226 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
226 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: "Primitive Living Lessons Learned, Episode 0"
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permalink: primitive-living-lessons-0/
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categories:
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- life
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- primitive-living
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- travel
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excerpt_separator: <!--more-->
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author: Mahdi
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---
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So I just went on my first primitive living practice trip in the woods, alone,
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with only a pocket knife.
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I decided I'm going to share the lessons I've learned in each trip as they are
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certainly going to be useful if you want to practice primitive living, I would
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find these useful if I could find them anywhere. I spend a lot of time reading
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and watching primitive living guides and experience reports, but they are never
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exhaustive, and this series is not meant to be exhaustive either.
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<!--more-->
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Here we go:
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# What I did know
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I spent a lot of time studying about edible wild plants, how to butcher and cook
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different kinds of animals and insects. I also had practiced fire by friction
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and read a lot and watched videos about theory of making cordages, making a
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bow-drill and so on. I also knew and had already built shelters for the night.
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So you can assume I had a basic, broad understanding of the necessary skills,
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but experience? Not so much.
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# Setup
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I had a pocket knife, a Garmin GPS and a pocket first aid kid, I would expect
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something to go wrong along the way, so I thought I want to be safe, but not
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comfortable, that's why I brought emergency necessities, but not any comfort
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tools and materials. I also had a canned tuna for my first breakfast, but
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nothing more.
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Now for what is worth, I'm going in around summer's end, September 5th, in a
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forest in northern Iran, Mazandaran Province. The forest starts from foothills,
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covering a few mounts from both sides, so it's pretty large but also
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mountaneous, so I it's hard to move in the forest.
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# Arrival: First Night
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So I arrived at the entrace of the forest at night, it was already dark and I
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couldn't build a shelter or do much, I just slept on the open ground, it was my
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first night in the woods alone. I was quite scared at first, lots of cracks and
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movements in bushes by unknown creatures, but after a few hours I figured out
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all these creatures are small ones that can't be harmful to me. A few hours
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before dawn it got bitter cold, and I woke up, unable to go back to sleep. The
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first night was not the best, but could be worse.
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# First Day
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I woke early at dawn and started moving into the forest, looking for a place to
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build my shelter in. I decided I'm going to follow these steps:
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1. Build a shelter
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2. Find water source
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3. Build a fire
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4. Find food
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But as was expected, it didn't go according to the plan.
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## Shelter
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I found a nice place to stay which had a stream passing by, the stream was
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running and from what I knew about the area, the water was safe to drink, so
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water was no longer an issue. I started building my shelter, got the base wooden
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structure down first, but there was a catch: I couldn't find any dry debris to
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put on top or inside. Last time I had built the same shelter it was autumn's
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end/early spring, so there were lots of dry, fallen leaves on the ground; But
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this time it's in the summer and there very few, scattered dry leaves on the
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ground, uncollectable.
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I decided I'm going with leaves of a small tree I had found nearby which seemed
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to be abundant around the area and the branches had lots of close leaves on
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them, looked like a good choice, but it was green. I didn't find out what I was
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doing wrong until I tried to sleep at night. The green leaves attracted lots of
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flies and insects and all sorts of annoying disturbances, and the smell wasn't
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helping either. I had to endure the insects throughout the night, because
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sleeping outside the shelter was a no-go, the dirt beneath was too cold. I
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hadn't put as much leaves on the ground, and the leaves were green (which also
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means they take more heat away), but still, it was much better than sleeping
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directly on the ground.
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What I learned was, **do not use green leaves for covering your shelter**. This
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rule applies to small shelters in which you are close to the covering, as well
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as the leaves you use as bedding. I've seen people using green leaves for
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covering big shelters which have a high ceiling, though I don't have any
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experience with those myself.
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## Friction Fire
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The most important part of primitive living is fire, without fire you can't
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cook, you can't stay warm and you can't defy nocturnal predators. You also can't
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repel insects. You can't make a torch, so there goes an infinite list of fire
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applications that you will miss.
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I knew the theory of friction fire in and out, how and why it works, but what I
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had missed was, **you are going to be in _real trouble_ if you can't find
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softwood**. To my surprise, searching portions of the forest, I couldn't find
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any softwood tree. Oaks were everywhere, as well as quite some other species of
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trees, but all of them were hardwood.
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I tried different combinations of the softer woods I could find, but none of
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them resulted in an ember, I got smoke with one combination, but that was it.
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After about 5-6 hours of trying, I got real tired and gave up. By the way, I
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tried hand-drills, I couldn't succeed with bow-drills as I couldn't find
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suitable cordage, I tried with a promising bark that was pretty strong, but it
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would break as soon as I put some pressure on it, It's also possible that I
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might've gone wrong in making the bow itself, so it would cause the breakage.
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So the lesson was **make sure the material you are going to practice with is
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available in your practice area**, had I known there were no softwood in that
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particular forest, I would change my destination and probably succeed somewhere
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else. Sure, a professional survivalist must be able to start a fire in almost
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all situations, but this is practice and you have to start with easier steps.
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I ended up shaking for 2 hours before the dawn, not a pleasant experience at
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all. :D
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## Food
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The difficulties didn't end there, without a fire, my only hope for food was
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specific edible plants which can be eaten raw, or fruits. Unlucky as I was, I
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couldn't find a single fruit-bearing tree in the forest (I found quite a few
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fruit-bearing trees along the roads and paths to the forest, but not inside the
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forest itself), and I also couldn't find any of the other edible plants (I was
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mostly looking for the onion family) that I knew of.
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One of the greatest complications when starting primitive living practice
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anywhere other than the U.S. is that **almost all guides and materials on the
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topic are from, and for Northern America**. [The Falcon Guide to Edible Wild
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Plants](https://www.amazon.com/Edible-Wild-Plants-Falcon-Field/dp/0762774215)
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that I read is all about northern american plants. I knew it, but it's also the
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case that the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth have more common of an ecology,
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so most of the plants found in Northern America can also be found in places like
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Iran, but they have their differences. Most of the tips and tricks provided in
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different resources are for Northern American forests, which do not always work
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in other places.
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So all in all, I ended up not eating anything for the next 24 hours, until I got
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out of the forest.
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## Psychology
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Apart from all the physical failures that I faced, which in turn caused
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frustration, I also had strong feelings of loneliness, boredom, and fear upon
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me. It was after failing to start a fire that I really felt the psychological
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burden on me. I had read about similar experiences, but believe me, the
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experience is hardly transmittable by words. A local rancher passing by the
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forest telling me about the leopard in the forest didn't make things any easier.
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The psychological pressure was above all other difficulties, at some point I was
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bursting into tears, but I couldn't associate it with any one specific feeling,
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it was a mix of anger, loneliness and fear.
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Anger and frustration because I couldn't succeed in what I was trying to do. I
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also cut my finger at some point while carving the woods, so there was that.
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Loneliness because I was all by myself and I had no company to talk to. You can
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really actually go insane, as seen in [Cast
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Away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_Away), after prolonged sessions of
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loneliness in situations like that. Mine wasn't long, it was only two days, but
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I still experienced the thought-fog, I couldn't think straight.
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Fear because I felt weak compared to the power of nature, my fear was doubled by
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the fact that I was alone. I felt like being in a place where everything seems
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to know what it is doing, but I don't; I felt lost, not knowing what to do after
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my basic plans had failed.
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Now I don't know if there is much you can do about the psychological part of it,
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I think experience is the remedy, at least I felt how different it was between
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the nights, the first night, even though I wasn't even _inside_ the forest much,
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I was almost at the border of it, it was much more creepy because it was my
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first time, but the second night, I was in the forest and now I had a _leopard_
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in my mind pouncing on me, but I felt less fear and was more comfortable.
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But in the end, what helped me was that *I knew I was going to face a huge
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mental challenge along the way*, so I was more prepared. I think it's utterly
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important to be prepared for such psychological situations, knowing the reason
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behind your psychological challenges can help you overcome it to some extend.
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# Second Night
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The second and last night was not all that much interesting, but it was damn
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sure cold and hard. At first I had to deal with the insects biting me everywhere
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and my feet scratching while trying to sleep in the shelter that I had wrongly
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built. After getting over that one and sleeping for what seemed to be ~2 hours,
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I woke up and felt the air temperature decreasing. I still got to sleep in
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intervals of 30 minutes until I woke up at around ~4 AM and my whole body was
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shaking. I couldn't do much, all I did was gather the leaves underneath a little
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closer and more dense, and crunch my body into a ball so I felt just a little
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warmer, but still shaking. It took ages for the last two and a half hours to
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pass until dawn. At dawn I got up quickly and walked around a little to warm
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myself up, and then waited until I could barely see my surroundings, then I
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started walking out of the forest.
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Initially I had decided to stay for longer, but the weather forecast had
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predicted a heavy rain and storm for the next night, there was no way I could
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withstand that. :D
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# Bottom Line
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It was a hard trip, I lost about 2kg (4lb) weight, but all in all the experience
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was a good one, I certainly learned a lot and I'm not going to make the same
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mistakes again. I should definitly practice more and keep working on my skills.
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If you are looking forward to practicing primitive living, please make sure you
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are safe and start small.
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> Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
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—Winston Churchill
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