Summer School

Survival school

By Steve Lange

Night one of survival school may have been the most miserable and uncomfortable night of my life.

And I've seen Celine Dion in concert.

Sunday, 4 p.m.: This is self-imposed, let’s get that out in the open. It makes a difference. Because when I read survival stories, it’s tougher to care as much for, say, Amundsen or Peary or the guys who get trapped on Everest or K2. They knew what they were getting into.

I am, after all, the editor of the magazine. I could have assigned myself a week at a Minnesota’s Mooseburger Clown College: five days of Miss Mooseburger and Flower the Clown and Mr. Ricketts teaching seminars like “Clown Dancing!” and “Clowning for Pictures!” and—I swear to God this is right from the brochure—”Learning to Use a Clown Hat!”

Two nights alone in Wisconsin’s northwoods seemed less frightening.

So that’s where I am—300 miles northeast of Rochester and two miles from Lake Superior in Cornucopia, Wisconsin, “The Gateway to the Apostle Islands.” “The Home of Wisconsin’s Northernmost Post Office.”

We—survival instructor Greg Weiss and I—have hiked well into the Bayfield County Forest, a northern hardwood forest on the edge of the Chequamegon National Forest, which covers 850,000 acres. “More bears,” according to the Wisconsin DNR, “are harvested near the Chequamegon than any other part of the state.” There have also been recent sightings of timber wolves and bobcat.

Greg, on our hike in, has gone over some basics, like the Rule of Threes: You can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter (in harsh conditions), three days without water, three weeks without food. That’s been about it.

“This is as good as it gets,” he says, gesturing toward an area of woods that looks like every other area of woods. “I’ll find you tomorrow.”

I did, when I set up the class, request that Greg make Night One a realistic survival situation. But as I watch him disappear into the woods, all I can think is: I’ve entrusted my life to a guy who I’ve known for less than two hours total. A guy who, when giving me instructions to his place, said “Just take a left and look for the first yurt [a round, portable tent-like structure over a lattice-work frame] on the right.”

I was originallly leery—and, really, everyone should be—of someone who lives in a yurt in Wisconsin. Now I’m downright concerned.

Here’s what I have with me: My clothes, my camera, a notebook and pen, and a lighter.

Here’s what I don’t have: Food, water, tent, sleeping bag, any clue what in the hell I’m doing.

It’s been raining on and off most of the day, and the forecast calls for rain most of the night with lows in the high 30s.

I find a tree with a Y-shaped split about four feet off the ground, wedge a main brace into the Y, and start breaking arm-diameter logs into eight-foot lengths by prying them between two trees.

Sunday, 9 p.m.: (since I don’t have a watch, all times, from here on, are approximations based on sky color, my internal clock, and my fear level.)

I have built what I think is a pretty solid shelter. Stacked logs like a lean-to. Debarked a fallen birch tree and wove birch bark through the logs. De-boughed an fallen pine tree and wove pine boughs through the logs. It’s been raining for the last hour or so, but it’s dry under my shelter. I’ve covered my floor—made my bed—with pine needles.

The last piece of birch bark, which I slid off the end of the tree in one tubular piece, has what looks like two eye holes and a peeled-up piece of bark that looks like a nose. I sit him next to my lean-to. I call him Barky.

Sunday, 11 p.m.: I get a small fire started in the rain, but barely. I keep trying to get the first level of twigs going while trying to dry the next larger stick size. At one point, I am on all fours trying to cover the fire from the rain. Bellybutton gets very warm.

Midnight: I have burned all of my pine needle bedding. Have burned much of my notebook. I seriously consider burning my camera’s instruction manual but, like everything else, it’s soaking wet.

Monday, 1:15 a.m.: The rain has let up, and my small fire is actually kicking out a little heat. Finally fall asleep, dreaming of ticks.

Monday, 2 a.m.: I wake up to pouring rain. My fire is completely out. In its place is a small puddle of ashy water. I’ll never, I realize now, get another fire going tonight, and it’s cold. Hypothermia cold. My shelter has kept me mostly dry, except for my face, which is suddenly soaking wet, mostly under my tear duct areas.

Monday, 2:01 a.m.: I decide to start walking to stay warm. Re-orient myself. Count my steps to each landmark and say it out loud. 200 steps to the tipped-over birch. Turn right and walk 150 steps to the stream. 120 steps to the sandy spot. Birch. Stream. Sandy spot. Birch. Stream. Sandy spot. I sound like Dora the Explorer, especially if Dora were shivering in the early stages of hypothermia and verbally berating herself for not going to Clown College.

Monday, 3:30 a.m.: Still walking the main trails. I am carrying my camera. Here’s what I tell myself: This rain is going to ruin my camera. I’ll just hike to the van to put the camera in it. I won’t get in the van myself. Though, maybe when I get to the van I should just make sure it starts, for safety’s sake. That’s all I’ll do. Get the camera out of the rain. Start the van. Also, maybe I should make sure the heater works.

Monday, 3:31 a.m.: I hike for the van. To put the camera in. Maybe test the starter and heater. Just before I get there, I realize that I have left the keys back at the campsite. By the time I hike there and back, it’ll be sunrise. [Expletive deleted] birch. [Expletive deleted] stream. [Expletive deleted] sandy spot. Dora the Explorer meets T-Pain the Rapper.

Monday, 4 a.m.: I hike back to where I think my shelter should be. It’s not there. Nothing looks familiar, and, as I’m standing in the middle of the pitch black woods, I hear what sounds like a scream. For maybe two minutes, I forget to follow the first Rule of Threes. The one about breathing.

Monday, 4:15 a.m.: Finally find my shelter. I missed you, Barky.

Monday, sunrise: The rain stops. The sun comes out. I get a fire started—a fire makes all the difference—and fall asleep for a few hours.

Monday, noonish: I hear Greg Weiss and photographer Jerry Olson, walking through the woods toward my makeshift camp. “Watch out,” Greg warns Jerry. “Steve may have set some traps for us.”

As if I were contemplating killing and eating them.

“Did you see the bear tracks?” Greg asks. “I could see your bootprints where you had been walking the trails, and a baby bear crossed your path and scratched at your tracks.” Down the trail were fresh bear droppings from one of Wisconsin’s estimated 12,700 black bears, whose primary range is basically centered in Cornucopia. I pretend not to hear him.

Greg surveys my shelter. “Not bad,” he says, then lists the things I did right—built it on high ground, wove layers into it, created a primitive shingling. Greg’s recommended shelter style is much lower and covered on both sides. “Just leave a small opening to get in and out, then completely stuff the shelter with dead leaves,” he says. “It’s like a sleeping bag.” It is, he says, and this is a direct quote, “luxurious.”

We walk through the woods for my crash course in survival basics. “Everything you need is around you,” Greg says. “These fiddlehead ferns will make an good survival stew.” These leeks will make great seasonings. Stuffing leaves between your shirt and jacket makes for great insulation.

Greg Weiss, 39, is 1,200 miles and a lifestyle away from his childhood in one of those New Jersey suburbs that top the nation in the most shopping malls per capita. Even then he was one of those kids drawn to the treehouse hideouts instead of organized sports. At 16, he took a weeklong course from “wilderness survival expert” Tom Brown. At 18, Greg enrolled at Northland College, the “Environmental Liberal Arts College” in Ashland, Wisconsin, to get a degree in Outdoor Education.

Since then, Weiss has lived the outdoors lifestyle, and it shows in his teaching. You can tell he’s actually practiced what he preaches. He spent a few post-college years teaching outdoor classes at places like the National Wildlife Federation and Outward Bound and the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, living out of his car and making “$6,000 to $8,000” per year. And, even then, saved enough money to buy 20 acres in Cornucopia. He bought a 20-foot diameter yurt (from online!) and lived in that off and on over seven summers as he built his house—the walls of which are straw bales covered with a mixture of clay and masonry sand.

He doesn’t look like a guy who has lived in a yurt, not that I’ve met anyone who has. He explains the survival basics with the pragmatism of a college instructor, which he’s been since 1999, teaching everything from Native American Woodland Skills to Whitewater Kayaking at Northland College.

Back at my shelter, Greg demonstrates a half-dozen matchless and lighterless firestarting methods. He makes tinder out of torn up birch bark, pocket lint, and the crushed-up inner bark of an aspen tree. He makes fire with flint and steel, then a bow drill (basically a string-driven friction fire), then a two-liter pop bottle (he fills it with water and turns it into a magnifying glass).

He shows me how to make a giant teepee fire, which is the exact opposite of my failed, build-it-as-I-go method of Night One. For Night Two, I have collected piles of twigs, ranging from pinkie size through full logs, and Greg stacks all of the wood into a teepee, with birch bark strips layered throughout and a small opening at the bottom. “I have my students build these,” he says, “and then I throw a 10-gallon bucket of water over it. It will still burn, though, even in a downpour.” It’s the kind of fire that can save your life.

I burn a tin can in the fire and scrub it with sand from the stream. Boil water for a soup with my fiddlehead ferns and leeks, seasoned to taste.

“You have everything you need right here,” says Greg. “The real key to survival is common sense and remaining calm. When people panic, it becomes a domino effect, and they can’t see it’s their actions causing the problems. Everything you need to survive is all around you.”

Monday, 4 p.m.: Greg and Jerry are gone. I cover my shelter floor with leaves. Eat my ferns and drink my water. The ferns taste like asparagus.

Monday, 7 p.m.: I put on my coat and find a Little Debbie Snack Cake that photographer Jerry must have slipped into my pocket. Contemplate whether eating this “outside” food will taint my survival experience.

Monday, 7:01 p.m.: I eat snack cake.

Monday, 9 p.m.: I have collected enough wood, I hope, for the night. Gather all the wood you think you’ll need for the night, so goes the survival saying, then put that in a pile. Then collect three more piles.

Tuesday, 1 a.m.: I hear animals scurrying everywhere, but my fire is going strong, and I fall asleep, deep in the Wisconsin northwoods, in a shelter I’ve built myself out of logs and birch bark and pine boughs.

Tuesday, the second the sun starts to rise: I burn Barky—I know that’s what he would have wanted. Douse my fire. Hike to the van.

Tuesday, 5:30 a.m.: I am speeding to find some sort of restaurant, but there’s nothing open in northern Wisconsin. I finally get to the Kwik Trip in Spooner. When I walk in, the lone female employee moves from stocking the shelves to standing behind the counter. She may have her finger on the silent alarm button. Because I look—and probably smell—like a person who just spent the last two nights in the woods sleeping on the ground in his clothes. And, maybe more frighteningly, I buy all of the hot food they have left—a cheeseburger, a hot pretzel, one of those Ranchero Beef Steak Tornados. Out in the parking lot, I fall asleep in my van while eating my Tornado.

Tuesday, 1 p.m.: I get back to Rochester, shower for an hour, and sleep in a dry bed with warm blankets. When I wake up, I remind myself that, before I do anything stupid for next year, I should just sign up for Clown College right now.