with my local neighborhood friends. On long summer days, we packed our lunch boxes and set out to find a secluded area in the woods. Once we discovered the perfect spot, we used materials from the land to make extravagant forts, all the while trying to be like the book Bridge to Terabithia. After several months or even years, the once unexplored corner of the woods would be a full-fledged civilization.

Despite spending much of my childhood outdoors, I am quite naive to the need of wilderness survival. We live in a world of electronics, cars, grocery stores and many other modern conveniences and because of this, I have never had to put in any serious effort to meet my basic needs. Anytime I want food, all I have to do is walk to the refrigerator or when I need warmth, I find a blanket and turn on the heat. I am ignorant to a life without these conveniences, and I feel that I will be until I can first hand experience a more primitive lifestyle. I think that while in the woods surviving, we will realize the importance of our lower level necessities, and focus less on the things that usually capture our attention such as our emotions, academics and self-esteem. 

I cannot wait to fully immerse myself into conquering this challenge and to see how it changes my outlook on the modern world. Follow my blog to see my progress along this journey and to learn with me what it means to survive.