I often discover people who inform themselves a lot about wilderness living, bushcraft or survival. Some wilderness instructors are also of this kind and have a some knowledge about specific skills. Basically nearly everything you find on Youtube is of that kind. But unfortunately something much more important is getting more and more lost: Being outside, living in the wilderness, get a deeper intuition.

For example you see especially in the first seasons of the TV series Alone that a lot of people who seem to have a professional background or are even survival/wilderness instructors greatly lack handling difficult and unknown situations. They find themselves making clearly wrong decisions most regular multi-day hikers without any special knowledge would not do. The hole wilderness – survival – bushcraft scene is often much more about playing with things instead really being out.

Often it is more important to do things intuitively and get a deeper understanding about being in wilderness. It starts with being out as a young child to get this deeper understanding. Things in nature are way too complex to do everything with rational thinking an deciding, because it just takes too long and there are too many factors in the equation. It is the same with simple living: It is extremely complex and not easy at all, simple ≠ easy.

Examples

Attentiveness

To learn more about nature the easiest way is to be out and visit places more often to see how they change and evolve over the seasons and over the years. It is important to be an attentive person and realize your surroundings in detail and as a whole. Some people go out and do not notice anything. Work on that! Attentiveness is the key factor for wilderness living! You can practice that by going through everything you see, smell, hear and feel: tracks, plants, traces, weather, animals etc.. Then you do that again and go into more detail with everything. Do it again and again and go into more and more detail.

When you are attentive you see problems before they occur and this is a necassarity for wilderness living.

Verdict

Do not get me wrong, theoretical knowledge and rational thinking are extremely important. But it is not enough.

Single skills may seem fancy and you can impress others with them, but they do not have a lot to do with living in wilderness.