IWLSR5

Andy and I have gotten totally sucked in by the latest round of survivalist-themed shows on the History Channel and Discovery. Tonight on Man vs. Wild we learned how to estimate how much more daylight you have by using your outspread hand.

You can hold the palm of your hand perpendicular to the ground, and align your pinky with the horizon. With your fingers naturally spread (i.e., your hand is stiff, but you're not trying to stretch your fingers out as wide as they can go), you count up from your pinky until you hit the sun. Each finger is 15 min. So... if your pinky is at the horizon and the sun is roughly where your middle finger is, you've got about 30 more minutes of daylight left.

Here are 10 more things I want to learn how to do in the next 5 years:

1. How to can/preserve food.
2. How to find fresh water or purify water I can find that might be too dirty to drink.
3. How to find/forage food without picking something poisonous.
4. How to construct a shelter in a wooded area.
5. How to build a fire from scratch.
6. How to navigate without a compass.
7. How to clean a fish.
8. How to to stay as safe as possible in a tornado, hurricane, flood, earthquake, fire, or electrical storm (indoors, outdoors, in a car, etc.).
9. How to shoot a gun - well.
10. How to use grey water and other green techniques to be as off-grid as possible (should we decide to go that route).

I'm not sure what's going to happen in the coming years. I have no idea if Andy's and my sense of worry is unfounded... but I don't think it's a bad idea to prepare no matter what. If anything, the skills we pick up will be useful and empowering, and the more "green" we can live, the better our impact on the environment and our imprint upon the land.