Trekking through the Wilderness
Custom Class for Personalized Land Navigation Guidance
What an exhilarating weekend we just spent at Survival University!
Our mission? To turbocharge the navigation skills of Navy divers and ROTC Army Officer aspirants, pushing their abilities beyond the ordinary.
First things first, we ensured everyone was on the same page with basic navigation concepts. Then, over the course of the weekend, we filled in the blanks with various handpicked land navigation techniques that are commonly known. With a certification test looming on the horizon for our students, we wanted to make that test a stroll in the park. Here's a glimpse of what this fantastic group of individuals achieved.
We had quite the assortment of navigator's tools at our disposal, from the Lakota navigation stick to the traditional shadow stick. The Lakota navigation stick took charge, completely eradicating the need for map and compass. On the off chance of dead batteries or a lost compass, the traditional shadow stick was there to pick up the slack. We even demonstrated Athabaskan strategies for dealing with declination, which is quite the conundrum when true north shifts to magnetic north.
Phones and GPS were there to teach every student the ins and outs of satellite navigation, both with and without modern aids.
Then there was the map and compass work. Mind-blown, just mind-blown. We covered substantial ground, wrapping up the weekend by setting each student on a solo, two-hour expedition while under the watchful eye of the lead instructor perched atop a hill with binoculars. At the finish line, each student was sent a Morse code message from a whirling bull roarer, spilling the beans on an unknown location. With a 100% success rate, they showed up on time and were rewarded with leftovers from the previous week's Austere cooking class.
The overwhelmingly positive feedback more than made up for the exhaustion. My personal favorite comment was, "I would have never dreamed that intricate orienteering was possible...now it seems so simple! Can we do it again?"
Lakota Navigation Stick
A tool traditionally wielded by the Lakota folks, the Lakota navigation stick is used to maintain a sense of direction by aligning a marked stick with the sun or other natural cues. This ancient method allows a navigator to orient themselves without the aid of modern compasses, instead relying on observational skills tied to the environment.
Traditional Shadow Stick
The traditional shadow stick technique involves observing the movement of a stick's shadow cast by the sun to determine direction. By placing a vertical stick in the ground and marking the tip of its shadow at different times, a navigator can establish an east-west line, helping to maintain spatial orientation in wilderness navigation.
Athabaskan Methods for Declination
Athabaskan navigators, indigenous to parts of North America, developed traditional strategies for dealing with declination, which occurs when magnetic north differs from true north. Their methods involve analyzing natural landscape features and celestial cues to adjust their bearings, compensating for declination effects to ensure accurate course plotting. The Survival University's course highlights the practical utility of these indigenous techniques in advanced land navigation.
- The Lakota navigation stick, a traditional tool from the Lakota people, eliminated the need for modern navigational equipment like maps and compasses during our wilderness trek.
- The traditional shadow stick technique, used to determine direction by observing a stick's shadow, served as a backup option in case of lost or dead navigational equipment.
- Athabaskan methods for dealing with declination, unique strategies developed by indigenous navigators in North America, were highlighted in our Survival University course as essential skills for advanced land navigation.
- In addition to outdoor-living and survival skills, our learning experience also encompassed education-and-self-development topics such as satellite navigation, map and compass work, and even Austere cooking techniques.
