The Survival Journal

…and I just can’t hide it! Resh and I are taking a page out of Thoreau’s book and heading to the great outdoors for the weekend. Now, I’ve never been camping, but I do miss the country and back lot woods of rural life, so I am super excited.  We have our supply lists made, made all but our last minute purchases, car is cleaned out, are half-packed and the stuff is near the door ready to be loaded up first thing Saturday morning.

After a long day of purging, cleaning and organizing a few weeks ago, Resh and I settled down to watch “The Road”, a movie which seemed to have decent reviews and intriguing dynamics of a post-apocalyptic Earth. While this may not be particularly survival related, the movie stuck with me and I’m compelled to share a few thoughts…only after giving time and perspective a chance to keep this post from being a complete rant!First off, I really did not like this movie. It was slow, unbelievable in parts, and the story was lacking enough that I was continually looking at my watch. Still, I can take it for what it’s worth and gleen out the few of the positive lessons that were presented.

Walking becomes the primary means of travel. It always seems a little odd that in most post-apoctalyptic movies the only mode of moving from A to B is on your own two feet. I get that fuel will be scarce, but I’ve never understood why people don’t hop on an old-fashioned bicycle. Much more ground could be covered more quickly with such a mode. One thing, however, that “The Road” illustrates is the constant search for food, shelter and the ever-present risk of running into others who may or may not be friendly. Atop a bike, that type of motion is easily visible and the sound can’t really be disguised, not to mention passing the landscape at a higher speed means you don’t have much time to survey your surroundings. So depending on the needs of the moment, slower and safer might be the rule of the day.

We’ve been getting ready to go camping recently, an activity that I haven’t had the pleasure of since before I was 10 and Rora hasn’t ever. That means a cooler, tent, tarp, some new campfire cooking accouterments, etc, etc. Lots of review reading and Amazon clicking later we are camping gear rich and cash poor until a couple of paychecks pass through again.

So this weekend we were wanting to do something to be better prepared for emergencies or tight situations in general but didn’t want to dip into our savings. Rora suggested that we get into re-organizing our limited space to make room for the new gear and some basement space for getting into LTS (Long Term Storage) for food which we’d like to start soon as well.