The place I camp is about 1 ½ hours from here, up in the Sierra Nevadas at about 7,000 feet. When I went there, I always took a walk along a path, across a paved single-lane road, down a dirt road that winds its way around a meadow, and finally to an area with huge boulders. I took in the fresh air, smelled the pines, and listened to the wind. Along the way I saw the dirt road, the meadow, the boulders – but time would teach me that I never really “saw” these things at all.
Since I often camp alone, I figured I’d better take a survival course. Searching for the best, I found Tom Brown, Jr. (author of several books) in New Jersey. New Jersey? How can you study wilderness survival in an industrialized state, unless it’s urban survival?
Boy, was I wrong. New Jersey has some of the most beautiful, remote areas filled with pines, oaks, deer, blueberries, and streams you can swim in and drink from at the same time (I’ve done it without ill effect, but I am not recommending you try it). We walked into an isolated area; the beauty stunned me.
Our class with Tom was an advanced one, in which we would live with only the clothes on our back and a knife for a week – in October, no less. We would have to make our own shelters out of leaves and sticks, carve or burn a bowl and spoon out of wood, study tracks, learn how to make traps,learn about pottery, cooking methods, foraging and plant medicine, water gathering, and how to make a fire out of sticks.
Now if they had required our group to hunt or forage for our food, we would be doing that all day and would probably end up starving anyway. So they provided a very basic stew for us, such as you would eat in a survival situation, and thus freed up time to learn everything we could.
We had personal “sit spots” where we could go and just chill or meditate. I started becoming more aware there. There was much, much more to the cedar swamp that I sat near than a casual glance would reveal. I found awesome, amazing plants and so much more – the likes of which I have never seen elsewhere.
Tom stressed awareness and never more than when he taught tracking. The man knows so much about this nearly lost art – an old Apache Indian taught him the art many years ago. He literally had us tracking mice across both dirt and paved roads by the time he was through with us. My awareness increased even more.
We were taught how to reach out with our senses, how to see and hear more in the woods, and the proper way to stalk an animal (or a human – I’ve made more than one person jump, wondering where I had come from). By the end of the week my awareness level had been pumped up higher than it had ever been before.
When I returned home to California, I went camping as soon as I could on “my” mountain. When I drove into my camping area, it was as if a bright light had been turned on. I was noticing things I had never noticed before. And I looked at the woods differently.
Where there had been “just leaves”, I now saw a living shelter ready to be made. Where there had been “just wood”, I saw bowls and spoons, fire-starting material, lances, arrows; the list goes on and on.
What’s more, I was more acutely aware of movement. Little chickadees flitting from tree to tree had evaded my vision before, but now I picked up on it immediately. I heard more, saw more, and felt more. And tracks were all over the place.
My perspective had changed. It all depends on where you’re standing as to what you see. If two people stood on opposite sides of a TV and described what they saw (without using the word TV), it would seem they were describing two different things. But it’s still a TV. It’s just that these two people have different perspectives.
So now, I often pause and think about another person’s perspective. It may be different than mine, yet we are essentially seeing the same thing. You’ve all heard the phrase “keep your perspective”. That may mean seeing the world as if from an eagle’s view, as opposed to a mouse’s view. Perspective is a powerful – and sometimes dangerous – tool. Be aware – and use it wisely.