Introduction

I've always been interested in the woods and film, and in this WISE project, my friend Clara and I will combine both. Our goal is to learn primitive survival skills and successfully spend three weekends in the woods over the course of the spring. However we will specialize somewhat- my focus will be directing and editing footage of our experience into a documentary. Clara's focus will be learning the skills and teaching them to me, as well as making a survival handbook of her experience I am very excited to start the project, and already have many ideas for shots, locations, background music and the structure of how I want to develop our story.

Our first stay in the woods will be in the very beginning of April, in the woods the extend back beyond my house on Snyder Hill. Every stay will be three days, two nights long, usually from Friday to Sunday. The first stay, due to the time of year and our novice primitive capabilities, will be the most comfortable of the stays. Each stay will also have a focus. Our primary focus of the first stay will be shelter and fire. This means that we will bring food, twine, survival knives, hatchets,- anything that will allow us to focus more on building a warm, dry shelter and starting a fire without matches. The stream that runs through the gorge will provide us with adequate water, provided we can get a fire going to boil it.

Our second stay, in a location TBD, will take place the first weekend of May. We have yet to determine the focus of this stay, however it most likely will be getting food and drinking water- if we are in a location where there is no stream- and preparing that food. This stay will have fewer comforts than the first, however we may still bring food to supplement our catches.Exactly how much we bring will be determined by our confidence in our skills and capabilities.

Our third and final stay will be in mid/late May, and will be (parent permitting) on lower St. Regis, near the town of Saranac Inn, in the Adirondacks. This will be the most primitive. We will eat only what we can catch, and bring as few tools as our skills will allow. This trip will involve all of our previous accumulated skills, as well as primitive fishing skills, because it's on a small lake. Last summer I spent the night in a shelter on the shore with my family, and it was absolutely gorgeous. To get to that camping spot, you have to paddle across Little Clear Pond (which is not too difficult), hike the portage (which is long but not too extreme), and then paddle out across lower St. Regis. We will not be staying in the shelter that I stayed in last year, but rather build our own on another shore. The view from the lake is gorgeous.

Again I am very excited to start this project! Watch my progress by following this blog!