Survival Outing

This morning I was really tired because I stayed up so late. I had to be at Ken's Truck Town at eleven in the morning to meet up with the others for the survival outing. I have been going along from year to year to help out. Mr. Thuot has been teaching a class at Liberty High School teaching people about survival and how to do things to help you survive in many types of situations.

This outing takes us into the woods where students build their own shelter and they have to sleep in it and spend time in it. They do not get sleeping bags and pillows. They sleep on the ground or on a bed if they make one. They have their watch taken from them and they get no food. They do get water.

We met up at Ken's Truck Town. A kid in the class is TJ. I know him from the tailgate parties before the Cougar Football games. He plays football for Liberty as well. He is a cool guy. He saw me and we shook hands. We talked about what each other have been up to. TJ will be going to WSU this fall. He is excited about doing that. I told him about the Palouse Thunder and he is pretty interested in playing for them this coming season.

Anyway, we head off to the Bandara Airfield. This is where we set up our basecamp. Then we walk on a short trail into the woods where they will set up camp. The first thing we do is unload the vehicles and do a walk through of the area. Mr. Thuot points out the bad areas to set up camp and then reminds them of what a good place would look like. Then he tells them they have some time to search for a spot and get it approved.

Once the approval is complete the students can start to build on their shelter. As they are doing that, the other chaperons and I worked on our camp. Because we are not working on the outing we do get some creature comforts such as a fire and sleeping bags. We got the area ready to go. Then we had the students come back to the main area.

Mr. Thuot worked on fire craft for a while describing and demonstrating how to use different method of starting fires. He told the story of Gary Anderson and his amazing survival situation back in the early seventies in Alaska. After that was complete he sent them back to finish up their shelter.

We got a fire going during that time to start to warm up. The weather was bad. It was raining really hard and we were all getting wet. But we put up a tarp over the fire are to keep us both dry and warm. That was nice. We waited until about eight thirty to get everyone back to the instructor area. We gave them some final words of wisdom before sending them back to their shelter. They would have to spend the next four hours in it.

After they go into their shelter we will make rounds about every ninety minutes to check up on them. I did my round with Ben. Ben has been coming along for a while. Mr. Thuot knows him from working with him. I always thought Ben was younger than me, but it turns out that he is almost three years older. He looks young. I would say he is close to being a ten-six-seven.

After that we sat around the fire with the others talking about various things. Someone brought some food. We ate. There were some potatoes that we put on the fire to heat up. One student came up to us. We all hide our food like a teenager would hide beer when a cop comes walking up. After his question was answered we sent him away can continued to eat.

At about midnight Ben and I went to our respective vehicles to get some sleep.