Do your research

PLANNING AND PREPARING FOR YOUR ADVENTURE BEGINS with research, a fairly easy undertaking in today’s information-rich digital age. Between the Internet and the countless books available in public libraries, the foundation is there for anyone to begin to build a location-specific store of knowledge for just about any region on earth. 

Printed publications offer other benefits too, aside from the significant information they can yield. First, you can carry small guidebooks and pamphlets with you and—assuming they haven’t washed down the river with your canoe—refer to them along the way. Second, reading about your destination ahead of time gets you excited about the trip and empowers you with information that might save your life. 

One thing to keep in mind when reading books or online materials, though, is that while they may describe, for example, the types of plants that can be sources of water in a specific area, you cannot be 100 percent sure that you’ll be able to identify a plant unless someone has personally taught you how. In this book, for instance, I note that you can find water in the chevron of the leaves of most banana trees. That’s all well and good, but you may need someone to show you a banana tree, and teach you how to distinguish it from similar-looking plants. 

Ideally, anyone going on a backcountry wilderness trip should take the time to train in that region with a local expert, one who can offer such vital advice as which plants are edible and which ones will kill you. Take the time to find an expert, and try to dedicate at least one day with him or her on the land. The training and teaching may even be available in your own area.  

Although local experts obviously know the best ways to build shelter, make fire, gather food, and locate water. I often find that it’s not the big lessons they teach that ultimately help me the most but the little nuggets of wisdom they throw out in passing. For example, in the Amazon rainforest Stay away from plants with umbrella-shaped flowers. It can be deadly to eat a plant you are unsure of, so it’s better to try and find food elsewhere than to risk eating a toxic plant.  That information can't nowhere to be found in any of the books on the region, but it could have saved my life. Catching small weaver birds by hand by walking up to their nests at night and simply plucking them out of their holes. This is the kind of tip that you can’t find anywhere else, but that may prove invaluable if you’re stranded and starving.

 Most people have only one or two weeks off work and can’t dedicate time for training or education while on vacation. But if you can, it will make you more self-reliant, enhancing your trip in ways you never thought possible, even if you never get caught in a survival situation.