4 Great Reasons to Learn Wilderness Survival Skills

Wilderness survival training arms you with essential self-rescue skills that can save your life in a crisis, but that’s not its only benefit. Immersing you and your family in an intensive wilderness survival course can also provide these 4 hidden bonuses:

1. Strengthens bonds between family members

One-on-one time, deep in the wilderness without interruptions and distractions is real time. A survival training course is an intense but equal playing field for all family members whose ties strengthen while building a shelter, making a fire, foraging for edible plants and insects and hunting small game or fishing, all while getting incredibly dirty. It’s good medicine for the family soul.

2. Gives you a connection with the natural world

Being up close and personal with the minutiae of nature awakens our five basic senses. Our senses trap and retain the smell and feel of fresh earth squished between fingers; a grub crawling on an outstretched hand; fast-moving rivers that shock legs and feet with icy coldness; the touch of scales on a wildly wriggling, freshly caught fish, the aroma of a hand-built campfire, or the wind whipping your face as you zip-line across a gorge.

3. It can be an intensely personal experience

Show me someone who isn’t afraid of something, be it heights, spiders, deep water, the dark, wild animals or wasps. Everyone has fears, and suddenly confronting them can be wildly unnerving. Wilderness survival training is chock-full of scaling cliffs, crossing churning bodies of water, trekking miles of bush, encountering animals and camping in the dark with bare necessities. It can bring an individual’s fears to the foreground where they can be tackled and defeated.

4. It’s a confidence-builder

Wilderness survival training teaches you to remain calm under pressure and fosters the analytical process of breaking down problems into manageable steps, strategizing and searching for creative solutions. Conquering challenges is a very satisfying and empowering feeling that in turn strengthens self-reliance, promotes personal growth and increases the ability to handle difficult or uncomfortable situations.

Making headway is often as simple as going back to the essence of our survival.