Project Survival

I’ve just completed the initial SEO for a project which I know I am going to enjoy. Enjoyment fosters enthusiasm and an inclination to share, so I thought I’d tell everyone about it.

Ray Mears is a respected authority on survival, bushcraft and the many skills that have been lost to the modern world. His TV series’ include: Tracks, World of Survival, The Essential Guide to Rocks, Extreme Survival, Trips Money Can’t Buy with Ewan McGregor, The Real Heroes of Telemark, Bushcraft Survival, and most recently, Wild Food. In his TV programmes Ray is full of admiration for the ingenuity of aboriginal, indigenous people and those who have survived incredible hardship. Ray has an engaging presentation style and he clearly holds a lot of affection for the lifestyles and cultures of the people he meets on his travels. If you have never watched any of his programmes and, like me, you enjoy watching programmes about survival from the comfort of your living room, I recommend you take a look at Bushcraft Survival.

His website at www.raymears.com is where you will find all of those neat outdoor survival tools and implements that Ray uses in his work. He also provides some popular bushcraft educational courses that give people a chance to gain some first hand experience and top class hands-on instruction from experienced woodspeople.

Luckily I have never been in a true ‘survival’ situation but I do have fond memories of my days in the boy scouts when we would regularly go camping to various places, some close to home and some further afield. It was on these camping trips that a few of us would have a go at ‘sleeping out’. Basically this involved heading off into the woods for one or two nights armed with only a few essentials to keep us warm and relatively dry.

Not only did these experiences provide me with a wealth of fond memories they also gave me a few of the basic survival skills that Ray shares in his TV programmes and survival courses. I can still start a fire without matches or a lighter and could probably still build a bivouac. And, if I was hungry enough, I think I could just about snare and skin a rabbit. Ray and his TV programmes always remind me of those nights in the woods with rain trickling down my back gnawing on the bones of a badly cooked rabbit. Happy days!