Wilderness survival training

 Wilderness survival training 

 

Today I’m going to tell you about Wilderness survival training. The idea is that this training should teach you how to survive in the wilderness with little to no camping gear in the event that you get stranded. This actually reminds me of what of my favorite books growing up called “Hatchet”. In that story a young teenage boy was in a plane crash and he alone survived and basically the only tool he has is a hatchet and he has to survive. So, for my merit badge training, I did not have to survive a plane crash, but I did have to survive a night in the woods with no tent and just a few items. It was the summer, so it was supposed to be warm, but it was also very buggy.  There were not a lot of campers that were going on this overnight required for the merit badge experience. We only had a limited amount of supplies we could bring. We were recommended to build a lean-to structure for this overnight camping experience. Everything was going along pretty well, just like we had planned and prepared for. Then the weather changed. We were not supposed to have a storm, but here it was. The sky just opened up. Now I have been a Scout a long time and I have camped in the rain many times. But in all of those times there was an actual tent that was surrounding me and protecting me. Now I just had a tarp and the rain was coming at us sideways not so much vertically. My group was eventually soaking in the rain and the rain was coming down so hard that the camp instructors held a brief meeting to decide if the overnight should be cancelled and they made the decision to cancel the overnight and they had our parents come to pick us up. At least we did not have to cook for ourselves all by ourselves. In the end our leaders decided that we had done enough of the requirements in order to earn the merit badge. There are other merit badges that are related to it but none that make you spend the night in the middle of the woods all alone. There were kids that were afraid to be alone in the woods and we all had to accept that we would be fine. We had to understand that we had had the right training and that if something went wrong, someone is nearby, and that was enough.  

 

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