Greetings,
Thank you for your interest in guiding for Natural Leaders!
The field of wilderness survival and primitive skills is inexhaustible - you could spend many lifetimes honing your skills in any of its myriad aspects.
However, for the purposes of our program, a good practical grasp of certain basics skills will go a long way toward giving you the confidence and ability to protect the safety of students and provide a valuable learning experience.
When you, and your students, learn these fundamentals, it should really open up the world - reducing fear, and enabling you to explore and enjoy the outdoors to a much greater extent than before.
Here is a list of topics to explore on this website to give you a head start.
Remember, watching the videos and reading the material is a good first step, but only by actually messing around with the skills, will you develop proficiency.
https://www.naturalleaders.com/learn.html
Thank you for your interest in guiding for Natural Leaders!
The field of wilderness survival and primitive skills is inexhaustible - you could spend many lifetimes honing your skills in any of its myriad aspects.
However, for the purposes of our program, a good practical grasp of certain basics skills will go a long way toward giving you the confidence and ability to protect the safety of students and provide a valuable learning experience.
When you, and your students, learn these fundamentals, it should really open up the world - reducing fear, and enabling you to explore and enjoy the outdoors to a much greater extent than before.
Here is a list of topics to explore on this website to give you a head start.
Remember, watching the videos and reading the material is a good first step, but only by actually messing around with the skills, will you develop proficiency.
https://www.naturalleaders.com/learn.html
- Safety page
- Learn the knife safety rules
- Understand about widow-makers:
- Exercise 1 - Find 3 widowmakers when you are out on a hike. Look for rotten or suspended branches on trees, and also standing dead trees that look ready to fall over.
- Exercise 2: Identify 3 large tulip poplar trees and see if you can find some widow-makers on them.
- Yellow-jackets and bald-faced hornets
- Ticks
- 1-match fire - practice a few times, how fast can you do it?
- Exercise: find and identify
- red cedar
- spicebush
- mountain laurel
- red maple
- river birch
- Tarps - practice finding a good location and pitching a tarp.
- Knots - clove hitch, bowline, taut-line
- Tinder - make a tinder bundle out of tulip poplar bark. Light it with a ferro rod if you have one.
- Survival pottery - see if you can find some wild clays, make some small test pots, dry and fire them.
- Survival shelter - build a small survival shelter. How long does it take? What challenges did you encounter.
- Cordage - make some cordage out of grass or other fibers (you might also search Youtube for more, better videos on making it).
