My First Survival Kit

I have camped, fished, hunted, foraged and enjoyed the outdoors my whole life. I learned a love and appreciation for the outdoors from my parents, and they provided many opportunities to learn about how to cooperate with nature. One opportunity was enrolling me in Girl Guides where I learned many of my camping, first aid and survival skills. As a young teen I connected with a local group of Pathfinders who realized that no one would participate if they were too rigid about the rules and so we just did the bare minimum in that regard and focused on real life skills. We did a lot of shelter camping, and experimental campfire cooking and first aid training and even winter camping.

It didn't snow much that often on Vancouver Island, but one year it snowed a lot and my parents' long, double-wide driveway resulted in large piles of snow once cleared. I excavated one of these piles into a snow cave. I spent three days hanging out in my snow cave, experimenting with the things in my survival kit before the slowly melting snow caused the cave to collapse in on itself (temperatures don't tend to get much below freezing on the West Coast of Canada and the heat I generated inside the cave contributed).

That first survival kit consisted of:

- clean can with plastic lid (mine was a bit bigger than the ones you can buy nuts in)

- swiss army folding knife

- fishing gear

- snare wire

- chocolate

- oxo beef bouillon cubes

- Red Rose tea bags

- Bic lighter

- tea light candle

- minimal first aid supplies

- some folded aluminum foil

- garbage bag

- paper

- pencil

In those three days I tried everything (almost everything, there weren't too many fish in the vicinity) in the survival kit. I laid out the garbage bag on the snow and placed all the items on the plastic. I collected snow in the can and proved that I could melt snow and heat the water to a sufficient temperature to make tea and broth (in those days we didn't worry too much about the purity of our water so boiling for 5 minutes wasn't thought to be necessary).

I was perfectly comfortable in my snow suit and snow cave. When it grew dark the light of the candle made my cave very cozy. I went for walks during the day and learned how to spend time with myself with no distractions.

Today I carry a lot more equipment in my survival kit, and I carry a lot more knowledge and skills. But the idea of practicing survival skills, of knowing how to use the items in the survival kit and the confidence that I can deal with survival situations all were rooted in me in those three days.

Is there anything in your survival kit with which you could use some more practice?