Stayin Alive
Deep in the woods at a survival camp, it's your mental attitude - not bears, snakes or alligators - that determines whether you make it
© DANIEL FISHEL
"You gonne be alright all the way over there?" Byron asks. “It’s gettin’ dark. Kinda spooky.” He draws out the “i” in “kinda” like a counselor taunting a kid on his first night at camp. Squatting as close to our fire as possible, I glare up at him, clutching a thin jacket around myself. It’s been getting darker — and colder — since the sun set three hours ago. Now, every sound assumes a substance in the dark. The forlorn hoots and too-close rustles have all been wild turkeys, or armadillos, or something called a herniated woodpecker, whatever that is. No snakes or alligators or swamp monsters. But it’s early yet.
“I’ll be fine,” I say with more bravado than I feel, and cast my flashlight beam out over the wilderness.
About 300 yards from the fire, the reflected eyes of two deer fl ash briefly and turn toward the canal where we found water this morning. Farther back, the temporary shelter in which I’ll be sleeping — made out of a single sheet of plastic and some parachute cord — glows faintly.
Nodding in that direction, he says, “You know, we used to call that ‘Bear Alley.’”
I SUSPECT BYRON IS ONLY MAKING FUN OF me because we make such an incongruous pair. Most people who spend the night alone in the woods with the likes of Byron Kerns — a scarred, barrel-chested graduate of the prestigious Air Force Survival Instructor Training School and former instructor at the USAF Survival School in Spokane, WA — are Navy SEALs, Eagle Scouts or, at the very least, experienced woodsmen with machetes. I, on the other hand, have painted toenails and the kind of knife Paul Hogan made fun of in Crocodile Dundee. I once got lost in a mall with only one floor. And I’ve never seen a bear.
Inexperienced though I may be, I am excited to spend a night alone in this so-called Bear Alley. Like many desk-bound computer jockeys raised on Survivor and Man vs. Wild, I have an irrational desire to learn to live in the woods with nothing but the clothes on my back and, preferably, some fl attering camoufl age face paint. Judging from the emergence of survival camps all over the country, I’m not the only one. A quick Google search reveals several dozen outdoor education programs, with names ranging from The Edge Extreme Survival Adventure to the much more innocuous Mountain Mel’s Outdoor Survival Camp.
“I’ve had a huge increase in requests for classes lately,” says Hank Fannin, owner of Green Earth Survival School in Hobe Sound, FL (32 miles from West Palm Beach), where I recently embarked on a weekend of wilderness training. “I don’t know if it’s more people watching those survival television shows, or, you know, the ones who think the world is going to end in 2012 or what.”
People who expect the world to end next year would likely be disappointed with the course I took, which was less about fending off zombies and building bomb shelters and more about primitive living — the perfect choice for someone who wants to know what kinds of leaves have enough vitamin C to stave off scurvy (pine needles) and how to build a tent out of palm fronds and tree roots (it’s complicated).
The nine or so other would-be survivors and I stayed in the shelters we constructed, but could decamp to our tents (basic, but plush in comparison) if we got cold during the night. On the second day, a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts mysteriously appeared by the campfire.
Other courses, like Byron’s three-day Bare Bones course, are conducted in more of a military style, incorporating food rationing and hiking with basic survival skills like fire-making and signaling. The third variety of schools reflects the gonzo-style of TV personalities like Man vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls, and usually involves taking off into the bush for up to a week without any supplies.
About the third variety, Hank says, “People don’t understand. If they do what that Bear Grylls guy does, they’ll get themselves killed. I don’t know why on earth anyone would go to one of those things. It just sounds like misery.”
I have a theory about that, of course, and it extends to the appeal of survival schools in general. Special forces members don’t consider survival training a luxury, but for those of us who don’t spend every day in mortal peril, making a fish trap out of a T-shirt, killing a snake for dinner and sleeping on bare rock is one of the most exciting experiences we’ll ever have. The more extreme the adventure, the better the story it makes.
In short, getting lost while hiking in the mountains may be a disaster, but getting lost while hiking in the mountains, roasting bugs over a fire for sustenance and then battling a mountain lion to the death is exactly the kind of story I want to tell at my next dinner party.
DURING my weekend at Green Earth, my fellow students were surprisingly normal — not a single 2012 disaster theorist among them. I shared a fire and s’mores with three Vietnamese sisters, a Boy Scout troop leader from Trinidad, a social worker and a police dispatcher. They all embodied Hank’s earth-loving, low-stress philosophy; in between lessons on making a fire with a bow drill and navigating by star, we talked a lot about Positive Mental Attitude, a survival buzzphrase that encompasses confidence, composure and the general belief that you’re going to make it.
Part of maintaining PMA, I’m told, is keeping yourself busy. Accordingly, any time we didn’t spend eating was rigorously structured. Shelters for the overnight portion of the camp had to be built before the sun began to set, which meant we had to get through lessons on fire-starting, compass-reading and signaling for help before lunch. The second day we learned to catch fish, forage for edible and medicinally useful plants and purify water. Through it all, one of Hank’s adjunct instructors, Bob Austin, ran around camp with a huge smile on his face and a shirt sleeve on his head, telling stories about chasing monkeys to find fruit when he was a teenager in Panama.
By the time I left, I’d learned a lot, but as with raising children or fending off a mountain lion, the thing about survival is that you can’t really be sure how you’ll fare until you actually have to do it. That’s where Byron comes in. The lead (and only) instructor at Byron Kerns Survival School in Central Florida (and Hank’s friend), he has agreed to set up a test for me in the bush outside Umatilla (57 miles from Orlando). As in a real survival situation, I have no idea what supplies I will have (other than the knife I brought from New York) or what I will have to eat or kill to make it out alive. I do, however, have an inkling that it will make for the kind of story I can tell my grandkids.
FIGURING A SUITE WITH A BALCONY OVER- looking a plain of palm trees might be a nice place to spend what might be my last night on Earth, I splurge on a night in the sprawling Waldorf Astoria Orlando. When I emerge from the most necessary shower of my life, still picking pine needles out of my hair from sleeping in my homemade tent, I find that the staff has graciously packed for me a survival kit containing food, Neosporin and even tiny waterless toothbrushes for the next leg of my training. In the morning, I stash it in my backpack.
Byron notices the kit immediately, and he seems unimpressed. Darkly tanned from spending most of his life outside, and almost unbelievably soft-spoken, he’s had dysentery three times and such bad frostbite that he still can’t feel several fingers in one hand. He’s been required to survive in Arctic conditions, at sea and in the desert. He’s not the kind of guy who brings a bag of beef jerky to a survival test.
“Take out your clothes and put them in here,” he says, indicating an enormous blue pack resting on the back of his pickup truck. “This is your food: two Clif Bars, and this is a Cup Noodles emptied into a sandwich bag. Ration them however you like — it’s all you’ll get.”
I peer balefully at the jerky and cashews in my car, but understand that if I did actually get lost while hiking, this would be enough food to survive on for two days. I soon learn that I am lucky. When coaching Navy SEALs, other instructors or even reality show stars, Byron doesn’t provide any food at all for the first few days.
He hands me a compass. “Do you know how to use this?” “Hank taught me. Where are we going?” I ask.
The place to which he points on the map is practically devoid of markings. There are trees, apparently, a small stream and a weathered pavilion. It is about 2 miles southwest of the already remote park entrance where we’re standing. Between here and there is a morass of brambles, animal nests and serpentine vines. As we set off in what I hope is the correct direction, Byron removes from his pack the largest machete I’ve ever seen.
“Watch out for snakes,” he says.
Within minutes, Byron is bleeding, and so am I. We’ve paused in our bushwacking through thick pine forest and thorny blackberry plants to contemplate an even more impenetrable thicket directly ahead of us. “Think we’re heading the right way?” Byron asks.
“I... hope so?” I offer. “Me too!” he says cheerfully. “I used to correct my students’ bearings when we were hiking, but then I figured out that they’d learn more if they just got lost.”
It is the first of Byron’s subtle jabs at my confidence in our 48 hours together. He, too, is an adamant proponent of PMA as a survival tactic, and profoundly realistic about the small setbacks that send it spiraling into despair. When working with a larger class (up to 10 people), he emphasizes teamwork, but will often instruct one of the students to steal food, or set off on her own, or refuse to help build shelter in order to see how it affects the group’s overall temperament. These are obstacles that arise in real-life survival situations, he says, and it’s just as important to be prepared for them as it is to know which snakes to avoid. (In the US, that would be the ones with elliptical eyes and heavy, triangular heads.)
My own low point arrives when I least expect it. At Green Earth, I’d learned how to spark a fire with a firesteel (a cylindrical piece of flint) and a knife, both of which I have with me now. Byron wanders off to build himself a shelter on the other side of the forest, telling me I should get a fire started before he returns. I’ve never had trouble starting a fire before in my life, but nerves, damp wood or the light wind coming out of the east causes this one to sputter out before I can get the first log to catch. I’ve used the last bit of tinder I can find, and Byron is nowhere to be found.
When he finally returns, he finds me moping around, collecting more sticks.
“This is what I’m talking about, with PMA,” he says. “I’m watching you get more and more down trying to build this fire, and it’s actually kind of beautiful out here. Imagine it’s cold and raining, and you’ve got a friend here with hypothermia. Do you want to be wondering whether you can get something started and reassure him? Or do you want to know that you can do it?”
He starts the fire for me — explaining the importance of placing the tinder on a platform of bark, of using the dead wood from tree branches rather than sticks found on the ground, and of adding a large branch under the fire to provide extra air while it heats up. Feeling wiser but less than exuberant, I hunker down and start boiling canal water for my noodles. I have a long night ahead of me.
NIGHT HAS REACHED PEAK BLACKNESS — AT AN astoundingly early 10pm — by the time I stumble off through the perilous underbrush to my campsite.
A stump crawling with fire ants appears in front of me like a videogame villain, and in the midst of half-tripping over it/half leaping out of ant range, I lose sight of the shelter in the flashlight beam. For five horrified seconds, I whirl in place, swinging my Maglite in haphazard arcs over an endless field of trees turned black and white in the moonlight. When I pause to collect myself — forked tree on the left, hoary branch shaped like a loveseat straight ahead — I hear nothing but my panicked breathing and the furtive clicks of insects.
Finally, the glow of light on plastic reappears behind an unfortunately located palm frond. Clutching my flashlight in one hand and my knife in the other, I tear across the remaining 50 yards and propel myself backward into the shelter, peering wide-eyed into the woods through the open end. Improbably, I feel safer with a thin sheet of plastic separating me from the acres of wilderness bearing down on me. An hour of listening vigilantly for the telltale crackle of bear feet on dry leaves tires me out enough to fall asleep with my knuckles white around my knife.
When I finally awake to light over Bear Alley, the nocturnal screeches have subsided. I’m dirty, hungry and covered in mosquito bites, but, more importantly, I’m alive. Perhaps because I’m a survivor, it barely intimidates me when Byron asks me to start the morning fire. I gather my dead wood, build my platform and brace and spark up a roaring blaze in minutes. Crouching in front of the fl ames with my lone remaining Clif Bar, I watch shafts of morning sunlight filter down through moss-draped live oaks.
“How’s that PMA now?” Byron asks.
I take a quick inventory: I’ve had more fun with less equipment than I have on just about any other vacation I’ve ever taken, I will be able to impress my male friends with my firemaking skills for the rest of my life and, best of all, I have a killer story.
“I’m doing pretty good,” I say. “But wait — what is that over there? Is that a bear?”
Byron whips around in time to watch a wild turkey run, head bobbing, through a clearing behind him.
“Gotcha.”
GREEN EARTH SURVIVAL SCHOOL
Hobe Sound, FL (32 miles from West Palm Beach) 772-530-5823; www.greenearthsurvivalschool.com
BYRON KERNS SURVIVAL SCHOOL
Weirsdale, FL (67 miles from Orlando), as well as Georgia and Virginia 352-350-4450; www.byronkernssurvival.com
Reader Comments
- Hey Jacqui, it was great to meet you at Green Earth, but it's so much better to read that you went on to really OWN the survival experience. Great article; fair and fun! I hope the outdoors continues to bring you joy. --Jake (Posted on 27 Jun 2011)
