Author Sara F. Hathaway
The Changing Earth
"Dream, Survive, Thrive"
Episode 175 S5-12
Passing Down Your Skills
Featuring:
Dark Days in Denver Ch 12
Special Guest:
James Hart
As Dark Days in Denver continues, Erika meets new friends and reunites with old ones. The topic of passing down skills and respect for mentors is discussed. Today James Hart, wilderness survival instructor, joins the show to discuss the importance of passing down your skills and how rewarding it is to take the time to teach.
Passions can create opportunities to pass on information and impact the lives of others in priceless ways. Parents often have the initial impact on an individual. Children will learn what you teach them. What are you teaching them? Wilderness skills like camping and fishing can also create problem solving skills that last a lifetime. Engaging in outdoor activities can help teach the individual how to adapt and overcome any situation that is presented to them.
Don't hide from your children. Show them what you are doing. If you are fixing an automobile, growing a garden or pitching a camp with a tarp or a tent, share the experience. Share hard times with your children too. Life is not all sunshine and roses. They should know what you have to do to live.
Survive to live and live to survive. Back in the not so distant past you had to learn to make due with what you had to sustain life. Even welfare was much tougher than anything anyone faces today. Using these systems means that someone else is buying your dinner. There is so much food available in the environment, if you know how to find it. You need someone to teach you and if you have the skills, you should be teaching them to others.
There are many types of tents you could construct or shelters you could build but which one is the best? An instructor can help guide your path with much less trial and error.
Weather patterns can be read from the sky and this knowledge can make a big difference in daily life but it must be learned.
The scouting program is a great place to start. Military service, education or experience can add to that base of knowledge. Teaching the skills that you acquire helps you have a deeper understanding and helps others develop their skills. Taking the time to teach is deeply rewarding.
When teaching, teach the basics through challenging your students. Students don't like to be told that they can't do something or they need to do something a certain way. Let your students put their skills to the test so they learn what works and what doesn't. Make their brains work. They'll challenge you too. There is always more than one way to get from point A to point B. If they get stuck and ask you for help, then lend assistance.
Teaching through guidance instead of lecture increases the respect level the student has for the teacher. Students will learn the way to do it properly plus they will learn another way or way not to do it. Don't be-little your students! Don't take the materials away from them! Guide them.
Technology is making us dumb! We rely on tech to solve or problems, remember our numbers, and do anything we need. The more people we can teach to be adaptable and train to survive hard times the more people will survive the chaos. Everything we create to make things "easier" makes the population less intelligent.
Even if you don't live the old ways of basic survival, you have to know it! If you don't, you won't be able to draw on those skills if you need them. Read more books! Find an instructor! Think outside the box!
A great book to have in your collection is the Good Housekeeping book Back to Basics. It's an older book but it take you through the ins and outs of every fact of homesteading, all the way through basic wilderness survival. However, it is an older book and can be difficult to get ahold of.
Information is priceless! Older folks have tons of information to teach you and share with you. All you have to do is have the respect and time to listen.
You need to have an idea of how to survive without electricity. Remember electricity controls food production too. Most everything is automated in planting, picking, packaging and shipping is automated. Without electricity it would all come to a stand still.
Learn how to make what you need. Even if you don't do it as a part of daily life. Learn the skills to do it so yo have the knowledge and then pass it down.
Learn from simpler folks like the Amish. Somehow their simple lives are much less stressful. Stuff if not important. People and skills are. Leave a legacy behind through your instruction. What will be on your gravestone?
Featured Quote From Today's Chapter:
"I respect him. That's why I listen to him. All he's ever tried to do is make me a better version of myself."
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The Changing Earth Series
The Federal Republic of America
Character Origins
James Hart
A veteran of 2 tours of duty in Viet Nam, James began his survival training at the age of 7 when he was stranded in the Mojave Desert for 7 hours without food or water during a family move in 1954. Since then he has been through the scouting program where he attained Life scout, served as Scoutmaster, Assistant Scoutmaster, Venture Advisor, and earned the Badden Powell Award. An avid outdoorsman, he has winter camped in Utah and northern Quebec, Canada, snowshoed in upstate New York, Utah and Quebec, and camped in the Mojave Desert of California, the Uintah Mountains of Utah, and the Piney Woods of East Texas, among numerous other locations. James has traveled and been through 42 of the 50 states of the US. Three provinces of Canada, sailed the Pacific Ocean, and crossed the Equator and 35 countries from jungles of South America to the Himalayas of Nepal. Having earned an Associates of Photography Degree from Houston Community College, he has beautifully captured many of his travels with his camera.
Now retired from a career with the Trinity River Authority of Texas, James resides in Dallas, TX, where he lectures on Wilderness and Survival Training. He is the author of SWET Survival & Wilderness Experience Training, Urban & Wilderness Emergency Planning, 35 other booklets on wilderness training, monthly articles for Survival Life Magazine, and a column and articles for The Garland Messenger Newspaper. James also does workshops and speaking engagements.
