Getting "Out There"

It sure is great to hit the out doors, especially when the weather is great.  When the sun shines and a nice summer breeze is blowing, it makes for great times.  When it’s nice out, we gravitate to the outdoors, and as we should.

On the other hand, it sure is valuable to get into the outdoors and stay a night or two in the cold and blowing rain.  We’re talking about training your survival skills.  They get rusty if they’re not taken out and worked once in a while.  Training doesn’t have to be miles from civilization.  In fact spending a night or two in your backyard in bad weather cements your survival studies.  There’s nothing wrong with reading about survival skills, but there comes a time when we have to practice what we’ve read about.

Survival training is something of importance if we want to take care of those we love in a less than desirable situation.  We cannot get around it.  There are literally a bunch of “how to” and opinions on what works in the wilderness, scattered all over the net.  A lot of it is good stuff.  I tend to wonder if there are as many people “getting out there” and testing their knowledge in bad weather, as there are opinions on survival skills.  Rhetorical question . . .

It’s easy to type up articles about wilderness survival.  Everyone has an opinion, and that’s not a bad thing.  That’s where new ideas and innovation come from.   But getting into the nasty weather or testing out setting up a camp in 50 mph winds, or being wet for 72 hours in continuous rain or camping in temperatures just about 0 degrees will teach invaluable lessons.  That’s quite another thing.  Ideas, innovation and opinions are very necessary, but so is the component of experience.  Training our skills gives us the ability to learn from uncomfortable situations that we can control, instead of learning by the seat of our pants in situations that are BAD and FOR REAL.  Unfortunately we cannot always benefit from other’s experiences.  No one could ever explain what it means to be hungry to someone who’s never felt a hunger pang.  Some things we just have to experience for ourselves.

If you’re the person who “gets out there” more than just a few times, in the nasty weather, in the less than ideal conditions to train what you’ve learned, hats off to you.  If you are the person that “gets out there”, life probably has a flavor that it doesn’t for others.  Having been through high winds, torrential down pours and frigid weather camping; perhaps a calm evening next to a camp fire has warmth in your mind that others really don’t know.

We’re not suggesting people put their lives in unnecessary peril.  But once in a while it’s okay to get wet, get cold and get uncomfortable.  That’s where the people at GLSC have learned the most important lessons, and it’s where we continue to learn lessons.  Behind a computer screen isn’t where true learning takes place, (it can be a great resource though!).  “Out there” is where the learning takes place.  It’s where we learn lessons that we can pass down to our children and our children’s children.

The Great Lake Survival motto is “Tough Products for Tough People”.  The reality is that our most important product are our experiences.  We’re the ones who take our experiences, and ultimately turn them into what we want to be: Tough People.

Thanks for reading,

- GLSC Team